Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in Jericho — not just a tax collector but the head of the local tax operation, meaning he was collecting a percentage of the percentages his agents took. He was wealthy and short in stature. When Jesus was passing through Jericho and the crowd was thick, Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him.

Jesus stopped beneath the tree and called up: "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today." The crowd muttered that Jesus had gone to stay with "a sinner." Zacchaeus stood and said to Jesus, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." Jesus replied, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." The story is Luke's sharpest portrait of the economic dimensions of repentance — not as a condition for Jesus' acceptance, but as its natural overflow. Zacchaeus moved from hoarding what he could extract to giving back more than he had taken.