November 2, 2025
Isaiah 1:10-18
Luke 19:1-10
I’m mixing metaphors that, in my experience, get mixed fairly often. If you’re in trouble, you might be up a tree. Or up the creek. If you’re in a lot of trouble, you might be up a creek without a paddle. And if you’re having trouble getting your metaphors together, you might be up a tree without a paddle.
Zacchaeus might be one of those up a tree without a paddle.
He doesn’t seem like a likely person to be in trouble. Luke wrote that he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Wealth is supposed to insulate us from trouble, isn’t it? If I’m pursuing wealth but I’m not really greedy, I’m probably trying to protect myself or my family from the things that poverty threatens, and poverty threatens a lot.
Wealth may insulate us from some kinds of trouble – even that’s not quite a guarantee, as some people can tell riches to rags stories – but there’s other trouble that wealth simply can’t protect us from. The wealthy get sick. They may struggle with relationships – arguing about money may actually raise the risk of broken relationships. Rich people may find themselves cut off from social supports.
That’s exactly what had happened to Zacchaeus.
Lis Valle-Ruiz writes at Working Preacher, “The plot is a (hi)story that repeats itself across places and times. It is the story of a person who belongs to an oppressed people by birth but joins the ranks of the foreigners/oppressors by trade, resulting in gain for the person and their family while contributing to the oppression of the community.”
Ironically, in Hebrew Zacchaeus means, “righteous.” I’m pretty sure that generated a lot of comment among his neighbors. He almost certainly started off fairly wealthy, because the Romans didn’t turn to poor people to become tax collectors, let alone chief tax collectors. He probably didn’t have much in common with or much to do with the poorer people of Jericho, which was most of them. In taking that position, though, Zacchaeus had taken a place that cut him off from most even of his wealthy neighbors. If a foreigner, a Gentile, entered your home it became ritually unclean. According to a saying preserved in the second century collection of rabbinic wisdom called the Tosefta, the same was true of tax collectors.
He may have been doing fine financially. He may have been doing okay with a very small number of his neighbors (and they were probably tax collectors, too). As far as the rest of the Jewish population of Jericho was concerned, he was up a tree without a paddle.
What do we do when somebody has built their own trouble? What do we do when they’ve cut themselves off from us? What do we do when they’ve planted the tree, watered the tree, fertilized the tree, profited from the tree, and then climbed the tree? What do we do when they’ve realized they’re up a tree without a paddle and have started to look for a way down?
What do we usually do?
Be honest. What do you usually do when somebody has made life difficult for others, even harmed others, has cut themselves off from you and from others, and suddenly announces that they’d like to come down?
If I could venture to guess, we react much the way that the people of Jericho reacted when Jesus called Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree and invited himself for dinner. With revulsion. With suspicion. With rejection. “Leave him in the tree, Jesus. He got himself there. He chose it. It’s on him. He didn’t even bring a paddle.”
I am not talking about those who have planted and nurtured their tree and are still perched in it, merrily enjoying the fruits of their separation and abusing those below them. I’m not talking about those who have settled into their tree so they can throw things at the rest of us below.
I’m talking about the ones who have decided they want to come down from the tree. The ones who have made an effort to tell us they want to come down. The ones who, like Zacchaeus, have shown that they’re interested in reconciliation.
Now what do we do, we who may be at the bottom of the tree, although if we’re honest with ourselves we’re probably part way up our own tree, what do we do when somebody says, “I want to come down?”
If we follow Jesus, we help them get down. We guide them to place their hands and feet as they descend. We raise our arms to them to give them support and cushion what might be a slip or two. We say, “Let’s get together for dinner. And by the way. You’ve been up a tree without a paddle. Here. Have a paddle.”
Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I know that even now, I hold people hostage to versions of themselves they’re striving to outgrow. I know that I refuse people the permission to change, because if they change, I will have to change, too. Likewise, I know that there are areas in my life where God is asking me to stand my ground and tell a new story about myself — a story my listeners might have high stakes in resisting. These are the places where I am tempted to retreat, to quit, to resort to a vision of humanity that is ordinary and mortal, not extraordinary and lasting.”
It’s not just Zacchaeus up a tree without a paddle. It’s you and me, isn’t it? We planted it. We watered it. We climbed it. We threw things at people from up there.
Jesus called us down. Jesus welcomed us down. Jesus told us he’d enjoy our hospitality.
Jesus said, with a smile, “Have a paddle.”
When somebody else wants to come down from their tree, well: “Have a paddle.”
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric writes his sermons ahead of time, but he tends to make changes while preaching. What you have just read does not precisely match what he said.
| The image is Zacchaeus by Niels Larsen Stevns, 1864-1941. Retrieved from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54227 [retrieved November 2, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niels_Larsen_Stevns-_Zak%C3%A6us.jpg. |
