REFLECTION 2ND NOVEMBER 2025 ZACCHAEUS AND HABBAKKUK 

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

 

In our two readings this morning we encounter two very different people, living centuries apart, both looking for God from a hard place. 

Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of grace.
Habakkuk, standing in a barren field, stares at the fig tree that no longer blossoms.
One man climbs to see; the other watches everything fall.
And yet both discover the same truth: God meets us where we are—whether up a tree or among the ruins. 

 

Habakkuk begins not with praise but protest.
He cries, “How long, O Lord?” as he watches injustice and violence fill his world.  There is no pretending, no polite prayer—just honesty.  I’m sure many of us seated here this morning                      would have uttered similar prayers when we watch injustice and violence.   

It teaches us that lament is not the absence of faith but the language of it.
We can bring our grief, our doubt, our anger to God—because God is not offended by our truth. 

 

And Zacchaeus?  He lives on the other side of despair.  He has stopped expecting change, climbing his own kind of wall between himself and his community.  He has made peace with being the outcast.  Until Jesus walks by. 

 

Have you heard of SMS?  It stands for small man syndrome,  it can because you are literally physically little and it could also be if you feel intimidated psychologically and overwhelmed by big people who crowd you.   

 

My family is a short family, my dad was 5ft 3 and I am 5ft 4.  Whenever we had church socials my dad would always ask me for a waltz and he and mum were very good ballroom dances and I liked to waltz with him because we were similar heights and I could easily follow his steps.  In fact dad and mum met at the Orange Ball room in Khyber Pass and the famous band playing there at the time was Bill Sevesi and the islanders.  They loved to dance whenever they had the opportunity.  Regardless of his small stature his love was huge.  On his gravestone is the phrase “a small man with a big heart”.  He may have been small in stature but his humility and his mana made him a big man of character and integrity.   

 

Zacchaeus was a man of small stature not just physically but perhaps also psychologically.  If you have ever felt unseen, unwelcome, or too small for the crowd to notice if you have ever had to climb just to catch a glimpse of hope then you already understand Zacchaeus. 

 

Zacchaeus was a short man living in a tall world.  He worked for the Roman Empire as a tax collector, and his own people despised him for it.
He was wealthy, but lonely.  Successful, but spiritually starving. 

When Jesus came through Jericho, the streets were full.  Zacchaeus couldn’t see, so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree—
the kind of impulsive, child-like act that makes adults gossip amongst themselves. 
 

And here comes Jesus—stopping, looking up, smiling.  “Zacchaeus, come down. I’m coming to your house today.”  Zacchaeus must have been thinking “are you talking to me?”  He must have been in disbelief.   

 

The response of the crowd was scandalous.  “He’s gone to eat with a sinner!” they muttered.  They judged him for what he did collect taxes from them.   

 

But here in this story Jesus doesn’t build a fence to keep people apart he builds a table.  Jesus goes where polite religion refuses to sit.  He keeps company with the complicated, the controversial, the cancelled. 

This is the scandal of inclusion that still unsettles the comfortable church today.
 

If Jesus walked down Lambton Quay or through Lower Hutt this week,
whose house would he choose?  Whose story would he want to hear?
And how would the crowd react? 

 

Every time we widen our table to include people on the margins of society
we continue the same gospel work that Jesus was doing with Zacchaeus.   

Zacchaeus opens the door of his home as well as his heart to Jesus.   Jesus sits down.  There’s laughter, maybe tears,  Zacchaeus suddenly stands and says, “Half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay them fourfold.” 

 

This was a voluntary announcement, Jesus did not prompt him nor did he demand this.  Grace, not guilt, sparked the change. 

 

On Monday I went to visit Molly Seah at Wellington hospital she sends her love by the way.  Anyway when I went down to the carpark to pay for my parking ticket I thought I could use my phone to payWave the ticket.  But alas, no it doesn’t allow phones you need an actual plastic card.  I had left my purse at home.  I just stood there and thought, how am I going to get out of this carpark.  I rang the intercom and no answer, afterall it was Labour day a public holiday so no one was answering.  I couldn’t even go to an ATM machine to withdraw cash because they don’t PayWave phones either.  I did not know what to do.  Anyway a man enters through the  door he was a Polynesia I couldn’t tell what island he was from.  Anyway I said to him, excuse me my phone is not working and so I am unable to pay for my carpark.  Could you pay for me and I will transfer $6 into your bank account.  The man pulls out his wallet, paywaves the parking machine and says, don’t worry and walks away.  For some people $6 is a lot of money, a loaf of bread and a small carton of milk.  He was very generous and I felt bad that I was unable to reimburse him.  I know I would have done exactly the same had the tables been turned.  When we encounter kindness, it transforms us.   

In the case of Jesus wanting to go the home of Zacchaeus hospitality becomes the catalyst for justice.  It transformed him, he wanted to make right all the wrongs he had committed to people.  People change not when they are shamed, but when they are seen, valued, and accepted.  Jesus response to Zacchaeus plan of action was to say, 

“Today salvation has come to this house.”  Salvation in the form of redemption walks through the front door with open arms.  It is social, relational, restorative.  Salvation is not about escaping this world;
it is about healing it.  When Zacchaeus shares his wealth, the community’s wounds begin to mend.  The gospel becomes visible
justice in action, mercy embodied, economics re-imagined. 

 

There are Zacchaeus’s and Habakkuk’s . 

 

 

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in every community:
people hiding in plain sight, longing to be noticed.  The single parent stretched too thin,  the teenager questioning their identity,  the elder who feels forgotten,  the refugee looking for a place to call home. 

The call of Christ today is simple and subversive.  Look up. Call them by name. Invite yourself in. 

 

Radical Hospitality is to welcome those the world excludes
it is to declare that every person is made in the image of God. 

The church’s mission is not to protect its respectability, but to practice extravagant welcome.  A truly faithful church measures success
not by how many attend, but by how deeply people are loved. 

 

Zacchaeus’s conversion was not a private feeling—it was public repair.
He gave, he restored, he redistributed.  Faith today demands the same courage:  to support living wages,  to advocate for affordable housing,
to speak for climate justice,  to challenge systems that privilege a few and harm the many. 

When we engage in that work, we too bring about the act of transformation in that Salvation has come to the homes of the people we encounter.  

 

I suppose each of us has a “tree” we climb a place of safety, avoidance, or pride.  We all have our barren seasons—when plans crumble, work dries up, or health falters.
The invitation of both texts is: Do not give up on joy.
Rejoice, not because everything is fine, but because love still abides.
Like Zacchaeus, we sometimes retreat into safe distance—behind our roles, our screens, our privilege, or our pain.  Jesus still looks up and calls, “Come down. I’m coming to your house today.”  Faith means climbing down to meet Christ in the ordinary, where community and courage begin. 

 

Zacchaeus’s conversion was social as well as spiritual.  He gave away wealth, righted wrongs, and changed his economy.  When we advocate for the poor, the planet, and fair systems, we live Habakkuk’s “yet I will rejoice” in real time.  Hope becomes activism; worship becomes justice. 

 

The story of Zacchaeus begins with a tree and ends with a table.   

 

Habakkuk stands under the lifeless fig tree and sings, 

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.”
Zacchaeus climbs a living sycamore and hears,
“Come down; I’m coming to your house.”  Both are songs of resistance and renewal.  Both proclaim that even when the world feels barren, God is already on the way.  We don’t need to climb trees, God meets us on the ground—with mercy, justice, and joy that never runs dry.  Amen. 

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Audio of selected readings and reflections

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Audio of the complete service