Wondering with the Word: restitution

No one can be privately righteous while participating in and profiting from a programme that robs and crushes other persons.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Luke 19:1-10

1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man named Zacchaeus lived there. He was a chief tax collector and was very rich. 3 Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was. But he was a short man. He could not see Jesus because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree. He wanted to see Jesus, who was coming that way.

5 Jesus reached the spot where Zacchaeus was. He looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

7 All the people saw this. They began to whisper among themselves. They said, “Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

8 But Zacchaeus stood up. He said, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of what I own to those who are poor. And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay it back. I will pay back four times the amount I took.”

9 Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to your house. You are a member of Abraham’s family line. 10 The Son of Man came to look for the lost and save them.”

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There was a fascinating story on the UK news recently. It covered the development of esports in secondary schools: not as an escape for troublesome pupils but as a wide-ranging set of approaches to developing skills in marketing, PR, languages (for multilingual commentaries) as well as the simple joy of playing.

It’s an alien world to me - even Sonic the Hedgehog was more than I could manage - but it is both a sign of education responding to the real world and not being afraid to broaden ways of teaching core subjects.

In November 2024, techUK published its first Gaming & Esports report into how the UK can lead on the development, application, and commercialisation of gaming and Esports technologies. It said that, in the UK, the video games industry contributes over £6 billion to the economy and supports 76,000 jobs.

Interestingly, not only was the development of esports suites in schools broadening students’ experience, it also served to reduce absenteeism, according to educators.

Certainly life is far more complicated than we were ever led to believe as children. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, the mantra was ‘Study hard and, if you’re bright enough, you can go to university. Otherwise plan a future in the bank or the civil service.’

From here in South Wales in 2025, I can hear former UK Education Secretary Michael Gove spitting out his tea. Gove, the man who destroyed many young people’s chances by his insistence that arts subject were largely irrelevant and all learning should be judged by examination; that projects and ongoing assessment must cease.

He and others like him would be outraged at the idea that youngsters may discover their place in the adult world from a gaming chair or from learning how to calculate a firm’s marketing share, or from discovering that their love of art could be translated into a career as a designer.

We dismiss people too easily. ‘Can’t learn chemical processes? Well you’re a waste of time. Don’t know what a fronted adverbial is? You’ll never write anything worthwhile. Can’t memorise facts? Who’s going to employ you?’

I long for a world where the outsider can find the door that lets them inside. I long for more stories of how rejected and written-off ‘failures’ can amaze us with their achievements.

It’s not my story to tell, but I know one case where someone written off completely by school discovered their entrepreneurial nous online and now fronts a company with a turnover in the billions. They found their door.

It’s why the Bible story of Zacchaeus is so powerful, even in this contemporary society. It’s one of the stories that, if we grew up in Church, we are bound to have heard. Strange logic, but because he was little it’s a story that gets told to little children.

So, what do we know about him?

• He was small

• He was hated (because he was a cheat and a collaborator)

• He was rich (because he was a cheat and the Chief Tax Collector)

• He was determined (he climbed a tree!)

• He was not easily embarrassed (he didn’t care who saw him up a tree!)

Rome was occupying the territory and systematically oppressing the Jewish people. Its taxation system, while highly-efficient, was corrupt and made some people extremely rich at the expense of those who could least afford it.

Zacchaeus as Chief Tax Collector was a crooked collaborator and at the centre of the tax system. He would have guaranteed to pay Rome a certain sum and, as long as that was paid, the empire wasn’t that bothered about the exact amount extracted from the Jews.

Cheating, on a huge scale, was the normal way of things, carried out by the tax collectors who would have been Jews themselves.

Fred Craddock says in his commentary on Luke: ‘While nothing of the private life of Zacchaeus is revealed in the story, this much we know on principle: no one can be privately righteous while participating in and profiting from a programme that robs and crushes other persons.’

So Zacchaeus would have been hated and it’s no wonder that he would be pushed to the back of any queue when Jesus comes to town. But, as Luke’s accounts so often remind us, the Gospel is a story of God continually coming to Israel and searching out those in need of a new start.

Zacchaeus had heard something about this Jesus - whether it’s about his teaching, or his miracles we are not told - and wanted to see him. So he risks embarrassment and climbs the tree to make sure that he is in the right place for a good view.

The powerful element in this story is that it turns out Zacchaeus is the one who was seen as Jesus comes to the base of the tree and invites himself to his house.

It’s a tender moment that leads to remarkable change. Craddock describes Jesus’s actions as ‘grace ... joined to repentance [where] repentance is not solely a transaction of the heart’. In other words, God’s grace results in practical change.

There was a requirement under the Law for repentant cheats to give a voluntary restitution of the original amount plus 20 per cent (Leviticus and Numbers) and compulsory restitution called for at least doubling the original amount.

Zacchaeus offers a fourfold repayment to anyone he has cheated - a big deal, literally.

And the story could end there, but there’s a follow on to that kind of change, isn’t there? All we learn of Zacchaeus is told in 10 verses of Scripture; only in Luke with no other reference anywhere.

While we can’t guess at what happened, we do know that he didn’t have the luxury of being able to follow Jesus by leaving - he has to stay and tough it out in Jericho.

He has to be faithful under the eyes of all of those he has lived near; watched by all the people he has cheated in the past, those he has repaid and those who will watch him for the rest of his life.

He is on show as a living example of the Grace of God - the man who went up a tree and came down a follower of Jesus! And, from what we learn in the story, he intends to live it out.

What about us? How do we live out our testimony of the grace of God? How do we let what God has done for us change us and our attitudes?

If we have been touched by Jesus coming to us and inviting us to be close to him then we can’t simply say that was one day in the past. It has to change our present and our future for it to be meaningful.