April 2, 2024

Some years ago, after I had played basketball at the Y, I had showered and was getting dressed in the locker room. A couple of lockers down was one of the guys that played regularly with our group. He was an incredibly successful attorney. His success and affluence were quite evident. He wore expensive suits and shoes. He wore a several thousand-dollar Rolex watch. His rings and gold chains screamed, “Money, money, money.” So did the brand-new Mercedes Benz he drove. But as he got dressed that day, he just looked at me and sighed. “Life is hell,” he said sadly. He spent the next few minutes detailing his sad life. For all of his success and all of his wealth, happiness still eluded him. It’s one of the many myths of the rich.
I thought about him as I read our passage today and its description of Zacchaeus. Here’s a guy who had everything. At least, he had everything that you could buy with money. But he didn’t have the things that were the most important in life. He was like a man on a raft in the ocean dying of thirst. For all that he had, he really had nothing at all. Like my friend at the Y, Zacchaeus knew there was something deeply missing in his life. Something he couldn’t buy at the market. Something he couldn’t wear or ride or show off to his tax-collecting buddies. For all of his wealth, he still had an ache he couldn’t soothe and a hunger he couldn’t satisfy. It’s one of the great paradoxes of the rich. You can have it all and still feel as if you have nothing.
Maybe you’ve believed that myth yourself. Maybe you’ve believed that if you just had more money, a bigger house, or a nicer car, you’d finally feel “complete.” Or maybe you’ve believed if you had a bigger office or a higher position, you’d at last know what it means to be “significant.” Or maybe you’ve believed that if you just had enough followers on social media, or had enough views on your post, or enough “friends” on Facebook, you’d finally have “arrived.” “Rich” means a lot of things to a lot of different people in this world. But none of that kind of wealth will ever satisfy.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Money is nice to have. It’s great to be able to buy what you need and to give to causes that you believe in. It’s a wonderful thing to have a job that you love and one that you feel is important. It’s a beautiful thing to have friends and relationships that can add much joy to life. Just don’t buy into the myth that if you have a LOT of any one of these, it’ll be enough. It won’t. Because if you don’t have Jesus, you’ll still be as poor as the man who doesn’t have two pennies to his name. But the good news is that if you do have Jesus, then any amount of the above will be enough because you will have discovered the secret that eludes so many of the wealthy. You’re already rich. That’s God’s Word for you today.