Good morning, my name is Zacchaeus and I want to tell you about the time I met Jesus. Really it's a story about being able to see. Here's how I remember it. Now I'm not a tall man. In fact, I credit my height or lack of it for some of the ways my journey has gone in my life. It's not easy being a small man. When you are short (okay there I said it), when you are short you literally get overlooked for many opportunities. You have to work harder to get noticed and to make your way in life. I tried a few other careers in my life. I thought about being a shepherd, the sheep weren't too big for me to handle, but I'm more of a city kind of guy. The country life just was not for me. I needed the hustle and bustle of Jericho to keep me busy. I was pretty good with numbers when I was growing up. But, as I said, when it came to using those skills to find a job, others got noticed before I did.

I'm not sure when the idea of becoming a tax collector came to me. It wasn't like there were ads posted at the market or anything like that. I mean who would apply for such a job that was so looked down upon by the general public. No, someone in the Roman government bureaucracy mentioned the opening to someone else and they told someone and they told someone and before you know it, someone with whom I had a casual acquaintance had mentioned it to me. What the heck, I thought, I am good with numbers, and everyone pretty much ignores me or doesn't think too highly (pun not intended) of me anyway, and besides it can be a lucrative job.

So, that's how I got started. Now tax collecting in my time wasn't anything like it is today. There was no Galilean Revenue Agency, that sent out forms and had a portion of the paycheque withheld for the ruling authorities. No, in a lot of ways, I and my fellow tax collectors were a collection of free-lancers. We had our routes to work and as long as we collected enough to cover the budget for our area we were free to extract as much more as we could manage. It turned out that my skills weren't just arithmetical in nature. Oh, yes I could add, subtract and multiply and even though I wasn't that good at division it wasn't something I needed to use all that often anyway, but I could do all the others with the best of them and usually much faster. But it turned out I also had a bit of a silver tongue. It certainly wasn't brawn that gave me the edge, I mean look at me – short and skinny, so it must have been my gift of the gab that worked for me. It wasn't too long before I had progressed from the junior ranks to handle some of the bigger accounts, and I earned the title of chief tax collector. Well, if you thought my ability to convince people to pay their taxes was good as a junior collector, I soon learned that I did even better with some of the more successful business people and traders in Jericho's high society. I'm sure these high rollers felt they got better value for their tax dollars – wielding a certain amount of influence with the Roman administration, but I parlayed that sentiment into a pretty lucrative cut for myself. Pretty soon I was a high roller among the high rollers. I had a nice estate, could pretty much buy what I wanted, and things seemed to be going well for me in my life. I was a big man in Jericho without being a big man – if you get my drift.

Well, that was all the outside stuff – the things people could see. And remember I started telling you that this story was all about being able to see. The people with whom I associated could see that I was doing pretty well. But the people I associated with were all business contacts – my business contacts, the people from whom I extracted more than the government's share of the taxes. As much as I'd worked hard to do well, to get over the small man syndrome, and make sure that people noticed me, I had done it at my own expense. Nobody liked me. They knew who I was – believe me, they could hardly avoid figuring that out – with my estate and its commanding view, and my regular calls to make the next collection, but they weren't keen on seeing me, and there was lots of talking behind my back. They couldn't sense the inner turmoil that was going on inside me. They couldn't see the angst with which I lived every day. I had quite quickly come to realise that money is not everything, but it is hard to give it up once you have it. You dig yourself in pretty deeply – once you have a few things you want even more. Once you become accustomed to a certain lifestyle you want to maintain it, regardless of what your neighbours or your clients think. But that's all superficial stuff. I didn't think it was superficial to begin with, I thought it was the stuff of life, but when I achieved it, I clearly knew it was not the stuff of life at all. Life was much more than having things. Life was much more than difficult relationships with clients who rarely thought well of you.

I was digging myself a hole of depression that was impossible to talk about with anyone – because first of all I had no one to talk to, and secondly it was too personal and shameful to say anything anyway. In an effort to be seen above the crowd, I had taken a path that put me above the crowd, but only so that everyone could look upon me with disdain, and often even loathing. I maintained an outer shell that appeared to shrug off all the mean looks, not so quiet whispers and outright hatred. It was a good hard shell, but it worked just as well from the inside as it did on the outside and pretty soon all the negative feelings I had about myself were so strong and pushing against the inside of that shell that I felt something was going to blow within me. My spirit was in turmoil and it needed to find a way out, and fast.

I'd heard off and on about the teacher and healer named Jesus over the past few months. Word of what he'd said had drifted down to me. Some of the people I visited to collect the taxes were talking about him. There were stories of amazement at the things he'd said and done, and in particular at the kinds of people that he had associated with, and not only that but whom he had pointed out as being among the most faithful of all the people around. I even heard that some of them were tax collectors. In fact, someone said that a former tax collector was among his group of closest followers, disciples I heard someone call them. When I heard that my heart raced a little. I wonder if there's a message there for me, I asked myself.

Then I heard he was coming into Jericho. A group of people who had been hanging out with him raced ahead to our city and the word quickly spread. Now I had a chance to find out for myself. Well, you know what happened. It was more than me that had heard of this fellow Jesus. The crowds were large and I wasn't in the front line. I told you it was all about being able to see, and that's exactly what happened when he passed by where I was standing. All I could see were his legs going by – at least I think it was him, there was such a crowd walking along with him it was actually hard to tell which of them was this man Jesus. I looked around, and down the road where he was walking, I saw a little grove of trees. Now one of my other talents, being such a short and small guy is that I'd become a pretty proficient tree climber when I was young. Sycamore trees were no sweat to climb and that's what was in this particular grove of trees. I saw my chance and raced ahead and clambered up the tree so that I would have a good view. Being able to see was important, but I wondered whether I would be able to hear anything he said, and if so, whether what he had to say would bring any relief to my troubled spirit.

What happened next is hard to put into words. As he walked along he looked up and his eyes caught mine. I was comfortable up there so I don't think there was any sign of terror or inner turmoil in my eyes or on my face, but it was if he could see right through the shell I had created around me. But not exactly right through it, it was if he could see through it but also as if he could see what the shell was made of. I think he could see the hurt I was feeling about being such a pariah in Jericho society. I think he could see the hurt from my childhood when I had been overlooked so often because I was so small, and I think he could see the turmoil I was experiencing that made me successful in worldly terms, but a failure on personal happiness terms. It was like he could see me – every bit of me, my outward appearance, my inner soul, the hurt, the worries, the good, the bad, the turmoil and pain, the joy and sadness, everything all at once.

And then he spoke. Zacchaeus, come down from that tree. How did he know my name? I guess people really had been talking about me behind my back! And then to the gasps of the crowd around him, to say nothing of my own gaping mouth and dropped jaw, he invited himself to my place for dinner! After the gasps of the crowd were over, they turned into indignation and protest. They really had been talking about me, and now they were angry not just at me, but at this man Jesus. It was like he was a sponge connecting with me and helping to absorb some of the contempt they were heaping on me. Suddenly it was like I had the friend I couldn't have anywhere else, and a friend who could see beyond the hard shell exterior, the ostentation of my lavish clothes and lovely mansion into the recesses of my spiritual turmoil.

And so we went together to my place. The twelve disciples came too, but they let us walk ahead together. We talked about being able to see. He asked about the tree climbing. I secretly think that he wished he could just go and climb a tree for fun sometimes. I told him I only climbed the tree because I had learned to do it as a teenager, and because it was the only way I could see. And that's when we started talking about being able to see. He talked about being able to see with God's eyes, instead of human eyes. Human eyes often get stuck on physical appearance (don't think that didn't resonate with me) , but God's eyes can see everything at once – the outer and the inner and how the outer affects the inner and the inner affects the outer. And that's when I started to see myself differently as well. I was looking at myself with human eyes, but also experiencing what it might be like to see myself with God's eyes. My eyes led to building myself up because I felt so small and short regardless of how that affected the people around me. As long as they saw me, knew who I was, that was all that was important to me. But Jesus taught me something new – it does matter what people think of you, but it's more important to know what God thinks of you, and God thinks of you as a precious human being, created in God's own image, so go and be everything that God wants of you, go and be everything that God has gifted you to do.

I can't see the same way that Jesus saw me that day, but I'm getting better at it. For example I saw that people really did dislike me, and I vowed to make things better in my relationships with them. They didn't like me because I used them. I became rich at their expense, so I promised to make that better.

I'm learning to see with God's eyes. And it all happened because I couldn't see. Funny how that happens. I told you my story was all about being able to see, now didn't I. Do you see?