Salvation Has Come

Psalm 117

Luke 19: 1 – 10

August 31, 2025

Jesus is only a few short days from his last entry into Jerusalem. While, I think, sometimes we have this image of Jesus and his followers coming to Jerusalem as a solitary group; the reality is that the group of Jesus and his followers would have been just a small part of a much larger pilgrimage crowd heading up to Jerusalem and Passover.

It is not unreasonable to think that Jesus was a known figure in the crowd. By this time Jesus had rattled the professionally religious, healed many, performed countless miracles and his reputation certainly would have preceded him. But make no mistake, Jesus is but a noteworthy figure amongst many making the customary pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Jesus has left Galilee and passed down the Jordan River Valley to Jericho. The city would finally have been a welcomed sight for the Jordan River Valley is a long, dusty passage. Certainly, the Jordan River in the first century would have been a significant body of moving water. That, perhaps, is hard to imagine today with roughly 90% of the Jordan River being siphoned off by Syria, Jordan, and Israel reducing the flow to a muddy trickle. But in the first century, cool, fresh water would have been readily available.

But nonetheless, the long valley is a hot and dusty five to seven day walk. Traveling in a large crowd, while certainly ensuring safety, did not necessarily make for a comfortable passage. Jericho, one of the longest continually inhabited cities in the world, would have been a glorious sight.

Built on several large and plentiful springs, Jericho was a city known for its abundant fresh water and large, plentiful, stately palm trees that lined its roads. Jericho was actually known as the “City of Palms.” It was also known – sorry Pasadena – as the City of Roses. Roses were grown in such amounts that the aroma of roses in bloom was said to be noticeable long before one actually entered the city. Jericho was also famous for vast acreage given to the cultivation and growth of balsam trees.

Jericho sat astride major trade routes in first century Palestine. Both Herod the Great, and his son Archelaus, had built palaces there. The rich and comfortable built vacation homes there. Jericho was an affluent city of merchants, importer/exporters, and the rich and famous. And as such, it was also a central location for the collection of taxes.

Every Jewish male over the age of 14, and Jewish female over the age of 12 had to pay a census tax to Rome. Landowners paid a property tax, usually based on the size of their harvest. Citizens also periodically had to pay special taxes as decreed by the Roman emperor. One of these special taxes, as ordered by Caesar Augustus, serves as the context for Joseph and Mary coming to Bethlehem.

There were also indirect taxes – tolls, sales taxes, import/export duties and tariffs. All of this taxation was handled by men who had purchased the taxation franchise from the Romans. These locals – viewed as collaborators by their fellow Jews – were allowed to add on a surcharge for the cost of collecting the taxes. The collectors were free to set their own rates, and the payment of these surcharges was also mandatory.

Tax Collectors were hated collaborators, the day-to-day economic face of their oppressors. They were viewed as outcasts and no tax collector was a welcomed member of Jewish society. Such was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was not just any tax collector, he was an “architelōnēs” – a chief tax collector, the only one of this level mentioned in Scripture. Such was the size of his franchise, and income, that Zacchaeus had to employ secondary collectors to handle all of their permitted taxation.

The pilgrimage crowd is coming through. As Jesus passes through Jericho, not only does he meet with Zacchaeus, but he also heals blind Bartimaeus. Jesus knows he is on his way to a horrific death, and yet he can’t help but be who he is – a teacher, a healer, one who brings new life and direction.

The life of Zacchaeus is turned upside down by his encounter with THIS Jesus.

Jesus sees Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Tree and comes to his home for dinner, for fellowship, and most importantly – for the beginning of a relationship that transforms his life.

Wouldn’t you have liked to be in the home of Zacchaeus for that encounter? Sometimes, I think we get the impression that this is a dine and dash situation. When Jesus says that he is coming to stay at his home, the Greek word that we are translating simply as stay also means to abide with. In other words, Jesus is coming for a while. This isn’t some kind of spiritual hit and run. Jesus comes, Jesus comes to the brokenness, to the despair, to the urgency of Zacchaeus with time….. with love.

Jesus comes with transformation.

Charles Spurgeon said, “Repentance is a discovery of the evil of sin, a mourning that we have committed it, a resolution to forsake it. It is, in fact, a change of mind of a very deep and practical character which makes the man love what he once hated and hate what he once loved.

Zacchaeus loved money and, undoubtedly, the power that came in its wake. Zacchaeus loved money and power to such an extent that he was willing to place himself as an outcast in Jewish society so that he could have it.

But he knew it wasn’t enough. The money and power could not fill the hole in his soul that only a relationship with God could fill. That desperation drove him up a tree….. literally. That desperation had this wealthy Jewish man doing the culturally unthinkable: hiking up his tunic and running along the road to get positioned to meet Jesus. The spiritual hunger that drove Zacchaeus into this encounter resulted in a relationship that transformed his life.

Because of that spiritual encounter, Zacchaeus is a changed man. He gives away half of his wealth and determines to pay back those he had cheated four-fold from what remains. Early church fathers like Clement of Alexandria would later write that Zacchaeus became an early traveler with Peter and later the first bishop of Caesarea.

All because of an encounter on a road in Jericho. All because of an encounter that transformed a desperate outcast. All because of Jesus; and that relationship transformed this once hated individual into a child of God.

Friends, the reality is that without a dynamic sense of both the presence and the mystery of God; without a cultivated relationship of vulnerability and intimacy with Christ; without a transformative awareness of a relationship with Jesus fueled by the creative work of the Holy Spirit; then conservative theology hardens into heartless political ideology and progressive theology is nothing more than activism responding to the latest activism. We become religious professionals.

The world doesn’t need anymore believers in name only. We already have far too many of those. The world needs a transformed Zacchaeus. Our communities need a transformed Zacchaeus. Can we become a modern-day Zacchaeus?

Richard Rohr has said that “Christianity is a lifestyle – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established ‘religion’ (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s personal ‘Lord and Savior.’….. The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on earth is too great.”

Zacchaeus made no such mistake. Zacchaeus went up that tree and into a spiritual encounter with Jesus. His world was changed, transformed, no longer characterized by his past obsession with money and power.

How about us? Has a relationship with Jesus really transformed our souls? Does repentance have us hating what we used to be and embracing what we were created to be? Is Jesus a familiar, if somewhat mysterious companion as we walk through life? We may not have cheated people four-fold, but have we always loved as Jesus has loved us?

We worship and offer a God who has created all that is and who has blown life into our created souls so that we might be in an intimate walk with him through this life and all of eternity. We worship and offer a Jesus who is filled with love, grace and redemptive mercy. We worship and offer a Holy Spirit who stands ready to fill us with transformative power to become the people God intended us to be.

Salvation came to the house of Zacchaeus, and it transformed his life. May it be so in your life and in mine. Amen.