Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Luke 19:1-10
I don’t watch much live TV anymore, but I do find myself watching more and more videos on YouTube, everything from historical documentaries to podcasts on current affairs, to old concert footage from some favorite bands. But sometimes the YouTube algorithm throws a curveball by putting into my recommendations something in which I thought I had little or no interest.
A few weeks ago I found myself watching a video of these two YouTubers—both white men in their late twenties or early thirties, walking through the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles—a primarily black neighborhood—randomly knocking on people’s doors asking if they—the YouTubers—could prepare dinner for everyone in the house. They brought with them all the ingredients. All the homeowner had to do was invite them in.
The Compton episode was not a one-off. The host goes out of his way—literally, to Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine, for example—to meet and make friends with total strangers. While food of course is a key component of the channel, the main point is not so much cuisine as it is the connection made between total strangers around a dinner table.
The basic concept of knocking on strangers’ doors and offering to cook them a meal isn’t new. Many years ago, when I did have cable TV, I remember a show on the Food Network called Door Knock Dinners, in which the host and a guest chef showed up at strangers’ doors offering to cook them dinner, the catch being that the chefs would confine themselves to using only ingredients already on hand in the home.
In today’s Scripture reading, Jesus doesn’t exactly show up at the home of Zacchaeus, saucepan in hand, but he does absolutely and rather comically invite himself to dinner. And not just dinner either. He fully intends to crash at Zacchaeus’ house. “Zacchaeus! Hurry up and come down from that tree! I’m staying at your house tonight.”
We’re not used to seeing this side of Jesus—earthy, uninhibited, gregarious. The Church has often put forward a Jesus who is serious and solemn with an austere holiness that can make him seem aloof. Perhaps more than any other Gospel, however, Luke emphasizes the humanity of Jesus. For example, Luke is the only Gospel that tells us how the birth of Jesus took place, amid squalor and straw and the sounds and smells of livestock.
In addition to putting forward Jesus’ full humanity, Luke presents a Jesus who is particularly concerned with human suffering. Jesus’ first public words in Luke are to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.
Finally, the Jesus that we meet in Luke is especially concerned with outsiders and outcasts. Only in Luke do we hear of the Good Samaritan, the outsider who models mercy. Only in Luke, as we heard last week, is the prayer of a tax collector compared favorably with that of a Pharisee. And now today we read about another tax collector—this one not a character in a parable but a man of flesh and blood who has a name—Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus is not only a tax collector but a chief tax collector, meaning that he is in charge of a number of other tax collectors. Of course, no one enjoys paying taxes, but as I mentioned last week, tax collectors in Judean society were especially despised. One reason for that was that they were Jews contracted by the Romans. That is, they collected taxes on their fellow Jews—taxes that helped maintain the Roman occupation of Jewish lands. That alone would have made them unpopular.
But in addition to being considered collaborators with Rome, tax collectors were also regarded as crooks. In fact, the whole system of taxation incentivized corruption and greed. Unlike us today, no one in the first century AD had taxes withheld from their paycheck. The way tax collecting worked was that the Romans would assign a tax collector a specific amount of tax to collect in a district. Any amount that he collected over his quota was his to keep. Thus, there was a built-in incentive to squeeze people for as much tax as possible.
And how tax was collected was entirely up to the tax collector. He could show up at your door with a couple of Roman centurions—goodfellas like Vinnie and Rocco—and suggest that it would be best for you to open your wallet a little wider.
Given all of the above—that they were considered collaborators and crooks and that they were backed by Roman muscle, it should come as no surprise that tax collectors were regarded as particularly egregious sinners, especially among the religious elites like the Pharisees. And as a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus would have been deemed even more reprehensible. He had risen up the ranks of the Roman IRS and had become rich at the expense of his own people. If this story were set today, he might be a subprime mortgage or payday lender, someone who takes advantage of the poor, who have few, if any, options.
Unbeknownst to him, Zacchaeus also will soon not have an option, for into his orbit strides Jesus and a great crowd of followers and onlookers. Now, it is ironic that Zacchaeus, who preys upon the poor, would be curious to see Jesus, who proclaims good news to the poor. We’re not told Zacchaeus’ motivation for wanting to get a look at Jesus. Perhaps he’s heard something about this charismatic preacher from up north in Galilee who has made his way to Jericho. Or maybe he just wants to see what all the commotion is about.
In either event, in a curious detail that seems too specific to be made up, Luke tells us that Zacchaeus is too short of stature to see Jesus amid the crowd that surrounds him, so he decides to climb a sycamore tree to get a better view. There’s something comical about this man whose position has given him great wealth and power scampering up a sycamore tree so that he can peer through the branches and get a gander of the rabbi from Galilee. Accustomed to social climbing, Zacchaeus must now climb for real.
While Zacchaeus intends to observe Jesus from a safe distance, Jesus will not have it. He immediately takes note of Zacchaeus hiding up in his tree and calls for him to come down. “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” And by the way, what’s for dinner?
As always, Jesus seems to have an eye and an ear for those who are disregarded, dismissed, disinherited, and despised. Whether it’s the possessed man who had been shunned by society and lived alone in a cave, the hunched-over woman in the synagogue who was all but invisible, the blind beggar whom the crowd ordered to be quiet, the poor widow who puts her last coins in the temple treasury, or Zacchaeus, the despised tax collector, Jesus goes out of his way to embrace the outsider, the outcast, the unseen, the undeserving.
That will win you friends in some quarters, but in others it will earn you enemies. Remember what I said earlier about how reviled tax collectors were? Seeing Jesus invite himself into the home such a baldfaced sinner and share a table with him scandalizes many in the crowd. “All who saw it began to grumble,” Luke writes. “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”
They began to grumble. They whisper. They murmur. They point their fingers. They shake their heads with disapproval. If this were truly a holy man, they say, a man of God, then he would not taint himself by associating with a tax collector. What kind of example does he think he’s setting? He’s befriending a crook and a collaborator!
the gospel is offensive. grace is wonderful when it’s directed our way, but when it goes to someone undeserving…
A few weeks back I asked you to try this thought experiment, and I now ask you to try it again. Think of the worst sinner that you know personally or know of publicly. Not someone adept at hiding their sin. I mean someone whose reputation as a sinner precedes them. Someone whose morality and behavior is recognizably immoral. Do you have someone in mind? Now imagine Jesus saying to that person, “Guess what? I’m coming to your house tonight. You prepare dinner, and I’ll bring the wineskin.”
How would you respond? If we’re honest with ourselves, we’d probably be a lot like the people in the passage. At best we’d be disappointed. “I expected him to have higher standards.” At worst, we’d be outraged and try to cancel Jesus because he crossed a line. “You can’t expect to associate with such people and not face the consequences. What was he thinking?”
You see, the gospel is offensive. Sure, grace is wonderful when it’s directed our way, but when it goes to someone who’s undeserving…. Oh, wait! Did I just imply that I deserve forgiveness but Zacchaeus over there doesn’t? My sin is forgivable but his is a bridge too far?
This is the trap that we fall into—one of our own design—when we divide the world into us vs them, the deserving vs the undeserving. If it were up to us, we would parcel out forgiveness neatly, orderly, logically.
“Yes, to you. You’re good. You just made a mistake.”
“You over there, no, I’m sorry. You don’t make the cut.”
If it were up to us we’d withhold forgiveness from those who, by our standard, don’t deserve it. We’d say, “Show me some sign that you’re sorry. Get on your knees. Repent!” “If you repent, then maybe I will forgive you.”
But that’s not at all what Jesus does. Jesus doesn’t wait for Zacchaeus to repent before extending him the hand of fellowship. Forgiveness comes first, then repentance. Jesus calls Zacchaeus down from the tree and then Zacchaeus repents, declaring, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
Repentance is not a prerequisite to forgiveness. It’s not a contractual obligation. It’s not a transaction. It’s not the law. What it is, is a spontaneous and joyful response to the radical reorienting grace of the gospel. When Zacchaeus hears Jesus call his name, he can hardly wait to rush down from the tree and meet Jesus face to face. He flies from that tree because a weight has been lifted from him.
And a similar weight has been lifted from you as well because Jesus is not withholding forgiveness until you repent. He’s not watching and waiting to forgive, checking to see that you are sufficiently sorry and really and truly repentant. Jesus did not come to watch and wait for those who can make their way to him; he came to seek and to save the lost. He came for Zacchaeus. He came for me. And he came for you.