The Symbolism of Zacchaeus

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| Transcription |
The story of Zacchaeus is one of the most well known stories in the gospels. But when you read it there is a strange information distribution. Now, what’s information distribution? One of the helpful things that you can do when you’re trying to understand a story, especially a well-known one, is look at how much information is devoted to each major section or event or character in the story. The purpose of doing this is to see what the author actually focuses on, what he wants us to pay attention to. Because if it’s a very well-known story our attention naturally gravitates toward the parts that are popular. So let’s look at the information distribution in our story.

The story of Zacchaeus is short, it takes less than a minute to read, so let’s read the whole thing:

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And look, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The story consists of 10 verses. Seven of the verses happen outside with the crowd with Zacchaeus running up in a tree and coming down and the crowd grumbling. Only three verses are the conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus, you could say the moral of the story. So we have a strange amount of attention on Zacchaeus’ action and the tree. I mean, why have all the stuff about the tree anyways couldn’t we just have the conversation in the house, Zacchaeus telling Jesus that he’ll give away a bunch of his stuff and Jesus saying that salvation has come here?

One of the fundamental features of great art, whether it’s architecture, music, or literature, is that all the parts work together to make the whole, all the parts, the sentences, the words, the images contribute to the main thesis of the work. So there’s never a shape or a note or an image that’s not serving the goal of the work. So let’s look at the craft of Luke and how these images and actions contribute to his message.

Luke opens the story like this:

“He entered Jericho and was passing through.” (Luke 19:1)

Jesus has just about finished his journey to Jerusalem that started 10 chapters earlier and just like the journey of Israel in the wilderness ended with them passing through Jericho, so Jesus passes through Jericho. But this is not a little detail to fill out the scene, Luke is showing us that this Jericho scene is parallel to the Jericho scene in the book of Joshua.

In both Jerichos you have a hostile group of people, the crowd here and the inhabitants of Jericho in Joshua. And in each story there is one exception, one convert, one faithful and unexpected one–a prostitute in Joshua and a tax collector here–whose home will be the place of their transformation. Notice, the Canaanites are parallel to the Israelite crowds here. Israel has been Canaanized and needs to be reconquered, but this time the warfare and the weapons will be different.