Some people say that short people are more determined than tall people, because they always have to fight harder to get what they want.  Small people can’t reach as high, can’t see over things as easily, and in many contexts, they won’t get seen much either.  Little people, they say, need to really make a lot of noise in life to get noticed.

Well, whether that is true or not I don’t know.  What I do know is that I am not very tall, but despite that, I got noticed when lots of other people didn’t.  And it completely changed my life.

My name is Zacchaeus and I am a chief tax collector, living in Jericho.  I am also rich, but not as rich as I used to be.

Did you know that taxes make society?  Roads, armies, security, law enforcement, government, public buildings and many other things come from the payment of taxes and duties.  Furthermore, the income from taxes has to be reliable and consistent.  If no taxes were received in any year, then the empire would collapse, with revolutions and uprisings everywhere.

So tax collection in the Roman empire was often contracted out after a tender process.  Rich people would bid for the right to collect taxes in a country or smaller area.  The winner had to pay the agreed amount each year to the government so that there would be no nasty surprises or bad years where the income did not meet expectations.

If they didn’t collect enough tax each year, they lost money.  But any extra they collected was theirs to keep – bumper crops, population increases or any other windfalls lined their pockets with gold, and so did any dubious practices they could get away with while collecting the taxes.

I didn’t believe in that sort of thing.

Laws defined what was taxable and who had to pay taxes, and the bidders had to estimate how much they could collect based on population estimates and expectations of taxable events.

You might think that the calculations should be quite exact, but it doesn’t work that easily – weather and disease can have a big impact on the tax that can be collected each year.  Not only that, but people move to different places and the population isn’t counted very often so estimates can be badly wrong at times.

Once a contract was agreed, a hierarchy of collectors would do the work of collecting the money from individuals, while the heavy weight of Roman law would make sure that the collectors were protected and supported.  There was always money to be made for everyone in the tax hierarchy.  If a farmer argued with a tax collector, Roman judges would be more likely to listen to the tax collector – after all, without the tax collectors, bureaucrats would not get paid.  The power was all on the side of the tax collectors.

I was a chief tax collector.  Being rich had bought me the job and doing the job made me richer still.  Many tax collectors worked for me and the money they collected was much more than the money I had to pay each year.

If you listen to the ordinary citizens of Israel, you will get the picture that everyone involved in tax collecting is a traitor and a thief, no better than the thieves that prey on innocent travellers along a quiet road.

But it’s really not that simple.

There are tax collectors who are dedicated servants of God.  I was one of them and quite happy overall with how I was living.  Rich?  Yes, I was rich – so was Abraham.  Working for the foreign overlords?  Yes, I was, just as Daniel had.  A rogue who cheats people out of money all the time?  No, that’s not me at all.

Some tax collectors are cheats, but I wasn’t.  Many won’t believe me about this, but I hope you will.

As a chief tax collector, I had to assign areas for tax collectors to look after.  Census details told me how many people lived in the area and he calculated how much money they should owe me after collecting the tax.  Income tax, import and export taxes, crop taxes, sales tax, emergency taxes, property taxes and various others all had defined rates and had to be applied to the right people.  That was their job.

As you might expect, farmers did the best they could to avoid the crop taxes and property taxes, and sales taxes were hard to levy if you didn’t arrive until after all the goods were sold – all the merchants reported that they had started with very few goods, hardly any at all.  Everyone tried to avoid giving a tax collector even the smallest copper coins and the lies they told should have stuck in their throats.  Some even came up with “religious” excuses to avoid the tax, claiming that no Israelites should pay taxes because Caesar was a foreigner and paying tax to him was being unfaithful to God.  A conscience is a good thing, but a conscience blinded by the love of money is not.

Sometimes it made me wonder how people could complain about tax collectors being greedy or being cheats – all the rest of the people were trying to cheat me whenever they could!  They were all pleased to have good roads for safe travel, but were far too greedy to want to pay for them.

But I kept going with my job, because the love of money was too strong in me also.  

Anyway, if I didn’t collect the taxes from my tax collectors, it didn’t reduce the amount of money I had to give to my bosses.  So I kept collecting, but I was as fair as I could be.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but it is the love of money that makes tax collecting so attractive and so repugnant.  Attractive to collectors and repugnant to those who must pay.  I had not known just how much almost everything I did was driven by a love of money.  My love of God was still there, but it was being strangled by my love of money.  I knew that some people were short of food, but I made all sorts of excuses why I shouldn’t give them the food they needed.  I understood that there were people who did not have enough clothes, particularly when the cold winter nights traced the grass and leaves in delicate frost.  Yet I would never give any of my spare clothes to them, although I had many sets of clothes which could have warmed them and their children which biting winds brought bitter cold.  I was blind.  Blinded by money.  And I used my intellect to reason away the needs and excuse my selfish behaviour.

But still, I loved God, and finally that drove me to do something that actually opened my eyes.

I heard of Jesus and I went to listen to him.  That was a good idea, but it didn’t work.  Too many people recognised me: no-one wanted me in the crowd, and no-one let me get near enough to hear Jesus speak.  For the time being, I gave up, although I continued to find out more about him and his teachings.

It was money that strengthened my determination to see him, because I heard that Jesus lived almost completely without money.  If people gave him food, he accepted it, but if people gave him money, it went straight to the poor.  I had even heard an amazing rumour that he had been given some precious presents a little while after his birth, but that once he grew up, he had given the money away.  I didn’t know whether it was true or not, but it certainly got my attention.

On another occasion when Jesus came to Jericho, I joined the crowd and tried to see him.  Once again, I had no chance, but this time I was more determined.  I ran on ahead, through Jericho and out onto the road where it led up towards Jerusalem.  There I found a tree and climbed into it, making sure that I couldn’t be easily seen from below.  I was afraid that if the crowd saw me and recognised who I was, they might throw things at me.

I sat there quietly and waited, hoping that I had guessed right and that Jesus would come this way immediately.  It seemed to take an age, but eventually, I saw a crowd coming, with Jesus near the front.  Big crowds move slowly, so I had to wait quite a while.

Finally, I could see Jesus and that was the first thing I had wanted to do.  His face looked clear and honest and his voice rang out over the noise of the crowd as they bustled about him.

Then I got the shock of my life as he suddenly looked up at me, almost completely concealed by the branches and leaves of the thick tree I had chosen, and our eyes met.  Straight away, I knew that he had seen me and I wondered what he would do.  If he was so unaffected by money, would he despise me for my riches and strong attachment to money?  For a moment I was terrified and wished I could escape – and maybe get rid of some of my money too.

An even greater shock was in store, because he called me by name: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

At my house?  That was so much more than I could ever have hoped for that I hurried so much that I almost fell out of the tree.

I can’t remember what I said to him, but we made our way to my house and Jesus came into the grand home I had spent so much money beautifying over the years.  It was quite embarrassing having this holy man walking on the marble floors as the ornamental fountains tinkled in the background.  He didn’t seem upset or embarrassed, and he ignored the people who sneered at him for coming to the house of a tax collector.

We sat and talked and he opened up the scriptures to me.  I have never heard anyone explain God’s word so clearly.  Never a word did he speak about the incongruity between his life and mine, his goals and mine.
But it made me feel that I needed to do something.  I examined my heart and made sure that I could really fulfil the commitment I was about to make.

Finally I was sure and I asked Jesus if I could make an announcement to everyone.  He told me that was a good idea, so I stood up.

“Behold, Lord,” I said, making sure everyone else could hear as well.  I wanted to be held accountable for this commitment. “The half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”

I had a clear conscience about not having defrauded anyone, or else I couldn’t have promised to give back four times the amount.  It wouldn’t have taken much cheating at all to quickly consume the half of my goods that I had not already promised to the poor.  But I wanted to be a bit careful too.  I needed to make sure that I could really do without my money.  There was no point in making a grand commitment and falling at the first step.  I thought I could do it, but I looked at Jesus to see if he was convinced.

It was such a glorious confirmation when he said, “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.”

Jesus was convinced, so I knew I could do it.