The story of Zacchaeus is very charming. A short, probably dumpy man who has failed to win the local popularity contest makes a fool of himself by climbing up a tree to get a glimpse of the man who is making a triumphant arrival in the town. The townspeople are laying down their garments and cheering and the mayor is poised to make a long-winded speech of welcome and give this visitor the key to the city, after which this man will wine and dine with the local chamber of commerce. But this distinguished visitor, Jesus by name, spares himself and the townspeople the long boring speech prepared for them when he notices this man crawling out on a tree branch with all the grace of a slapstick artist. Jesus calls out to the man who is overjoyed at this outcome, the townspeople laugh at the discomfited mayor with relish and are deeply edified that this religious teacher should stand up for the underdog and they go home as happily as people do today after they have listened to a sermon about Zacchaeus. It's such a nice picture that one hates to spoil it by looking at the story again, but perhaps we can end up with a better and deeper picture if we do.

We can begin by noting that Jesus has come to Jericho, a larger and more important town than the villages Jesus has visited previously. However, we hadn't gotten it quite right yet, because Luke says that Jesus is passing through Jericho. That is, Jesus has not come to Jericho after all. Rather, he has another destination in mind and it happens that he has to go through Jericho to get there. By looking at the broader narrative of Luke's Gospel, we see easily enough that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. The road to Jerusalem goes through Jericho and there is no viable route around it. Jesus, then, is not honoring the town of Jericho with his presence in the way that a politician running for office might honor a town by visiting it to give a campaign speech and shake hands with everybody. He was on the way to Jerusalem and we know what was in store for him there.

Jesus was famous, or notorious enough that something of a hubbub would arise as a result of Jesus' passing through the town with people gathering and crowding each other out to gawk at the man and his followers. If that were not so, there would be no reason for a short man to climb a tree in order to see for himself what the fuss was all about. But were people cheering and laying their cloaks on the road for Jesus? Was the mayor holding out the key to the city? Luke gives no indication that Jesus was given anything remotely resembling a warm welcome. Why the stir, then? Our best hint comes from previous narratives of the journey towards Jerusalem where Jesus is set upon by Pharisees and doctors of the Torah and questioned in front of the crowd. Such questioning, of course, is made with the intention of publicly discrediting the free-lance itinerant preacher. It happens that no such encounter is recorded for Jesus' visit to Jericho. Why? If lawyers and Pharisees were snooping around in Galilean villages on the lookout for heretics, surely they were on the prowl in the larger town of Jericho. Surely the Pharisees and lawyers of the Torah were poised to hurl a challenge of some sort at Jesus, and just as the surely, the crowd was gathering in anticipation of an exciting debate over Torah. Zacchaeus' act of climbing a tree to get a look at Jesus need not be taken as an indication that he was inclined to have his life changed by this stranger. Eagerness to see and hear the duel and the hostility of his fellow townspeople who were unwilling to let Zacchaeus get in front of them is enough to account for his action. And yet the anticipated debate does not occur. Why?

It would not be surprising if Jesus had become weary of debates with Pharisees and lawyers by this time. That he had a few curve balls up his sleeve for future debates would become apparent after Jesus reached Jerusalem. However, Jesus chose to throw a different curve ball, maybe a split-fingered fastball this time, a pitch that would stop the Jericho debate before it started. Seeing a well-dressed man perched in a tree, Jesus did not necessarily need supernatural knowledge to size up the situation. The signs that Zacchaeus was a rich man hated by everybody in town were there to be seen by a person with eyes to see. This was the situation that Jesus chose to address. Once Jesus went down that road, there was no chance for another debate about Torah.

That Jesus had discerned the social matrix of Jericho rightly was immediately manifest when Jesus called out to the tax collector and invited himself to that man's house. St. Luke says that "all who saw it began to grumble and said, 'he has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.'" Here is another example of Luke's astute anthropological insight. It isn't just the Pharisees and lawyers who grumble about Zacchaeus. It is everybody who grumbles about him. It is hard not to hear an echo of the words of the Pharisee Simon who had, like Zacchaeus, invited Jesus to his house. When a woman "who was a sinner" entered and Jesus allowed her to bathe his feet and dry them with her hair, Simon muttered to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him--that she is a sinner." (Lk. 7:39) Likewise, the people of Jericho are thinking, if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of man this is who was sitting up in a tree--that he is a sinner. And just as Jesus showed that he did know what kind of woman was washing his feet, he seems to have known what kind of man Zacchaeus was.

The earlier story showed the disdain of a rich and law-abiding citizen for a downtrodden woman with a poor reputation. Jericho would have been an unusual town to say the least if there were not many downtrodden people in the crowd, including more than one woman known to be a sinner. For that matter, there would likely have been more than one deranged person like the Gerasene demoniac. Such people could easily have been designated the communal scapegoat for Jericho, but it was Zacchaeus who had the job. It follows then, that women who were sinners and other downtrodden people were among those who grumbled that Jesus had "gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." One suspects that Zacchaeus deserved to be hated by everybody because, as a tax collector, he was profiting from Rome's occupation of the Jewish lands at the expense of his own people and garnering his own pay from what money he collected beyond what Rome demanded of him. In short, Zacchaeus was treading the downtrodden down. But if we place Zacchaeus alongside the sinful women who came to Simon's house and the Gerasene Demoniac, we have three types of people who are particularly vulnerable to becoming a scapegoat in that they stand out in some way, either through illness, through being the prostitute with the most clients, or through being the richest man in town. (If the narrative of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 has strayed from the Lukan corpus as some scholars speculate, then this pattern in Luke is strengthened further.) Perhaps in a small village there is only one person who stands out in so significant a way, but in a town like Jericho, the people most likely had a choice of standouts to choose from. This consideration underlines the arbitrary aspect behind the scapegoat mechanism. More important, we are left with the likelihood that downtrodden women and possessed men, if spared the ordeal of becoming the scapegoat, can just as easily turn against the scapegoat as anybody else. It is through showing us that anybody can be the scapegoat and everybody can be a persecutor that Luke shows up the communal scapegoating phenomenon for what it is. Given the fact that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem with a pretty clear idea of what was going to happen to him there, it behooved Jesus to give his followers every opportunity to see how collective hostility against one person works in the hope that they will recognize the process when it happens in the Holy City and that is what he has done here.

In common with the other two Lukan stories cited, it is the communal scapegoat whom Jesus singles out for healing and commendation, with the result that the homeostasis sustained by the scapegoating process is destabilized. It happens, however, that there is some ambiguity as to whether or not Zacchaeus is actually converted by his encounter with Jesus. Bible scholars disagree as to whether the verbs used by Zacchaeus are in the present tense or the future. That is, Zacchaeus may be saying that he will give half of his possessions to the poor and pay back four times anybody he has defrauded, but he could be saying that he already does these things. If Zacchaeus is using the future tense, then he is announcing a change of heart. If Zacchaeus is speaking in the present tense, then he is claiming that he is better, or less terrible, than he has been made out to be. Since I am not at all competent at analyzing the grammar of koine Greek, it seems more productive to look at the implications of either interpretation of the verb tenses.

If Zacchaeus has been converted on the spot by Jesus, and we assume that Jesus did not zap people with a magic wand to override their free will, then we may ask ourselves how this conversion happened. The information in Luke suggests two possibilities. As the communal scapegoat, Zacchaeus was acquainted with the point of view of the victim and perhaps that point of view led him to understand what it meant to other people to be the victim of his tax collecting. The other possibility that the undeserved commendation from Jesus freed Zacchaeus from the necessity of acting in such a way as to justify his designation as communal scapegoat. It is more than likely that both factors played their part here. On the other hand, if Zacchaeus was speaking in the present tense, the implication is that the collective attitude of the townspeople was unjust, which would underline the arbitrary aspect of scapegoating. Generous actions on the part of a rich person who has drawn the collective resentment of the community do not diminish this resentment in the least. It is also possible, of course, that Zacchaeus is trying to make himself look better than he really is. That is, he is boasting of his good deeds while overlooking the unjust means used for gaining the wealth which he uses for his acts of largesse. If I am right in taking this story as being primarily concerned with communal scapegoating, then the ambiguity enriches the story and there is no need to solve the grammatical problem once and for all.

If Zacchaeus needed to be converted, we can be sure that Jesus desired that conversion, just as he hoped that Simon would be converted by the example of love shown by the woman who was a sinner. The challenge of this story, however, is not limited to the possible conversion of one person, but it extends to the possible conversion of the whole community. Whether or not Zacchaeus needs to be converted and, if so, whether or not he does change his life, is immaterial for the greater challenge. Either way, by singling out Zacchaeus and inviting himself to that man's house, Jesus has already robbed Jericho of its scapegoat. The unanimity has been irretrievably broken. That everybody turns to grumbling at Jesus for going to the house of a man who is a sinner suggests that Jesus is well on the way to becoming the unanimous object of hatred. Since Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem where the same thing happens to him again, it is no surprise if it should happen in Jericho as well while he was on the way to the Holy City. However, if Zacchaeus holds his ground and takes the side of Jesus, Jericho lacks the required unanimity against one person and thus foils the town's attempt to reorganize itself around another scapegoat. More important, Jericho now has the opportunity to organize its society around the newfound or pre-established generosity of Zacchaeus in contrast to the Gerasenes who applauded Jesus' healing of the possessed man by asking him to take the next bus out of town. The outcome is left unresolved in Luke's narrative, thus posing the question to each one of us: will salvation come to our house as it has come to the house of Zacchaeus?