The crowd was shocked when Jesus approached Zacchaeus and invited Himself over: “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. As a senior tax official in the important business hub of Jericho, Zacchaeus would have been well known for his long involvement in the corrupt system. Tax collectors extorted their fellow Jews on behalf of the Roman government and used questionable methods to accrue vast personal wealth. While the Gospel of Luke mentions the conversion of tax collectors (3:12 7:29 15:1 18:10), we know that people with this job during Jesus’ time were widely shunned. The simplicity of this song-popular in many church nurseries and Sunday school classrooms-belies the profound implications of Zacchaeus’ story for our understanding of wealth, economic justice, and Jesus’ posture toward those most despised by society. These songs for children are meant for adults too, for us to ask in earnest the question: Are we willing to run and dash and scramble up trees to get a better look at Jesus?ĭon't miss a blog post! Subscribe via email or RSS, using the grey box on the upper right.The following lyrics will quickly bring a familiar tune to mind for some of us: 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 / And as the Savior came that way / He looked up in the tree / And he said, Zacchaeus, you come down from there / For I’m going to your house today. Zacchaeus and the many Saints we honor this day compel us to examine our lives, to see if our trajectory is leading us to more holy lives or farther away. You come down, For I'm going to your house today! If that still doesn’t ring a bell, think of the song from your childhood: You know, the tax collector who wanted to see Jesus but couldn’t catch a glimpse because he was short and the crowd was large. On Sunday, we heard the gospel reading from Luke about Zacchaeus. This song was not in the main part of the songbook but rather in a special section called “Hymns for Children.” In fact, the 1940 Hymnal recognized the connection of these lyrics to children.
In games of tag and a night of candy-collecting. They express unadulterated joy: In the box a present is wrapped in. They find opportunities to be kind when we’re too busy adult-ing.
That’s one of the beauties of the song it invites us to realize that the Saints of the church-those capital S saints who we honor today for their witness and devotion to our risen Christ-weren’t superheroes or rock stars but mostly ordinary people who rose above themselves to express extraordinary faith.Ĭhildren get this in a way that we adults often forget. Or you see yourself in the second or third verses. You may find yourself in this first verse (if you happen to be a doctor or a shepherdess, or, like me, married to a man whose last name is queen). (If you’re primed to sing the rest, go ahead and turn to page 293 in the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church).
And one was a doctor and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green: they were all of them saints of God-and I mean, God helping, to be one too.”
“I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who toiled and fought and lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew.
ZACCHAEUS WAS A WEE LITTLE MAN LYRICS FULL
Today we claim the song as ours, belting it out full throttle, especially today as we celebrate All Saints Day.