When Success Isn't Enough

Tom Brady was twenty-seven years old with three Super Bowl rings, married to the number one supermodel in the world, and on camera he asked why he had all of it and still thought there was something greater out there. It has to be more than this, he said. I have done it. I am twenty-seven. What else is there?

Then: I wish I knew.

That is Zacchaeus in this passage, at the top of the top. Jericho was a city of enormous affluence and influence. He was not simply wealthy, he was chief tax collector — he had climbed as high as the ladder went.

And then a grown man runs. In that culture, dignified men did not run, and they certainly did not climb trees. He does both, in public, in front of the people who hate him, because he is that desperate.

Maybe your tree is not a sycamore. Maybe it is success, and you have been climbing your whole life, and it has cost you — maybe a marriage, maybe most of your kids' childhood. Maybe it is the relationship tree, and you have been looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right Now instead of Mr. Right down the road. Maybe it is reputation, and this is a city that likes to show it: more people leasing cars that cost more than their mortgages, two and a half hours a day scrolling.

Climb any of them and it leaves your mouth dry.

So answer it honestly this morning. Which tree have you been climbing? And roughly how high up are you?

Here is the irony of the whole story, and it is easy to read straight past. Zacchaeus thinks he is the one searching. He runs, he climbs, he positions himself. And Jesus walks up to the tree already knowing exactly where he is, and already knowing his name.

Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.

In our culture that lands as presumptuous. Let me check my calendar. In the Middle East it is an honor — you tell people to come over any time and you mean it, and when someone says they are coming, you get the food ready.

Remember who is in that tree. A man with no friends. The people below him had all been overcharged by him, by design, and they hated him for it. He is lonely at the top of everything he built.

And Jesus offers the outsider a place inside, before he says one word about repentance. Read the order again: the invitation comes first. Nothing in verse 5 is conditional. Zacchaeus has not promised anything yet.

That order matters, because most of us have it backwards. We think we clean up and then we get called. The text has him being called while he is still up a tree with a reputation.

He knows your name too — not your role, not your title, not the version of you that answers email. Your name.

When did you last let him call you down instead of climbing higher to be seen?

They all grumbled. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.

And here is the uncomfortable part: the crowd was not wrong about the facts. Zacchaeus really had overcharged them. He really had bought the franchise knowing his people would hate him and his family would be embarrassed by him, and he did it anyway because he saw opportunity. The crowd had the facts right and the heart wrong, which is a combination available to religious people in every century.

James serves as the chaplain for the Miami Marlins, so he is around people who look like insiders from the outside. After a game one night, in the locker room, a player said: Chap, there's got to be something more. Best season of my life. More fans than ever. All these people know my name and follow me. But I don't think they know me. If I didn't wear this jersey, I don't think they'd care.

Everything on the outside. Nothing on the inside.

They opened a Bible together and he came to Christ, and the change was not subtle. He stopped walking onto the field anxious about whether he would earn his worth or keep his spot, and started playing as an act of worship, because every opportunity was a gift.

The research says the same thing the locker room did. More likes and more followers track with higher depression and anxiety. Our Surgeon General calls it an epidemic of loneliness in the most connected era in human history.

Who do you know who looks like an insider and is starving? What would it cost you to ask them a real question this week?

Watch what Zacchaeus does the moment his feet hit the ground. Half of everything to the poor. And anyone he defrauded — which is essentially everyone standing there watching — paid back fourfold.

Nobody asked him for it. There is no demand anywhere in the passage. And the law of the day required twenty percent restitution, so he could have satisfied every legal obligation he had and kept the rest with a clear conscience.

He did not ask what the standard was.

That is what tells you something actually happened to him. He had just been handed extravagant grace, and extravagant grace was the only currency he had left to spend. You cannot receive that and then go looking for the minimum.

There is an old hymn called Just As I Am. A lot of people come to Christ just as they are — and then leave just as they were. That is not how this works. When Christ comes in, he does not only change your heart. He changes your life, from the inside out, and usually the first visible place it shows up is your money and the people you have wronged.

So make it concrete, because Zacchaeus did. Is there anyone you owe? Not owe in the sense of a legal debt — owe in the sense that you know, and they know, and it has been sitting there for a while.

What is the fourfold version of setting that right? And what is stopping you from making the call today rather than adding it to a list?

The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

One sentence, and it settles who has been doing the searching this whole time. Zacchaeus ran and climbed and craned his neck, and none of that is why the story ends the way it does. Jesus came looking. The tree was never the point.

And notice the direction it moves. He takes outsiders and brings them in. Then he takes insiders and sends them back out to the outsiders. That is what a faith family on mission means, and it is why a church that only gathers has stopped halfway through the sentence.

He does not save you so you can hold eternal fire insurance. He saves you and hands you something to live for — his kingdom, not yours.

So there is something more, and it is not a thing. Not a title. Not a follower count. Not a number in an account. It is a person, and he knows your name the way he knew Zacchaeus'.

Here is the week's question, and it has two halves. The first: which tree have you been climbing, and what is it going to take to get you down from it? The second is harder. Who is up a tree near you right now — somebody the crowd has written off, somebody with a reputation, somebody nobody expects to be invited?

Jesus stopped, looked up, and used a name. You can do that much this week.