Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
“What? No! You don’t need to do that.” Bob and Sherry had invited our dinner group to meet at a restaurant since the furniture for their new home hadn’t arrived. Three couples, each of us planning to pay for our meals. But when the checks came, Bob collected them. Despite our protests, he insisted. His unearned and unexpected generosity surprised us. Jesus also shocked Zacchaeus with a generous gesture. Rather than pick up his dinner check, Jesus offered something the tax collector’s community believed he didn’t deserve—scandalous grace in the form of table fellowship.
Table of contents
The Man Nobody Wanted
After healing Bartimaeus (Luke 18:35-43), Jesus continued through Jericho with a large crowd following him. Though desperate to see the healer, Zacchaeus was too short to see over the crowd and too hated for people to let him through.
Luke 19:1-10 describes Zacchaeus as the chief tax collector in Jericho, a fertile and prosperous community with a mild climate and on major trade routes. Archaeologists estimate the population was between five and ten thousand people, more in the winter. Publicans bought from Rome the right to collect taxes in their area. They paid the oppressor a fixed amount, but could charge their fellow citizens whatever they could squeeze out of them, and then keep the surplus. Jews considered them traitors, unclean, and on the bottom rung of the social ladder. No righteous Jew would associate with them.
Not only was Zacchaeus a tax collector, but he was the chief, meaning he took his self-determined share of whatever those under him gathered. Most Jericho residents knew him, and no one liked him. In their eyes, he had forfeited his place among the covenant people. His money could buy many things but not the goodwill of his neighbors.
When Scandalous Grace Came to Dinner
So Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree with large leaves and low branches, something no honorable adult male would consider. He may have hidden himself from his enemies’ eyes, but Jesus knew where to find him, proving no person or place is too small to merit God’s attention. The Savior stopped right below the trying-to-be-invisible man and invited himself to dinner.
“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” (Luke 19:5 ESV)
Jesus’s words may sound friendly to our ears, but to the listening crowd they were scandalous. Table fellowship in the first-century world carried a deeper meaning than today. Eating together communicated personal and public acceptance. That the person you ate with was worthy of your friendship. A meal wasn’t only an expression of a social relationship, but also of a covenant one, a declaration that you shared a common faith. Religious leaders refused to eat with those they considered unclean, lest they defile themselves.
The crowd that glorified God when Jesus healed the oppressed (Bartimaeus) grumbled when the famous rabbi reached out to the oppressor (Zacchaeus). “Grumble” in Greek is the same word used in the Septuagint for the Israelites’ repeated complaints as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Apparently, scandalous grace can provoke grumbling. Luke showed the same reaction when the Savior welcomed those others rejected. In Luke 15, Jesus told a three-part parable about seeking the lost to the Pharisees, who grumbled because he ate with sinners. In Luke 19, Jesus encountered another crowd that grumbled because he planned to socialize with one they might have considered the chief sinner in their village. Zacchaeus embodied the lost, those Jesus came to save.
Outrageous Grace Transformed a Heart
The chief tax collector scrambled down from the tree and welcomed Jesus with joy. Somewhere between Jesus calling him by name and the conclusion of the day, outrageous grace changed his heart. Zacchaeus volunteered to accept the strictest punishment for theft under the Torah, returning half of his wealth to the community and promising fourfold restitution to anyone he’d defrauded. Jesus applauded both his confession and compensation because Zacchaeus’s restitution proved the genuineness of his repentance.
Jesus’s Hebrew name is Yeshua, meaning “salvation.” Jesus bookended his conversation with Zacchaeus by announcing his intention in his first statement and his mission’s completion (at least, that portion) with the last.
“[Salvation] must stay at your house today…. Today salvation has come to this house.” (Luke 19:5, 9 ESV)
We see God at work in Zacchaeus before he ever climbed that tree. God the Father awakened Zacchaeus’s hunger to see Jesus, God the Son answered that hope with shocking grace, and God the Spirit accomplished the heart transformation.
The crowd treated Zacchaeus as though he’d forfeited his place among God’s covenant people, but Jesus restored his identity. The man they rejected as an outsider was a son of Abraham. Salvation included repatriation to the family of God’s chosen people, moving Zacchaeus from an outsider to an insider despite the displeasure of his contemporaries.
Aggressive Grace Seeks the Lost
Then Jesus explained the reason for his actions. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10 ESV). Both the oppressed and the oppressor. Zacchaeus thought he was searching for Jesus when, in reality, Jesus was seeking Zacchaeus. Even the word “must” — “I must stay at your house today” — points to divine purpose. Their encounter wasn’t an accidental meeting but an intentional rescue mission.
Jesus offered his aggressive grace before Zacchaeus confessed or cleaned up his life. Before he promised to repay anyone, before he demonstrated the slightest evidence of repentance. Not because Zacchaeus deserved a place at the table, but because Jesus came to invite the undeserving.
Like Bob and Sherry paying bills they didn’t incur, Jesus paid the debt we owe for our sins. He associates with people others avoid, calls the ones others condemn, and welcomes those who could never earn a relationship with him. People like us.
Where Do We Stand?
Perhaps we’re standing in the crowd, denouncing and defining people by their worst decisions, resenting God’s grace to the unworthy. Or maybe we’re more like Zacchaeus, wearing the neon colors of our poor choices but with a God-inspired hunger in our hearts. Either way, we need to move as close to the Savior as possible and listen for his invitation to transformation and restoration.
Regardless of where we stand or with whom we identify, Jesus invites us to his table.
Why Jesus Invited the Wrong Man to Dinner~A Story of Scandalous Grace by @NancyLucenay on NancyLucenay.com Share on XJoin the Conversation
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