Zak the Rat

Zacchaeus was short. He’d always been short. He used to be poor, now he’s rich, filthy rich, but he’s still short. So here’s this little short fellow in purple finery running around the back of the crowd trying to look over the shoulders of the big fellows in front or maybe squeeze through them. But they would have none of it. In fact, they’d just wink at one another, and move over just a bit so he couldn’t get in or peek over them.

 Why? Because they hated him. He’d been taking advantage of them for years. Overtaxing them and then pocketing the money for himself. You see, that’s what tax collectors did in ancient Palestine.

They charged whatever they felt like and they’d give some portion of it to the Roman authorities that employed them, and then keep the rest for themselves. Zacchaeus, himself a Jew, got rich by gouging his Jewish brothers and sisters. For a tax collector, that was the only way to get rich.

 Nope, they didn’t like Zacchaeus one little bit. And they had good reason. Not only was he an Uncle Tom and a cheat, but he had this attitude. Maybe he got it when he was young, just a little Zacchaeus, or, rather, a littler Zacchaeus. You see, young Zak wasn’t just short, he was also slight, skinny, and not much of an athlete. They’d yell things like ‘Hey, stick your tongue out Zak, and we’ll use you for a zipper.” And way back then, like now, it was not easy to be a boy if you were not macho, not a jock. Why, some of the big Judean lads from Jericho High, they used to pick on him something fierce. The girls were almost as bad, they laugh at him when he’d ask them to dance at the sock hops, say things like, “Come back when you grow up a little. Zakky…” and then they’d all giggle.

 The boys would knock his yarmulkah off just as he was going to synagogue and then trip him as he bent over to pick it up. They’d push Zak around, tease him, lock him in his locker. They’d have their fun roughing him up.

And Zacchaeus - he’d just seethe inside. And he promised himself that one day he would show them, one day he’d get his revenge. He’d be rich and powerful and they’d come crawling to him for favours. That’s when he got this attitude. Cocky like. But he did get his revenge.

So now he’s rich and he’s got lots of power. Those big lads grew up and some of them became inn-keepers and some inherited their daddy’s shop and some became lawyers and scribes and such. And Zacchaeus, why he can make those big, tough adult boys veritably quake when he smiles and says five little words: Let me audit your books.

As a result of an obsessive desire to revenge, and an insatiable hunger for goods and power, Zak had created for himself a comfortable, but lonely, life in this occupied land.

Rich. Power galore. Calls the Roman brass by their first names. But still no friends. Somewhere inside he knows that those Romans don’t care about him, and his fellow Jews can’t stand the sight of him. And so Zak has this emptiness inside him.

At night he goes home to his big split level house in Pleasant Acres - a posh suburb of Jericho - and he pours himself a big glass of the finest Egyptian whisky, single malt.  And while he's sitting there, feeling both smug and empty, he over overhears his maid and his cook, both young Jewish women, and they are gossiping and talking about some new leader, a young teacher named Jesus.  And for some reason hevery time he hears them speak about this new young Galilean rabbi, something inside gets real curious, something inside him wants to cry, but he doesn't know why.

 

He’d never been much on religion, didn’t have time for that kind of stuff. Why take this sudden interest in this homeless poor rabbi? We don’t know, and maybe he didn’t know. Maybe Jesus was short himself. Scripture never tells us how tall Jesus was. While we don’t know in human terms what piqued his curiosity, underneath it all, we know it was the Spirit starting to get into Zacchaeus’ ideas, his mind, his heart - just the way she starts messing up our orderly minds, sometimes reminds us that there is still inside us a lonely hurting person that craves some loving, craves some contact with God - a real God who can touch the deep parts of us that we can’t or don’t show anyone.

So one night as he sits in his lovely water buffalo leather lazyboy, eavesdropping again on the maid and the cook, he hears the news: the young Galilean is coming toward  Jericho. And something comes over Zacchaeus. He has got to see him. Something inside him snaps, he becomes almost obsessed. He’s just got to see Jesus. All the next morning he can’t get Jesus out of his mind. Then someone in the office tells him that a big crowd has gathered on Main  Street, trying to see some kind of strange new teacher.

So Zacchaeus runs out of his Revenue Judea Tax Office and Pawnshop. He doesn’t even stop to lock the door, and he goes running down the road. But there’s people everywhere. Big, tall people. Course, they all look big and tall to Zak. And would they move for him? Not an inch. He tries to get in, but they won’t budge. They make sure there’s no way that Zak the Rat is going to push his way in. And to make matters worse, they’re all laughing at him.

And so what does he do? He climbs a tree. He’s way past caring what they think any more. It doesn’t matter that he looks pretty silly - a grown man in armani purple linen sitting in a sycamore tree.

So in the story what’s the purpose of the tree. It’s the structure that allows him to see Jesus. Now if that tree didn’t have any limbs for 5 or 6 feet, wee Zak couldn’t have climbed it. Maybe that trunk then would be just one more obstacle, like those tall fellows. It could have kept him from seeing Jesus. Structures are like that – when they work right they allow people to see Jesus, to see the Divine, and, in a sense, not just to see the Divine but even without their knowing it to see themselves touched by the Divine, transformed by the Holy. When he saw Jesus next thing Zak saw himself, but a new Zak, not just kinder and gentler, but a restored Zak, without the attitude, the bitterness.

So in churches, we got to look sometimes at the wood, the structures, and ask what purpose are those structures serving – are they helping folk see Jesus, touch the Holy, experience wonder. Or are they just obstacles. Rules. Fixed ideas. Procedures. Are they doing what they’re supposed to. They’re hard things to bend, those wooden things, hard to work with them. Once you’ve got a rule or a structure in place folk tend to think it’s always been there so it’s got to be doing some good.  Sometimes you’ve got to climb right up on them, doesn’t matter how crazy you look and how many people are telling you to get off that tree. And sometimes you find rot up there. You want people to be able to see Jesus, not drop on his head. It’s good for church workers and others to have a little chain saw somewhere nearby, for when the structures, the rules, the procedures, are in real bad shape.