Instant Transformation (Friday Devotional)

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

- Luke 19:1-10

When you take a moment to think about it, popcorn is amazing. You start with these hard, golden brown kernels, these things which look (and taste) more like rocks than food. But then you stick them in the microwave for 2 minutes and voila—suddenly those kernels are white, fluffy, delicious pieces of popcorn. Two minutes of heat is all it takes to effect a complete transformation. It’s hard to believe a change like that can happen so fast.

I wonder if that’s what the crowd was thinking in Jericho the day Zacchaeus was transformed. As a chief tax collector, he was a despised person in the community, someone for whom corruption and treachery was second nature. He was the kind of man worthy of sneers, not salvation.

Perhaps that’s why he had so much trouble getting a decent view the day Jesus passed through town—no one was going to make space for Zacchaeus. Taking matters into his own hands, he climbed a sycamore tree for a better sightline, and in doing so caught Jesus’s attention. The crowd must have been eager to hear Jesus’s judgment upon this sinner, but they were disappointed, for instead Zacchaeus received a gesture of friendship: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down,” Jesus said. “For I must stay at your house today.”

By the time they’d made their way to Zacchaeus’s home, the crowd’s dismay was apparent; they couldn’t believe Jesus was wasting his time on a sinner like this tax collector. But that was when they received their second surprise of the day, this time from the mouth of the man who’d spent years earning their hatred. Hearing the complaints, Zacchaeus promised that starting that day he would give half of his wealth to the poor; furthermore, anyone he’d defrauded over the years he would pay back fourfold.

How could this be? Zacchaeus was a professional sinner, a traitor to his people, a thief, a liar! How could he go from stealing from the poor one minute to extravagantly giving to them the next? How could he go from being a man of greed to a man of grace seemingly in the blink of an eye? It was hard to believe a change like that could happen so fast.

We tend to think of people the way that crowd must have thought of Zacchaeus—as unchangeable. We assume that their bad habits are baked in, that their flaws are unfixable, that their past determines their future. People don’t change, we say.

But when Jesus enters the equation, we see how false a narrative that really is. “Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus said of Zacchaeus. Today. Not in a few months when he has time to prove himself, not in a few years when he’s worked his way into the community’s good graces, not in the next life. Today.

Jesus is able to do what we think impossible, to effect eternal change in the blink of an eye. Jesus can heal and redeem people we think are lost causes, Jesus can save people we think are beyond help. There are people we simply cannot and will not believe in, people we are sure are past the point of grace—but if you can’t believe in them, then perhaps you can believe in Him. Jesus can take the repentant faith of the worst man imaginable and make him someone new.

So when confronted with someone you are sure can’t change, pray for faith—not only theirs, but yours. Jesus is in the business of new creation—and you won’t believe how fast he can work.