Have you ever felt written off or type-cast? Have you ever felt like the things of your past constantly haunt you in such a way that you can never get out from underneath the shadow of who you used to be? Zacchaeus was a person everyone loved to hate, and as far as they saw it, they had good reason to. He was a chief tax collector, which meant that he was in the employee of the Roman government and his job was to extract a certain amount of money from the Jewish population. Once he had collected the Roman quota, he was allowed to keep whatever else he could squeeze out of the people; and Zacchaeus was rich, which meant that he squeezed his own people pretty hard. In other words, the popular opinion of Zacchaeus was that he was a crook, a scoundrel and worse, a national traitor in the back pocket of the Roman oppressors. Everyone despised Zacchaeus with a zealous fury. Well, everyone except Jesus. When Jesus visited Jericho, he wanted to have dinner with Zacchaeus. He wanted to hang out at Zacchaeus’ house. A couple hours with Jesus and Zacchaeus changed forever. Folks began to mutter about it, but Jesus stood up and commended the man they all hated. I love Jesus because He sees something in me besides my past, my sins or my reputation. He sees a reason to love me.
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