Seaton Road at Felixstowe Methodist Church have held Godly Play sessions Sunday afternoons throughout the winter months. The visual presentations help us to think and “wonder”.
At our last session the story of Zacchaeus was played out. The long road (vinyl wallpaper) was laid out between Jericho and Jerusalem (shoe box) with the crowds gathering as word got out that Jesus was coming their way (dolly pegs in margarine tubs).
Zacchaeus, the hated chief tax collector solved his vision problem by climbing a tree to view Jesus.
We pondered what it was like to be short, and some in the group confessed to feeling inferior, bullied at school and having to deal with this stature problem. We wondered if Zacchaeus had also felt inferior and being a tax collector elevated him and gave a sense of importance and wealth.
Zacchaeus was very keen to see Jesus; he didn’t give up despite not getting through the crowds who wouldn’t let him in. Was he looking for a spiritual dimension to his life? We actually felt sorry for him and felt Zacchaeus needed to be loved.
Something happened in the conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus when they were alone together. Annoyingly the Bible doesn’t tell us what is said, so we have to “wonder”. Perhaps Jesus used his great counselling skills to pull out the inadequacies Zacchaeus had and got him to find his own answers.
Why wouldn’t they let you in?
Why do they hate you so much?
Do you mind being hated?
I wonder what you could do to make things better?
When the pair reappear to the crowd Zacchaeus is a transformed man. He gives back what was not rightfully his. (Apparently paying back “four times” owed is an Old Testament decree going back to David’s time.)
We sympathized with the crowd’s feelings of – It’s not fair. Why him of all people? But then concluded that by this act ALL the crowd benefited. A much better outcome than Jesus visiting one of the goodly crowd.
In conclusion Jesus came to be with those whom others didn’t like – the unworthy (the lost). It’s a challenge to us not to shun the different, the difficult, the dirty or the bad (as the people behaved to Zacchaeus) but to walk beside them and to change them for the better.
(P.S. Have you noticed a similar story of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol? Perhaps Charles Dickens was also inspired by the story of Zacchaeus?)