The man who made it through the eye of the needle

Text: Luke 19:1-10

The story of Zacchaeus is pretty familiar to most of us. It’s almost like a children’s story; Zacchaeus, despite the fact that he is a wealthy home-owning tax collector, seems like a little kid himself. He is short, he can’t see over the big people, he runs, and he climbs trees. We read this story in preschool chapel recently and the kids could definitely relate.

This story is only found in the Gospel of Luke, and it plays an important role in one of Luke’s favorite themes, one that we’ve been considering for some weeks now: the danger of wealth and the proper use of money.  Along with the other gospels, Luke reports of Jesus meeting with a rich young man who is unable to give away his possessions, of Jesus saying that one cannot serve God and wealth and that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God, that with God all things are possible. 

But it is only Luke who tells about the Good Samaritan who spent his money caring for the man who was robbed, beaten and left by the side of the road; and tells about the rich man who found himself, after his death, in Hades and with a great chasm between himself and poor Lazarus whom the rich man had ignored in life. Luke also is the only Gospel writer who tells us of the widow who found a lost coin and spent more than she found rejoicing with her friends, and the generous father who spends his wealth celebrating the return of his wayward son.  

Today’s story, the Zacchaeus story, is the climax of all of Luke’s stories about money. It is the story of a rich man who makes it through the eye of the needle and receives salvation, because he responds positively to Jesus, gives away his money to those who are poor, and makes restitution to those whom he has wronged. 

So this charming scene plays an important part in the story line in Luke about the right use of money. It is also just about the last story Jesus tells before he enters into Jerusalem to great fanfare on Palm Sunday. Luke says that Jesus told this story as he passed through Jericho, the city which, in the Old Testament, was the gateway to the promised land. For Jesus, too, this last stop before Jerusalem, the city where he would die, was his entrance into the promised land.

But for Zacchaeus, it was meeting Jesus that gave him entrance into the kingdom.  It was being sought out by Jesus, being singled out to host Jesus who invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house, and by accepting Jesus’s invitation that gave Zacchaeus a new life. A new life of Jesus-inspired generosity, a life of doing justice and loving mercy, a life of righteousness - being in right relationship with God and neighbor. Salvation has come to Zacchaeus, who once was lost but now has been found.

The takeaway from this story for our preschoolers was that Jesus knew Zacchaeus by name, even though he had never met him before, and that Jesus knows all of our names, too. They really liked that. We’d been talking about what they might offer Jesus for lunch if he came to their house that day - they had many suggestions, from home baked cookies that their moms would make to taking him out for a Happy Meal (that last suggestion was made by our new student who moved here from Moldova, having fled with his mother when Ukraine was invaded - he has learned so much English already and is enchanted with Happy Meals). Anyway, after all that excited chatter about food options, they got really thoughtful and quiet when I told them that Jesus knows their names. Wow! What a concept!

Sometimes we get all wrapped up in the details from our stories, these stories that instruct us, challenge us, comfort us, and guide us, but let’s don’t forget the overarching story that God loves us and is always looking for us and always wants to be in relationship with us. God never stops loving, looking, and listening for us, and truly God knows every hair on our heads every day of our lives. God is for us, always.

This is easy for many of us to take for granted. Of course God loves us. We’re lovable! 

But some of us can’t quite believe it, you know. Either because we were wrongly taught that God’s love is conditional, that it is the prize for being good or doing good, or because we were taught that we are undeserving. Or because we are overwhelmed with guilt and mistrust thanks to something having gone wrong in our childhood learning and we truly believe we are unlovable and that God is not trustworthy. In Jesus’s day, it was common to believe that when bad things happen to people it is always their own fault, that God is punishing them for something they said or did or even thought, and sadly some of that has persisted into our own day. I still meet folks who believe that their loved one died because they didn’t pray hard enough or pray the right way and it just breaks my heart.

The story of Zacchaeus is not simply a children’s story, although it does offer a wonderful “in” to the good news for our littlest saints, the news that Jesus knows them and loves them and wants to be close to them. But for us grownups it is so much more - that we are known and loved, yes, and also that being known and loved brings with it responsibility to be generous and faithful and ethical, to share our wealth and to make restitution when we wrong someone - not SO that we will be welcomed into God’s kingdom but BECAUSE WE ALREADY HAVE BEEN GIVEN the kingdom. It tells us the news - good news - that we who truly have so much have much to share, and that we should therefore put our wealth to work for God, with gratitude.