Introduction
As I mentioned last week, I am using the Season after Pentecost text for All Saints as well. The story of Zacchaeus is incredible and a wonderful text for All Saints.
Of course, we mostly tell the very simplified Sunday School version of this story. But there is so much tension in this text that opens up this amazing grace at the end (if we’re willing to go there).
So, let’s dive into the narrative.
Narrative Overview
Luke’s Gospel reaches a turning point as Jesus enters Jericho, the last major stop before Jerusalem. And beautifully (especially for the Gospel of Luke), the road to the cross runs through the house of a sinner. And that sinner’s name is Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus is described as “a chief tax collector and rich” (v. 2). This is Luke’s way of saying he’s about as far from the kingdom as one could imagine. He’s not just a tax collector (already a symbol of collaboration and exploitation), he’s chief among them, probably overseeing other tax collectors in his work, profiting from a system that impoverishes his neighbors.
And yet, Luke tells us he “was trying to see who Jesus was” (v. 3). That’s the crack in the façade. Whatever else we might say about Zacchaeus, something in him still longs to see (to know, to be seen by) this wandering teacher. And so, he climbs a sycamore tree like a child. One of the most powerful men in Jericho takes the posture of the least powerful.
Jesus stops beneath that tree and says the words that change everything:
“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”
It’s worth noting how personal and urgent that invitation is. The “must” (which in Greek is dei) signals necessity for Jesus. It’s the same word Luke uses for Jesus’ mission to suffer, die, and rise. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “It is part of my calling to enter your house.”
The crowd grumbles, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner,” but Zacchaeus responds with joy and repentance. His transformation is immediate and tangible: “Half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will pay back four times as much.”
We could be suspicious of Zacchhaeus’ actions here. Maybe this is all just performative. But I’m not sure that’s the case. I think Luke is illustrating something deeper. It’s a resurrection story. Zacchaeus moves from greed to generosity, from isolation to community, from shame to joy. He doesn’t climb his way up to salvation. Salvation calls him back down to community. Zacchaeus returns to life.
Jesus’ closing declaration frames the whole scene in salvation history: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” The “lost” (apolōlos) is the same word used in the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son. Zacchaeus is one more in the long line of the lost who are found by grace and restored to community.
Preaching Zacchaeus Directly
So, you can stick with the above and it’s still a deeply compelling story. But there is a way to hear this with a little more sting.
Luke does not give us a gentle sinner in Zacchaeus. He is not a sympathetic figure misunderstood by his neighbors. He is, by all accounts, a collaborator and an exploiter. He is a Jewish man working for the Roman occupiers, enriching himself by squeezing his own people. And not just any tax collector, but the chief tax collector, likely overseeing others and pressuring them to be just as ruthless.
He has built his wealth on betrayal. He has used his power to harm. The crowd’s anger toward him is not misplaced moralism, it’s the cry of a community that has suffered under his greed. If we want to preach this text honestly, we need to feel that tension. Zacchaeus is not the marginalized victim of public shame, he is the powerful offender who benefits from the very systems that oppress his neighbors.
And yet.
And yet, this man climbs a tree.
He climbs not as a powerful man but as one who is curious, restless, maybe even desperate. It is an act of holy foolishness. Luke invites us to wonder what moved him. Guilt? Longing? The faint memory of faith? Whatever it was, Zacchaeus does something unexpected. He breaks from his usual role. He risks looking ridiculous. The chief tax collector becomes childlike again, pushing through the crowd that despises him just for the chance to see Jesus.
That simple, almost comical image (a short, powerful man scrambling up a sycamore tree) is where the gospel breaks in. Because Jesus does not call down a righteous man. He calls down a sinner at the height of his corruption. In our preaching, we might linger there. In the strangeness of grace that seeks out not only the lost, but the loathsome, not only the wounded, but the wounding.
It is one thing for Jesus to eat with sinners who have been excluded by circumstance. It is another for him to enter the home of someone who has caused the exclusion of others. That is the scandal of this text, and perhaps the reason it belongs near the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. The love that will soon stretch out its arms on the cross first stretches out its hand to a man everyone else has written off as beyond redemption.
Personal Aside: A Word of Grace and Recovery
Last week’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector set the trap perfectly. We learn to side with the tax collector because he prays humbly, while the Pharisee prays with contempt. We tell ourselves that we know who the righteous ones really are. But then this week, Luke brings us face to face with an actual tax collector. A man who really is corrupt, who has hurt his neighbors, and who is still the object of Jesus’ mercy. And suddenly our sympathies shift. We can’t stand him.
Luke is offensive that way. He keeps dismantling our categories of who deserves mercy. The first tax collector shows us humility, and this one too shows us repentance. And both receive grace they could never earn.
For me, this story has always been one of extravagant grace.
God willing, I will be eleven years sober on November 8th, 2025. Eleven years ago, I was a wrecking ball in my own community. I was pushing people away, isolating, and drinking myself toward death. Like Zacchaeus, I had shrunk away, but not in the way that leads to humility. It was out of shame. I saw myself as a villain. And when you start to believe that story about yourself, it’s easy to keep playing the part, even when you might be desperate for a way out.
Maybe Zacchaeus knew that story too. Maybe he’d long since accepted his role as the traitor, the one everyone loves to hate. Maybe it was easier to stay angry than to risk being seen. But something in him, something that wouldn’t die, wanted to see Jesus.
I know what that longing feels like. It’s the moment when the story you’ve told yourself begins to crack. The moment when, even in your isolation, you find yourself climbing a tree, not because you deserve anything, but because you need something. You need someone to notice you, to call you down, to come stay at your house today, to bring you back into community.
That’s what grace looks like in this story, and in recovery, too. Grace doesn’t wait for us to get it all together. Grace looks up into the trees we’ve climbed and says, “Come down. I’m coming over.”
The Difficulty of Restoration
Of course, that kind of grace is not easy. Not for Zacchaeus, and not for the community he’s harmed. We know this from life in recovery, and we know it from life in the church. Sometimes we don’t want the sinner back. Sometimes the pain and betrayal run so deep that it’s healthier for everyone when the person finds a new community to be part of. And yet, Luke’s Gospel keeps pressing us toward something even more daring: resurrection life through restored relationship.
Salvation, for Luke, is not escape from this world but reconciliation within it. It’s the hard, messy work of making amends, having difficult conversations, rebuilding trust, and risking community again. That’s what it means for salvation to “come to this house.” It’s not only that Zacchaeus is changed, but also that his neighbors, too, are drawn into the redemptive work of restoration. The gospel is not complete until community is healed.
Preaching Possibilities
Preaching All Saints through Zacchaeus
All Saints Sunday in the Lutheran/Protestant tradition is not about a hierarchy of holiness but about the communion of all the baptized, living and dead, made saints by grace. We celebrate those who have gone before us in faith, not because they were perfect, but because Christ called them by name.
In that sense, Zacchaeus is a saint. Not because of what he’s done, but because Jesus said, “I must stay at your house today.” The holiness of Zacchaeus is received, not achieved. His life becomes a living witness to what it looks like when salvation comes near.
All Saints is the feast of God’s relentless pursuit. The Christ who seeks out and saves the lost. The community of saints is made up of those whom Jesus has sought and saved through the restoration of the whole community, the faithful, the flawed, the forgotten, the forgiven. And perhaps this story gives us a new way to imagine the communion of saints. A crowd of people who were once on the outside, now gathered around a table with Jesus. People who once climbed trees to see, now seated with Christ in community.
Zacchaeus’ salvation is not proven by his moral turnaround but by his rejoining the community, by coming back to the table. What was lost (his belonging, his humanity, his place among God’s people) is restored. And that restoration always culminates in a meal. In Jericho, Jesus sits at Zacchaeus’ table. In Jerusalem, he breaks bread with his friends. And in the life of the church, we gather at Christ’s table where the saints of every time and place are brought together again. Betrayers and betrayed, sinners and saints, the lost and the found, all restored by grace into one communion.
On All Saints, we name those who have gone before us and hear again that salvation has come to this house, to our community, to our congregation, to our homes. Not because we are righteous, but because Christ still seeks and saves.
Micah Krey 
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