If you went to church as a child, you have probably heard the story. It was so popular that I remember a song we used to sing about a wee little man named Zacchaeus who climbed up in a sycamore tree to see what he could see. Let me set the historical stage so we can better appreciate the scene. Israel had a long history of being a sovereign nation. Sure they had their times of being conquered but they took pride when they had autonomy and independence as in the great days of King David and his son Solomon when kings and queens came from afar to see the splendour of their Jewish kingdom. By the time of Zacchaeus, the Roman empire had spread over most of the civilizsed world at the time, including Israel. Imagine being independent to now being ruled by someone an ocean away. Imagine working so hard and being demanded to pay this emperor heavy taxes. Romans were smart. They didn’t bring in a guy from Rome to collect their taxes.
They hired a local guy – someone who would know the truth about how much people were really making. Someone who knew just how to squeeze every penny. The deal was the tax collector got a commission on how much money he received, and the Bible says Zacchaeus was a very rich man. That means he decided he would rather sacrifice his relationships with his friends and relatives. He didn’t care if he hurt them, exploited them, lied to them, or abused them. At the end of the day, he just wanted to be rich! Mission accomplished! But, he was hated in the process. We still have our own Zacchaeus’s today – men and women who abuse their power in order to get rich at the expense of their own people. Just like in the Roman times, these people are talked about and distrusted but at the end of the day, their faith is more in their wealth than in their popularity. Now, here is where the story turns interesting. No one liked tax collectors.
