Oops!
Brothers and sisters in Christ, have you ever wanted to see someone, but hoped they wouldn’t see you?
That’s Zacchaeus. He climbs a tree because he’s curious — he wants a glimpse of Jesus — but he doesn’t want to be noticed. He’s small, yes, but he’s also ashamed. Everyone knows who he is.
You see, Zacchaeus is a tax collector. He works for the enemy. In the eyes of his neighbors, he’s a traitor — one of their own who’s chosen the side of the government against the people. He’s made a good living collecting from others what he himself doesn’t owe. He’s the kind of person people whisper about in the marketplace, the one parents warn their children about.
And yet — Jesus looks up.
He stops beneath that tree, looks Zacchaeus in the eye, and calls him by name:
“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”
Ugh!
That’s when the murmuring starts.
“He’s gone to be the guest of a sinner!”
Of course they murmur. It’s scandalous. Why would Jesus, who teaches mercy and justice, eat with a man who has profited from injustice?
Why show kindness to someone who’s hurt others?
We can understand the crowd. It’s easy to cheer when Jesus lifts up the poor and the oppressed.
It’s much harder when He reaches out to the oppressor.
Because we all have our Zacchaeuses — people we see as corrupt, cruel, complicit. People who, in our minds, have sold out their brothers and sisters for power or a paycheck.
And yet Jesus looks up to them, too.
That’s hard to swallow.
Because when mercy reaches that far — when it extends to them — it challenges the lines we’ve drawn between righteous anger and holy love.
Aha!
But here’s the twist: Jesus never explicitly tells Zacchaeus to repent. It’s not in the text.
He doesn’t lecture him, shame him, or demand restitution. He just looks up and calls him by name.
And, yet, something happens in that moment — something we can’t quite explain but can feel. For perhaps the first time in years, Zacchaeus is seen not as a monster, but as a man. Not as a category, but as a person.
And that gaze of Christ — that mercy that sees the truth without denying it — well, it melts him.
He stands and says,
“Behold, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I’ve defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold.”
Jesus’ presence awakens in Zacchaeus what no law or argument could — compassion.
He becomes sensitive again to his neighbors, to the suffering he caused. The man who once climbed above others now bends low to make things right.
Whee!
This is what grace looks like.
Jesus doesn’t excuse Zacchaeus’s sin — He transforms it.
He doesn’t cancel him — He redeems him.
That’s the joy of the Gospel: that Christ’s mercy isn’t a reward for those who have already changed, but the power that makes change possible.
And if that’s true for Zacchaeus — the collaborator, the exploiter, the one everyone had written off — then it’s true for anyone.
Even those we think least deserving.
Even those we think of as “the problem.”
For as long as Christ is looking up, calling names from beneath the trees of our lives, no one is beyond His reach.
Yeah!
So what about us?
Perhaps today, Christ is inviting us to look again — to see not just the wounded but also the wounders through His eyes.
To remember that every Zacchaeus has a story, that every heart can still respond to love.
That doesn’t mean we excuse injustice–by no means! But it means we believe that mercy can still work miracles where judgment only deepens division.
Maybe there’s someone in your life you’ve written off — someone you’ve stopped seeing as redeemable.
Maybe it’s time to stand where Jesus stands, look up into the branches, and call them by name.
Because when Jesus looks up, the world turns upside down: the sinner becomes the host, the crowd becomes the learner, and the home once filled with greed becomes the house of salvation.
“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus says, “for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
May He find us there — not in the safety of the crowd, but in the daring mercy of His gaze.
Amen.