And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully. (Luke 19:5-6)
Zacchaeus receives Christ joyfully – not tentatively, or uncertainly or hesitantly. As soon as Christ addresses Himself to Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus is joyful. He doesn’t appear to be afraid of Christ’s judgment, though the fact that he doesn’t approach Christ directly and has to climb a tree because the crowed won’t make room for him, suggests he knows he is not liked by the crowd. Even though he is a tax collector, he doesn’t behave as one having authority or power over others. Archimandrite Zacharias comments about he learns from Zacchaeus:
I think that both the strength to bear shame and the strength to suffer are gifts from God. When I was a young and inexperienced spiritual father, Father Sophrony told me to encourage the young people to confess precisely the things of which they are ashamed, for if they learn to do so, shame is transformed into strength against the passions, and they will overcome sin. . . . And I understood that this is precisely what had occurred in the person of Zacchaeus. He bore shame voluntarily, and the Lord, Who was on his way to Jerusalem in order to suffer on the Cross of shame, saw Zacchaeus bearing shame for His sake and recognized in him a kindred spirit. (REMEMBER THY FIRST LOVE, p 349)
Though today in Slavic Orthodoxy because the Zacchaeus narrative is read just before the Great Lenten cycle begins, Zacchaeus is now identified as a sinner who repents, Archimandrite Zacharias points out a different idea – Christ sees in Zacchaeus a kindred spirit, one who is willing to overcome shame. Zacchaeus was too short to see over the crowd, however, he was not too ashamed to climb the tree to see Jesus. Jesus too will climb a tree associated with shame – namely the cross. Jesus is saying Zacchaeus is behaving prophetically. And Jesus wants all the Jews in Jericho to welcome Zacchaeus into the fellowship of the people of God, for they have misjudged him. Zacchaeus shows his true spirit when he says to Christ, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.” (Luke 19:8) Note, he is speaking in the present tense, not a future promise. He apparently had been misjudged by his fellow Jews who assumed that as a tax collector he was a greedy, dishonest “sinner”. Instead, he is revealed as an extremely generous man.
Part of the shame of the Zaccheus story is that the self-righteous condemned him without knowing him and what he was doing with the wealth that he had. Zacchaeus accepted this judgment because he was humble and of the same spirit as the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus works His ministry of reconciliation, breaking down the walls that divide people, or, as we are known as, sinners.
Fraternized 