Resurrection in the Rust

Zacchaeus was a wee little man And a wee little man was he He climbed up in a sycamore tree For the Lord he wanted to see And when the Savior passed that way He looked up in the tree And said, “Zacchaeus, you come down! For I'm going to your house today! For I'm going to your house today!” When I sang this song in Sunday School as a child, I didn’t think about how strange it must have looked as Zacchaeus, dressed in his expensive clothes, struggled climb the tree, hanging on for dear life. He wasn’t Tarzan; he was a tax collector. And not just any tax collector, he was the tax collector, in charge of all the collectors in Jericho. To Jews in Jesus’s day, a tax collector was the ultimate traitor, because they collected taxes for the Roman occupiers. But Rome didn’t pay them a salary. Instead, Rome permitted them to charge fees to the taxpayers, and many used their position to get rich. This was probably why no one was willing to stand aside so Zacchaeus could se...