The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church, Fairfax, Virginia, on November 2, 1980. The sermon is entitled, Zacchaeus, the Little Big Man, and the scripture references Luke 19, verses 1 to 10. 

Yesterday was All Saints Day. This is All Saints Weekend. And that's a time when we pause to remember not just those few great well-known Christians whose lives have literally shaped history, but on this particular day and weekend we pause to remember the vast multitude of others, the little people like you and me, who play perhaps a role that the world will little note nor long remember, but which is very much known to God.

It's a day for all saints, and the word saints, biblically, is all Christians. All of those who are set aside, not by their own doing, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Neil was reminding us on Friday evening what fun it would be to trace our spiritual genealogies.

You know, you might be able to single out one or two people, perhaps one person, who God really distinctly used to bring you in an initial kind of a way to trust in Christ and to begin to know Him personally. But you probably can't tell who it was that brought that person to Christ and who it was that brought that person and so on. And wouldn't it be fun to be able to plot out your spiritual family tree?

Well, one day you're going to be able to because those stories are known unto the Lord and one day He's going to share them with us. John writes a gospel that ends with these words. It's the very last statement in John's gospel.

He said there are also many other things which Jesus did, in addition to those recorded in the book. Many other things which Jesus did, were every one of them to be written down, I suppose that the world itself couldn't contain the books that would be written. The marvelous thing is he goes on doing those things, doesn't he?

And adding to the library. One day all these stories will be told, and we'll rejoice to see the interconnections. You know, behind every one of those great saints, there was probably a mother or a father or a grandmother saying their prayers.

Maybe a Sunday school teacher. Some little person who might not even have been aware of his or her significance in the unfolding plan of God. So that's what All Saints is about, celebrating all those other saints who don't have special days in the church calendar.

It seems appropriate to me that on this weekend we would have before us the story of one of these little people, which did, as a matter of fact, get into the book, a fellow by the name of Zacchaeus. It's a very short story about a rather short man. It only takes a paragraph to tell the whole encounter, but you may find yourself in this story.

We only know four things about Zacchaeus. They're interesting things. First of all, he was a tax collector.

When I say that, if you like, you can say, boo. As a matter of fact, he was the chief tax collector. That's bad enough today with Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13 and rampant inflation and runaway spending and so on.

You can hardly imagine what it was like to be a tax collector in the days of the New Testament. If you're talking about tax collecting among the Jews, you've got to bear in mind, first of all, that the tax collector was himself a Jew. That's the way they did it.

They would find a Jew who would be willing to be their henchman, a kind of a betrayer of his own people, an agent of the Roman Empire. And Rome was in the process not only of imposing very oppressive government, but of exacting extremely severe taxes on the people. So the tax collector is virtually by definition a betrayer, a turncoat.

He has an inside track to his fellow Jewish citizens but he's using that to betray them to Rome. In addition to which, it is virtually taken for granted that the tax collector will take his own very generous slice of graft on top of what the government is charging. So you have your first double dipper here, all right?

And you can imagine how little loved he is. Secondly, in case there's any doubt about it, Luke spells out very clearly for us, Zacchaeus was rich. Do you hear him sort of spitting that word out at you?

It's almost like an epitaph. He was rich. All right.

We're told he was the chief tax collector in Jericho, and ancient Jericho was one of the wealthiest cities in the Middle East. It's not a huge city, but it's a very important one. It was and is an oasis city in the middle of the desert.

You can go for many miles in every direction, and all you see is desert, and then suddenly there is this lush little city. And even today, producing fantastic quantities of citrus fruit, there are caravans rolling out of the city of Jericho every day, crossing the Jordan River and bringing fruit to the whole Arab world, which denies the existence of Israel. Kind of interesting dynamics there.

It was always a strategic military city, you remember that this was the first city that Joshua had to contend with when he came in and fit the battle, right? So it was very well fortified it was the winter capital of Herod the Great when he wanted to get out of bone chilling Jerusalem he'd go down to tropical Jericho it wasn't that far away but it was an enormous change in climate it was the chief producer of balsam wood which was being widely used in building at that time. So I hope you begin to see this is a very, very important city.

It's a rich little city. And to be the chief tax collector in the city of Jericho is to live extremely well. Obviously, the opinion of everybody else is you're living well by ill-gotten gain.

I hope you're building up an image of Zacchaeus. Thirdly, Luke says he was small of stature. Isn't that a delicious phrase?

In the light of what I've just said, you can hear him very clearly implying small physically and small morally. He was a little man. Rather pathetic figure.

Perhaps you've known little people who desperately wanted to be big. It's not confined to those who are physically short, but so many folks are trying to be something more than they are, trying to make it big when the truth of the matter is, and I'm not talking about their size, I'm talking about their spirits, their little shrimps. That's Zacchaeus.

You can just sense. You sort of have to read between the lines, but I think it's there. He wants to be popular.

He wants to have friends. He wants to have influence and he has none. He wants to make it big and all he can make is money.

And what good does the money do? You know, throw a party and nobody comes. Sort of the Bible's answer to the Wizard of Oz, right?

A little man trying to be a big man. I suspect that he was beginning to realize that he didn't so much possess his possessions as he was possessed by them. He accumulated great wealth, and it didn't satisfy.

A rather pitiful little person. But the fourth thing that we're told about him, and this is the great thing, the wonderful thing, is that he wanted to see Jesus. He wanted to see Jesus.

And you would have to speculate on why that was. Perhaps it was just plain idle curiosity. You know, the latest thing to hit town.

Everybody's going to see this kind of itinerant preacher, this strange rabbi who's doing these strange things all over the territory. Maybe it's just idle curiosity. I suspect it was something much more profound than that.

I suspect that Jesus' reputation was preceding him wherever he went, and what was being said about him is, This man receives sinners. Everybody else thought that was rather disgraceful that Jesus should receive sinners. You know, we all know how a holy man is supposed to behave.

You encounter a woman of the streets, you gather your skirts about yourself, and you give her a very wide, I was going to say birth. You go by on the other side, right? You have nothing to do with her.

You encounter a tax collector who's betrayed his own people, who's involved in graft and thievery. You have nothing to do with him. But this man received sinners.

And I just see the wheels turning in Zacchaeus' mind. I've got to meet this man. I've got to see this man.

They're saying He's a great rabbi. They're saying He is a great teacher of God. Some of them are saying He might even be the Messiah.

Some people are even going further than that. They're saying He's the Son of God coming to our midst. And He receives the despised, the rejected, the people that nobody else has any time for.

I want to see such a man. Just last week, Neil was recounting to us the story of the Pharisee and the publican. That's just the preceding chapter.

Maybe that teaching has made it to the city of Jericho. And little Zacchaeus has heard a rabbi saying, the Pharisee goes home lost in sin, and the publican, the tax collector, went to his home justified. So he wants to check this out.

this is a great time for taking polls I'm about polled out I don't know about you but there was a poll taken not too long ago and 91% of all the folks surveyed said that they are trying to lead a good and decent life 91% of the people in America if this is a representative sample are committed to leading a good and decent and righteous and upstanding life. Hope that makes you feel a lot better. 82% of them admitted that that really isn't interfering too much with their lifestyle.

But this is the part that really intrigued me. 18% said that they have already achieved complete success. 23% said that they're about three quarters of the way there.

32% said that they're about halfway there. And less than 7% said that they're less than halfway there. Just let that register.

Less than 7% of the people in America think that they are less than halfway to the goal of the good, righteous, decent, upstanding life. the person that God is prepared to work with to deal with to bless is the person that realizes that before God he is utterly needy if you think you've attained complete success or you're well on the way to getting there and just a little bit more effort you'll make it the gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to say to you. Nothing to say to you.

In fact, it will be a scandal and an offense. Because what it says is that before a holy God you're in deep trouble. God does not grade on the curve.

God's standard is His own righteousness. You want to make it before God, you've got to be perfect. Jesus says, be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

You think of the great people of the Scriptures, and look at what they say about themselves. Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel, says, I'm not worthy of the least of all thy mercies. Isaiah, from whom we heard a reading a few minutes ago, says, Woe is me, I am lost.

I'm a man of unclean lips. Think of that. The prophecy of Isaiah, the mightiest prophet of all, And he says, I've got a dirty mouth.

I haven't learned to control my tongue. And what does God have to do about it? He takes a burning coal and cleanses that tongue before he can use it.

Peter says, depart from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man. David says, my sin is ever before me.

The centurion says, Lord, I'm not worthy that you should enter under my roof. The prodigal son says, Father, I don't deserve to be called your son anymore. Do you see what I'm saying?

the man that God is prepared to use is the one who acknowledges who understands that before God he's utterly hopeless apart from the grace of God see you've got to hear the bad news before the good news makes any sense if you don't know that you're sick you're not going to welcome the efforts of a physician when you know that you're drowning the lifeguard is going to look very attractive to you And when you finally begin to understand that we're talking about life and death before a holy God, then and then only is the gospel of forgiveness going to begin to mean something to you. Do you know what was the best thing that Zacchaeus had going for him? That he knew he had nothing going for him.

He knew what he was before God. He knew what everybody else thought of him. And he knew what God thought of him.

When you think you're doing just fine, you're in trouble. It may be that you find yourself in this story because most of us spend an awful lot of time trying to prop ourselves up. Trying to prop up our self-image.

Trying to prop up our lives with either material possessions or power and influence in our job or popularity or some other thing that would give us a sense of self-worth. You may be able to fool some of the people some of the time. Maybe even all of the people all of the time.

But you don't fool God for one minute. Scripture says, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might.

Let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he knows and understands me, says the Lord. And I'd like to ask you this morning what you're glorying in.

What is it that's giving your life meaning and purpose and direction and a sense of worth and esteem? Where's your joy? are you glorying in the right thing this morning?

One of the most memorable episodes of that old television show, The Twilight Zone, was the story of a man sent to hell and he got there to find that every wish that he'd ever wished was fulfilled. Only to find out that he'd wished for all the wrong things. And he was stuck with it for all eternity.

What are you wishing for? what are you glorying in if it's other than knowing the Lord it isn't going to satisfy so here's the picture Jesus is coming into town crowd is gathering him Zacchaeus wants to see him and he tries to push his way through the crowd and everybody's giving him one of these get to the back of the bus Zacchaeus and so he sees a sycamore tree Actually, a huge spreading fig tree. As a matter of fact, in the city of Jericho, there is one very ancient sycamore tree, and it could well be the very one.

Climbs up into the tree, and along comes Jesus. Can you imagine the scene? Stops under the tree, looks up, and says, Zacchaeus, come on down here.

I'm coming to your house for dinner. Can you imagine Zacchaeus scrambling, out of that tree. Did you see that everybody?

Did you see whose house he's coming to? See the marvelous thing about Jesus is that he not only receives sinners but he receives from sinners. Have you caught that in the scripture?

Notice it. Remember a few weeks ago we were talking about the woman at the well. Despised Samaritan woman who's little better than a prostitute.

And Jesus engages her in conversation. And the first gambit is, would you give me a cup of cold water? He goes on to say, I have a great deal to offer you.

But the first thing he says is, you have something to offer me. Can you imagine what that does for her? Nobody else has anything to do with her.

She has to go to the well when nobody else goes. Because they will shun her. And Jesus says, I consider you a person of worth.

I consider that you have something worth contributing to my life. And I'm prepared to receive it from you. No more pretense.

He knows exactly what she is. And when she finds out that he knows exactly what she is and that he's still prepared to deal with her as a person of dignity and worth, she's converted on the spot and becomes an evangelist. Mary Magdalene, another woman of the streets, comes in and breaks a container of oil and anoints Jesus' head, kisses his feet, lavishes her affection on him, and the Pharisees say, if he knew what sort of a woman she was, he'd have nothing to do with her.

And Jesus says, I know exactly what sort of a woman she is. And her sins, though many, I forgive. And I welcome her affection.

He knows how to receive from sinners. Matthew, another tax collector, it says Jesus goes to his home and has a great feast. Nobody else would go to Matthew's home.

Jesus goes. So he says to Zacchaeus, you come on down. I'm coming to your house today.

And Zacchaeus too is absolutely, radically transformed. Do you catch the order of things? Jesus does not say, get your act together, Zacchaeus, clean up your life, become a person of worth, and then I'll love you.

He says, I love you just the way you are, you miserable wretch. And it changes Zacchaeus' life. And Zacchaeus says, I'm giving away half of what I own.

And if there's anybody that I've defrauded, I'm going to restore it fourfold. And the story becomes a story of restoration. Zacchaeus restores fourfold what he's defrauded.

But look at what Jesus restores to him. First of all, he restores his dignity. You're a person of worth.

You matter to me. He restores his heritage. He says he also is a son of Abraham.

Nobody else thought that. Jesus says he's a son of Abraham and restores his heritage. He restores his relationship with God.

Today, salvation has come to this house. He restores his freedom. Do you know what it's like to be in bondage to your possessions?

In bondage to your reputation? In bondage to your popularity? In bondage to what other people think of you?

He sets Zacchaeus free. And most importantly, he restores his name. Because the name Zacchaeus means the pure one, the righteous one.

Come and be clothed in his righteousness. Alleluia. Saints of God, arise.

Let's bow our heads together. Lord, a great Christian once said that there is a God-sized, God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every one of us that only God can fill. We confess that we have spent so much time trying to fill it up with other things and none of them satisfy.

Lord, we thank You that in this Lord Jesus Christ we see somebody who knows exactly what we are. with all of our shortcoming and all of our compromise and all of our pathetic attempts at pretension. And He sees through all of that and He loves me just as I am.

Lord, I would drink deep of that love this morning. I would find my identity, my worth, my purpose, My joy in Him. For I pray in His name.

Amen.