Zacchaeus is described by his job title before he is ever described by his name: chief tax collector, and wealthy, two facts that in first-century Jericho meant the same thing to most people, a man who had grown rich by overcharging his own countrymen on behalf of an occupying empire. He is also short, a detail Luke includes only because it explains why the man climbed a sycamore fig tree to see Jesus over the crowd.
Jesus stops beneath the tree, looks up, and does something no one in the crowd expected. He uses the man’s actual name.
Short, Rich, and Despised Were the Only Descriptions Anyone Used
By the time Jesus reaches Jericho, Zacchaeus has apparently been fully absorbed into his reputation. The crowd does not see a person with a name and a history. They see a category, the tax collector, the collaborator, the man whose wealth was everyone else’s loss. Whatever Zacchaeus once thought of himself, the town had long since replaced it with a label.
Jesus Used His Name Before Anyone Else Would
“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Jesus does not address him as tax collector or sinner, the only titles the crowd has been using. He speaks his actual name, a level of personal recognition that Zacchaeus, hidden up in a tree specifically to avoid being seen, was almost certainly not expecting.
The Crowd Kept Calling Him a Sinner After Jesus Called Him Something Else
Even after this, the people mutter that Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner. The old label does not disappear just because a new one has been spoken. Zacchaeus responds anyway, pledging to give half his possessions to the poor and repay four times over anyone he has cheated, the response of a man who has decided which name he intends to live inside of.
Son of Abraham Was the Identity He Had Forgotten He Still Had
Jesus does not tell Zacchaeus he has become something new. He says salvation has come to his house “because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.” The identity being restored is not invented on the spot. It is a belonging Zacchaeus already had by birth and had been effectively excluded from by everyone, including possibly himself, because of what he had done for a living.
“Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.'”
Luke 19:9
The belonging he thought he had traded away for money was never actually gone. It was only waiting to be spoken out loud again.
