When the little procession stopped under the sycamore tree,
Zacchaeus would begin to feel uncomfortable. He may have had
experience in past times of the way in which the great doctors of
orthodoxy were in the habit of treating a publican, and may have
begun to be afraid that this new one was going to be like all the
rest, and elicit some kind of mob demonstration against him. The
crowd would be waiting with intense curiosity to see what would pass
between the Rabbi and the revenue collector. They would all be very
much astonished. 'Zacchaeus! make haste and come down. To-day I must
abide at thy house.' Perhaps it was the first time since he had been
a child at his mother's knee that he had heard his name pronounced
in tones of kindness. There was not a ragged beggar in Jericho who
would not have thought himself degraded by putting his foot across
the threshold that Jesus now says He will cross.
It is the only time in which we read that Jesus volunteered to go
into any house. He never offers to go where He is not wanted, any
more than He ever stays away where He is. And so the very fact of
His saying 'I will abide at thy house,' is to me an indication
that, deep down below Zacchaeus' superficial and vulgar curiosity,
there was something far more noble which our Lord fosters into life
and consciousness by this offer.
Many large truths are suggested by it on which we may touch. We have
in Christ's words an illustration of His individualising knowledge.
'Zacchaeus, come down.' There is no sign that anybody had told Christ
the name, or that He knew anything about Zacchaeus before by human
knowledge. But the same eye that saw Nathanael under the fig-tree
saw Zacchaeus in the sycamore; and, seeing in secret, knew without
being told the names of both. Christ does not name men in vain. He
generally, when He uses an individual's name in addressing him, means
either to assert His knowledge of his character, or His authority
over him, or in some way or other to bespeak personal adhesion and
to promise personal affection. So He named some of His disciples,
weaving a bond that united each single soul to Himself by the act.
This individualising knowledge and drawing love and authority are all
expressed, as I think, in that one word 'Zacchaeus.' And these are as
true about us as about him. The promises of the New Testament, the
words of Jesus Christ, the great, broad, universal 'whosoevers' of
His assurance and of His commandments are as directly meant for each
of us as if they were in an envelope with our names upon them and put
into our hands. We, too, are spoken to by Him by our names, and for
us, too, there may be a personal bond of answering love that knits us
individually to the Master, as there certainly is a bond of personal
regard, compassion, affection, and purpose of salvation in His heart
in regard of each single soul of all the masses of humanity. I should
have done something if I should have been able to gather into a point,
that blessedly pierced some heart to let the life in, the broad truths
of the Gospel. 'Whosoever will, let him come.' Say to yourself, 'That
is me.' 'Whosoever cometh I will in no wise cast out.' Say to yourself,
'That is me.' And in like manner with all the general declarations,
and especially with that chiefest of them all, 'God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish.' Read it as you may--and you will never read it
right until you do--'God so loved _me_'--John, Mary, or whatever
be your name--'Jesus so loved _me_ that if _I_ believe upon
Him _I_ shall not perish, but have everlasting life.'
Then, note, further, how here we get the revelation, in a concrete
form, of Christ's perfect willingness and desire to make common
cause, and dwell with the most degraded and outcast. I have said
that this is the only instance in which He volunteered to be a
guest. Pharisees asked Him, and He did not refuse. The publican's
dwelling, which was tabooed, He opened the door of by His own hand.
And that is what He always does.
This little incident may be taken to be, not merely a symbol of His
whole dealings, but an illustration, in small, of the same principle
which has its largest embodiment and illustration in the fact of His
Incarnation and Manhood. Why did Jesus Christ take flesh and dwell
among us? Because He desired to seek and to save that which is lost.
Why did He go into the publican's house, and brave the sneers of the
crowd, and associate Himself with the polluted? For the same reason.
Microscopic crystals and gigantic ones are due to the same forces
working in the same fashion. This incident is more than a symbol; it
is a little instance of the operation of the law which finds its
supreme and transcendent instance in the fact that the Eternal Son
of God bowed the heavens and came down 'and dwelt among us, and we
beheld His glory.'
His example is our pattern. A Christian church which does not
imitate its Master in its frank and continual willingness to
associate itself with the degraded and the outcast has lost one of
the truest signs of its being vitalised with the life of Christ.
There is much in this day in the condition of Christian communities
to make men dissatisfied and fearful. But there is one thing which,
though in all its developments one cannot sympathise with it, is in
its essence wholly good, and that is the new and quickened
consciousness that a church which does not address itself to the
outcasts has no business to live; and that Christian people who are
too proud of their righteousness to go amongst the unclean and the
degraded are a great deal more of Pharisees than Christians, and
have need to learn which be the first principles of the religion
which they profess. Self-righteousness gathers up its skirts in holy
horror; perfect righteousness goes cheerily and without fear amongst
the outcasts, for where should the physician go but to the sick, and
where should Christ be found but in the house of the publican?
Further, the saying of our Lord suggests His recognition of the
great law that ruled His life. Chronology here is of much
importance. We do not generally remember that the scene with
Zacchaeus was within about a week of the Crucifixion. Our Lord was
on that last journey to Jerusalem to die, during the whole of which
there was over His demeanour a tension of holy impatience,
altogether unlike His usual manner, which astonished and amazed the
disciples as they followed Him. He set His face like a flint to go
to Jerusalem; and strode before them on the way as if He were eager
to reach the culmination of His sufferings and of His work. Thus
borne on the wings of the strong desire to be perfected on the
Cross, He is arrested on His path. Nothing else was able to stop
Him, but 'To-day I _must_ abide in thy house.' There was a soul
to be saved; and the world's sacrifice had to wait till the single
soul was secured. Christ hurrying, if I may use the word, at all
events steadfastly and without wavering, pressing towards the Cross,
let His course be stopped by this need. The highest 'must' was
obedience to the Father's will, and parallel with that need there
was the other, of rescuing the Father's prodigal sons. So this elder
Brother owned the obligation, and paused on the road to Calvary, to
lodge in the house of Zacchaeus. Let us learn the sweet lesson,
and take the large consolations that lie in such a thought.
Again, the utterance of this self-invited Guest suggests His
over-abundant fulfilment of timid, half-conscious desires. I said at
the beginning of my remarks that only curiosity was on the surface;
but that the very fact that our Lord addressed Himself to the man
seemed to imply that He descried in him something more than mere vulgar
curiosity. And the glad leap with which Zacchaeus came down from his
tree might have revealed to Zacchaeus himself, as no doubt it did to
some of the bystanders, what it was that he had been dimly wishing.
So with us all there are needs, longings, half-emerging wishes, that
have scarcely come into the field of consciousness, but yet have
power enough to modify our actions. Jesus Christ understands all
about us, and reads us better than we do ourselves; and is ready to
meet, and by meeting to bring into full relief, these vague feelings
after an undefined good. Brethren, He is to us, if we will let Him
be, all that we want; and He is to us all that we need, although we
only half know that we need it, and never say to ourselves that we
wish it.
There is a last thought deducible from these words of our Lord's;
and that is, His leaving a man to decide whether he will have Him or
no. 'Make haste and come down, for to-day I _must_ abide at thy
house. Yes! but if Zacchaeus had stuck in his tree, Christ's 'must'
would not have been fulfilled. He would have gone on to Jerusalem if
the publican had not scrambled down in haste. He forces Himself on
no man; He withholds Himself from no man. He respects that awful
prerogative of being the architects of our own evil and our own
good, by our own free and unconstrained choice.
Did you ever think that it was now or never with this publican; that
Jesus Christ was never to go through the streets of Jericho any
more; that it was Zacchaeus' last chance; and that, if he had not
made haste, he would have lost Christ for ever? And so it is yet.
There may be some in this place at this moment to whom Jesus Christ
is now making His last appeal. I know not; no man knows. A Rabbi
said, when they asked him when a man should repent, 'Repent on the
last day of your lives.' And they said, 'But we do not know when
that will be.' And he said, 'Then repent _now_.' So I say,
because some of you may never hear Christ's Gospel again, and
because none of us know whether we shall or not; make sure work of
it _now_, and do not let Jesus Christ go out of the city and
up the road between the hills yonder; for if once the folds of the
ravine shut Him from sight He will never be back in Jericho, or seen
by Zacchaeus any more for ever.