Zacchaeus and the Safety of Climbing Trees

October 17, 2022

Why do we seem always to miss the point when teaching Bible stories to children? It’s almost like we only care to teach them the most trivial aspects of the story at hand. We transform the story of David and Goliath into something far removed from determining who was the true God determining the outcome on the battlefield. We transform the story of Jericho into a wall falling down, rather than relying on God to do the impossible. We transform the stories of Samson as though to say that God wants men to be exceptionally strong, losing sight of just how Samson abused God’s power for his own purposes.

We get to the story of Zacchaeus, and it’s all about how short he is and how he had to climb a tree to see Jesus. Not only are the kids cheated by the way we tell these stories, they grow up to be adults who have never reflected theologically on any story in their lives.

The story of Jericho is about trusting God against insurmountable odds. It is about following through in living up to God’s expectations when we can’t see how that could possibly work out. David facing off against Goliath is not about David’s heroic strength and accuracy with a sling. It is about who is really God. It is about how God can take our inadequate-seeming skills and use them to great effect. It is about declaring that there is only one God worthy of Israel’s worship. The stories of Samson are about how we like to misuse what God has given us for our own purposes, not considering the greater purposes God has in mind, like liberating the nation from oppression.

The sycamore tree is incidental to the story of Zacchaeus. Much more important was that this was a man nobody loved. This was a man who was looked down on by the rest of the nation. While he was looking down on Jesus from up in the tree, Jesus saw him differently from anyone else. Jesus looked at him in terms of possibility. Jesus looked at him from the perspective of what he could become. Jesus saw in Zacchaeus what no one else could, a man who was ready to be transformed into someone new.

We talk about that when we tell the story to our children. Well, maybe we do. Generally, however, that is at most only an aside. It is an afterthought. It is a point of reflection we all too easily just ignore, for it calls for our own reflection and transformation, as well. Maybe that’s the real issue we have with teaching Bible stories to kids. We don’t really want to take the time and energy to reflect on how they should transform our own lives.

As long as the story is about climbing a tree to be taller, there is just not a lot of reflection needed. As long as it is about facing a giant, well, I’ve never seen many giants, have you? As long as it is about a wall falling down, that mainly only happens in an earthquake which are infrequent. As long as I don’t have to do much reflection, those stories are safe. Once I start applying them to my life, however, who knows what unexpected thing God might do? I might suddenly determine the entire focus of my life needs to change, giving away half of all I own and making ample restitution to those I have wronged.

It’s safer if I stick to climbing trees.