gospel · 30 · Jericho
He was a chief tax collector and rich — Luke says both, and the second is an accusation in this gospel — and he was short, so he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore to see over the crowd. What he got was his own name from a stranger and an invitation issued in the wrong direction: not may I, but I must stay at your house today. The crowd grumbled that he had gone in to be the guest of a sinner. Zacchaeus answered by halving his estate on the spot and offering fourfold restitution, which is the penalty the Law sets for stolen livestock and far beyond what any court would have asked of him. It is the last of the reversals Luke has been stacking up since the Magnificat, and it happens at Jericho, on the road up, days before the city he is climbing towards kills him.
A chief tax collector restores fourfold, and the last of Luke's reversals before the passion.