A Wee Little Man? Luke 19: 1 - 10

We all learned the song, "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, he climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see....." You know the rest. I have always focused on Zacchaeus' role as a tax collector, and the negative community relations that were caused by that profession. Nothing new there. However, this year I discovered an article by Roberta Bondi in which she recounted a sermon she heard back in the 1970's that changed forever the way she reads this story. She was listening to a preacher, himself a man lacking physical stature, who read the story from Luke, changing just one word in the text. The text as written, states "He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature." Bondi recounts how the preacher changed the end of the sentence to "because Jesus was short in stature.". He defended his choice by stating, correctly, that the Greek does not define to whom "he" refers. Of course, it makes the most sense to read it as referring to Zacchaeus, but there is no rule that says that one must do that. Bondi makes the point that, if Jesus is the short guy in this story, it messes with our mental images of God. Have we ever watched a film where Jesus was portrayed as a wee little man? The closest the movies have come to offering such a portrayal is "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the guise of Ted Neeley portraying Jesus. The only problem I have with Neeley's Jesus persona is that he continues to portray him, though he must be at least sixty years of age, and Jesus lived to be about thirty-three!
We think of Jesus as a tall, Caucasian, good-looking man who would cause women to swoon. Never mind that Isaiah contains a passage that states that the coming messiah would not have any physical qualities that would cause people to want to look at him. We can handle Zacchaeus being really short, but could Jesus have been puny as well? Our whole Christus Victor mindset demands that Jesus be a strong and commanding presence. Imagine meeting Jesus in the next life and stating "I always imagined you as being taller!"
Sadly, our perception of what is an acceptable image of God is tied in to our idea of acceptable images of people. America finally elected a black man as president, and, his political failings aside, it is hard to believe that all of the Tea Party hoopla has nothing to do with his race. Women are still objectified, and in some Christian denominations, they are told to be subservient to men. Good thing God is not a woman or of another race, huh? Truth is, we tend to think of God as looking like us. And any attempt on the part of anyone else to change that perception is taken as a threat. It's very personal. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, but surely Jesus was not. Right?