The Little Man

We were traveling in a small Midwestern town, when a crowd came out to meet us at the main street. Jesus had preaching through the area for a few weeks, and after some healings and other miracles he had started to catch quite a bit of attention,so it wasn't unusual to have people coming out to meet us at new locations. While we were coming in, Jesus suddenly looked up, pointed in the air and shouted, "You!" The rest of us looked to where Jesus was pointing, and there we saw a short, dirty looking and hairy bald man, who had apparently climbed up a telephone pole to see over the crowd. Still pointing, Jesus said "Zaccheus, come down here and walk with me, because tonight I want to have dinner at your house." The townspeople were looking confused, a few of them even looked disgusted at Jesus. Zaccheus came down and began to walk and talk with us, and we came to learn that he was the owner and operator of a strip club just outside of town. He admitted that he had been abusive to the women working for him, and that he often cheated them out if the money he owed them. He also regularly gave the drugs to keep them addicted and make it even more difficult for them to leave and find other lines of work. While the rest of us were shocked, it was clear by the way he responded that Jesus was not only surprised, be he'd already known about all of these things.

We went with Zaccheus to his club, where he also lived in a room above, and he had tables pulled together and he began to serve out food. He called all the women who worked for him, as well as many of his regular customers, and invited them all to come and join us for dinner. He served the food himself, and asked everyone to be seated, leaving him to serve everyone there, including these women who he'd been a monster to for years. He then announced to Jesus, where everyone could hear, "Today, this club is closed forever. I hereby give everything that I have back to those whom I took it from. The women who have worked for me, I hereby pay you not only what I've taken from you, but also three times over that amount. Today I swear that I will never raise my hand against someone, and I will never cheat or take anything that is isn't clearly mine." But the religious leaders were incensed that Jesus was there having dinner with strippers, drug dealers, alcoholics, prostitutes, and all of the other "scum" that were in that place.

Years later, I heard about Zaccheus. In the time after, he followed through on all of his promises. He'd closed his club and turned it into a soup kitchen for the hungry in the area. Later, he began to travel and raise money for halfway houses for battered women. He devoted the rest of his life to helping those he'd hurt. Unfortunately, that wasn't long. A few years after Jesus' Resurrection, Zaccheus came afoul of a man who he'd seen beating a woman outside a truck stop. Zaccheus stopped the man, but later found out he was a city councilman. A week later, Zaccheus was lynched by klansmen who showed up at his house.