Today I am thankful for the story of Zacchaeus.

11.3.19

---

When I was little, the story of Zacchaeus was one of my favorite Bible stories. For those who may not be familiar with it, Zacchaeus was a tax collector from the town of Jericho back in the time of Jesus. Tax collectors in that era were known for their dishonesty and were therefore not real popular in most circles. Well, Zacchaeus got curious when he heard that Jesus was coming to town to preach and he followed the crowd of Hebrews to go meet this Jesus guy. Zacchaeus was pretty short, though, and couldn’t see through the large crowds. He climbed a sycamore tree so that he’d have a view of Jesus as he preached. As the story goes on, Jesus approaches Zacchaeus, asks him to come down and announces that he’d like to go to Zacchaeus’ home to dine. People were shocked because Zacchaeus was an unpopular tax collector, and Zacchaeus himself was shocked because he felt unworthy. However, Jesus insisted and went to Zacchaeus’ home.

As a kid, I think I liked this story because I thought it was kind of cool that Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see Jesus. Or maybe it was because I, as a kid, could relate to being short and not being able to see everything. But, I actually think it was because my mom had a recording of a song about Zacchaeus that my sister and I would listen to over and over again on our record player. It was a fun, catchy song that told the Bible story, and because we sung it over and over again it routinely got stuck in my head and I remembered it.

Well, today’s Gospel reading at church was the Zacchaeus story. And, the children’s choir I direct sang a fun Zacchaeus song during Mass. It wasn’t the same song I knew from my childhood, but it was equally upbeat and catchy and brought back a whole swarm of great memories.

I appreciate the Zacchaeus story on a different level, though, now as an adult. I appreciate knowing that Jesus didn’t just pass by the dishonest, unpopular tax collector who was awkwardly up in a tree feeling unworthy, and I appreciate the correlation that this has to my life – that Jesus still wants to hang with me when I’ve been sinful or when I’m unpopular or when I’m weird and awkward and feeling unworthy in life. Fr. George, in his homily today, also reminded us that Zacchaeus isn’t the main character of that story; Jesus is. He offered us the insight that we should, like Jesus, look for opportunities to love those who are sometimes difficult to love and let them into our lives, even though society says otherwise.

So, while I’ve spent most of my day with two different Zacchaeus tunes battling it out in my head, I’m awfully thankful for the story of Zacchaeus – for the joy-filled childhood memories that it invokes and for the important life-lessons attached.