The story of Zacchacus is unique to the Gospel of Luke with no parallel in the other canonical gospels or any of the apocryphal writings. The story is widely accepted by scholars as an original composition because of the uniquely Lukan character, the author’s focus on outcasts, repentance, and social reversal.
Zaccahaeus was a chief tax collector who lived in luxury in Jericho a flourishing city along the Jordan Valley trade route, but because of his profession, Zaccahaeus was hated by his own people. Despised as traitors for collaborating with the occupying Roman forces, tax collectors grew rich by extortion and demanding payments above the required taxes.
The streets of Jericho were filled with the bittersweet scent of spices, food cooking and animal manure. Camels groaned under the weight of loads, children ran barefoot in the marketplace, and merchants yelled orders to those carrying heavy weights on their gaunt shoulders. In the centre of all the ruckus stood a man of short stature with alert eyes, dressed in a robe of imported linen, a man who knew how to cheat with numbers, broken promises, and threats.
Jesus was travelling through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, and the crowd pressed together, everyone was trying to catch a glimpse of the teacher who healed the blind and made the paralysed walk. Desperate to see over the milling crowd, Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore-fig and saw that Jesus was soon to pass under the tree where he had scrambled. Then unexpectedly Jesus stopped and looking up called him by name; “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”
He was astonished but climbing down he felt the glare of hateful eyes, and as he led Jesus to his house he could hear the accusing crowd muttering, “He’s gone to be the guest of a sinner.” A sinner he knew he was, but from Jesus he sensed no contempt, judgement or accusation and in that moment Zacchaeus was transformed into a symbol of redemption.
“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” he said. Old Testament restitution laws sometimes required a thief to repay up to four times what was stolen, but Zacchaeus, sorry for his life of greed, also gave half of all he owned to the poor – he was a changed man.
Luke places this story right after the Parable of the Rich Young Ruler. (Luke 18:18–30 which goes like this. A wealthy man asks Jesus what must he do to gain eternal life, Jesus lists some of the ten commandments to which the ruler responded that he had kept them all since he was a boy. Then “Sell everything you have and give to the poor…and come follow me.” [Luke18:22] “When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy,” and he left a sad unchanged man.
Luke’s storytelling shines as he contrasts the polar-opposite responses of people who had personal encounters with Jesus. Both men were rich, one appeared righteous but his wealth meant too much to him and he missed becoming a disciple of Jesus, the other who was known for his sinful life gave his riches away and became a model of repentance. The underlying idea in these stories is that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” which echoes Old Testament themes about God’s visitation.
Genesis 50:24–25, God will visit Israel, Ruth 1:6, “The LORD had visited his people and given them food,” Ezekiel 34:11-16, “I myself will search for my sheep and look after them…” When Mary and Joseph took their baby to the temple, Zechariah the priest declares Jesus the fulfillment of the visitation prophecy announcing: “God has visited and redeemed his people.” (Luke 1:68)
Jesus repeatedly identified himself as the one promised to seek, save, and restore the lost, when he walked among the people, God was visiting, healing, teaching, forgiving and restoring. When Jesus declared Zacchaeus to be “a son of Abraham,” it was not about ethnicity, but words of comfort and forgiveness, that restored and moved him from alienation to belonging.
Placed immediately after Zacchaeus’ story, the Parable of the Talents (Luke 19:11–27) continues the theme of divine visitation. A nobleman about to leave for a distant country to receive a kingdom and then return gives ten servants money to invest until he returns – some do and some don’t. Those who do are rewarded and the unproductive rejected. The nobleman symbolises Jesus, the servants are people entrusted with gifts and abilities, and the return of the nobleman is God’s visitation. What the servants do is significant just as it was with Zacchaeus and the rich young ruler and the choices they made. People respond to divine visitation differently.
Now we come to the climax of Luke’s long visitation theme, The Lament (Luke 19:41–44.) As Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem, he wept because the people didn’t recognise divine visitation. In chapter 1 of Luke’s gospel the visitation theme was set. V.68. “God has visited and redeemed His people.” Jesus wept not only because the people rejected him, he grieved that the city would be destroyed which happened in 70 CE.
God’s visitation is an opportunity that comes with a call to repentance, but like the rich young ruler who could not let go of his possessions, Jerusalem tried to hang on to power and wealth. Luke’s motif comes through loud and clear, “What will you do in the day of visitation?” That’s from Isaiah 10:3.
What did the characters in the stories do in their day of visitation? One person welcomed Jesus, the other turned away from Jesus, some served Jesus faithfully while another refused, and finally a whole city rejected him.
To those who feel rejected, irrelevant, and they have made too many mistakes, the story of Zacchaeus serves as a beacon of hope showing that an encounter with the divine (however it comes) can change a person’s heart. Zacchaeus and the rich young ruler remind us that life is made up of choices, the talents, that there is work to be done, and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem shows the heart of God on a larger scale, toward all people and all of creation.
Jesus didn’t fit with society’s expectation, instead of fomenting a revolution he went around restoring broken lives and calling everyone into relationship. He upset those with authority and power, but not those who received him. He forgave and healed all who came to him, opened closed minds and hearts breaking down walls of suspicion and hatred that divide people.
The Bible is not a static collection of ancient writings, but an invitation to make choices, and like Zacchaeus, question how we live and choose our response to the presence of the divine in our world. The French writer Auguste Comte divided human history into three stages. The age of religion, when people were superstitious, the age of metaphysics, when philosophers explained the world through reason, and the age of science, when provable facts reveal truth. There is space to repent and change, to be forgiven and forgive, to learn and grow, and be transformed and changed into better people.
When read as a unified whole, Luke’s writing has incredible narrative and theological depth but less so presented as disconnected sermons focusing on moral lessons that miss the underlying theme woven through the sequence of these stories. Tracing the themes, structure, and Old Testament echoes, the bible opens up in ways that are astonishingly coherent, not just moral advice, but masterpieces of divine storytelling.
Let us not relegate them to myths and fables, but a window into the lives of ordinary people just like us, as one person then another encountered the divine visitation and how they responded. The Bible remains ever poignant in every age and time, the challenge for us is to recognise and respond to the liberating energy of Christ’s visitation today because today may be the only time we have.