Luke 19:1-10 Pentecost 22
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Tucson, AZ
November 9, 2025
The Splash and Ripple of Grace If you didn’t grow up somewhere where there’s an ocean or lots of lakes and rivers and streams, maybe you’ve tossed a rock or two into the few lakes around here—Silverbell Lake, Sahuarita Lake, Arivaca, Parker Canyon, Rose Canyon Lake up on Mount Lemmon. Or maybe it took a vacation to get you from the desert to water to do that! But you know what happens when you toss a stone in the water. There’s a plunk, a splash, and ripples that flow out from it. It’s simple Cause and Effect. A similar thing happens when God drops his grace, his love, into the heart of a person. There is a Splash and a Ripple! Today, we get to hear about someone who experienced this. Short guy, important guy, unpopular guy—but we’ll get to him in a minute. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, along with a lot of other people from up north, to celebrate the festival where everyone made a special lamb dinner and remembered how God had led his people out of slavery in Egypt under Moses. Jericho was a stop on the way to that Passover celebration, just about 14 miles from Jerusalem. Jesus was going there for the last time—to offer himself as the sacrificial Lamb whose life would be the price paid for the world’s sin. Now, when I say Jericho was “a stop on the way to Jerusalem,” don’t think of it like a roadside stand or like a QT, where you could get some food for you and fuel for the donkey and then be on your way. Not at all. Jericho was the Old Testament gateway to the Promised Land—maybe you remember. The City of Palms, they called it. In a desert land, it sat in the Jordan River valley and was lush with vegetation and fruit trees, rare plants and spices. The plants that produced an oil that was one of the costliest substances in the ancient world was grown there. And it wasn’t just the soil that was rich. Picture luxury villas and a palace built by Herod the Great—his winter home. Its location on a trade route brought great wealth to the city. Oh they had their homeless and beggars (and you can read about one Jesus met on this trip), but the rich and powerful lived there, and lots of people passed through all the time. Can you imagine being the top of the IRS food chain in a city like that? Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector there. But it wasn’t just that he collected taxes and made sure the taxes were collected by the other agents, there was cheating going on. He and the other tax collectors were collecting for the Romans who governed the land of Israel— and they didn’t care if the collectors collected more than they needed to. They could pocket the extra. So, they did. Can you even imagine the money Zacchaeus made as the chief tax collector in a city like that…and how many people must have absolutely hated him and the rest who worked for him?