Are You Out Of Your Tree?

Zeke was clever.  No flies on him!  Even if there had been rocket scientists around in 61 BCE when the Romans world conquest included Jerusalem, it would not have taken one – a rocket scientist that is, to see the advantages in joining the conquerors.  The Roman Empire seems to have been able to spread expand so broadly not only through military might, but through their policy of leaving locals in charge.  Local religious customs were allowed to continue, and local government.  The Romans posted soldiers and collected taxes to cover the cost of occupation and send some money back to Mama and the bambini in Roma.  This is where Zeke comes in.

Zeke was clever.  He was always looking for an angle.  He felt like he needed an angle to make up for the fact that he was the shortest of the kids he ran with.  His mother told him he ought to be a lawyer.  And so

he heard about the Roman recruiters looking for a few good men to collect taxes.  It was a sweet deal.  One for me, one for you.  Clever people like Zeke could buy a piece of the action, a piece of Jerusalem, in which they had the right to collect taxes from their fellow Jews.  Tax collectors like Zeke had the muscled of the Roman soldiers to back them up if needed.  Half of what they collected was theirs to keep, to pay off the price of their territory.  The clever tax collector could make a comfortable life for himself.  And Zeke was clever.

It wasn’t long before Zeke had set himself up quite well; big house, servants, top-of-the line donkey.  When he started to feel the resentment of his neighbors when he came to collect the roman tax from them, or when he heard his name whispered behind the backs of hands of the vendors as he passed their stalls, he’d head to the cool comfort behind the thick walls of his house.

It got old.  In business parlance of the 80’s, “a met need is not a motivator”; the stuff that seemed to be a pot of gold at the end of the Roman rainbow when he took the job was not satisfying Zeke like it used to.  His work was just a matter of going through the motions, getting the job done.  The people he could hang out with, the other clever ones were, frankly, boring.  Life had become a bit like the Bill Murray movie “Ground Hog Day” with the same routine unrolling every day, and it was driving him slowly nuts. 

The one for me, one for you deal the Romans gave him had him by the throat, but his ears still worked.  On the other side of the thick, cool wall of his house, he heard the commotion on the street.  That Miracle Worker was coming, that Messiah guy.  For a moment he forgot that he was Zeke the Tax Collector.  He felt like a kid.  His kids’ feet pulled him out onto the street and he jumped to try to see over the taller people, to get a look at this Jesus guy.   He got tired of hopping, and so he ran ahead and climbed up a tree next to the road.  He could hear the whispers and jeers of the vendors, of his neighbors, of the Jews from whom he’d squeezed taxes for too long to remember.  He was making a spectacle of himself.  Who did he think he was, this Roman rat, even thinking about this just Jesus?  “Look at Zeke,” they jeered, “he’s out of his tree!”

Tomorrow we’ll look at what happened when Jesus says, to the shock of the cheering studio audience, “Zeke!  Come on Dowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn!”