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 "TRYING TO SEE JESUS" Psalm 119:137-144; Luke 19:1-10
Okay, let's just go ahead and get it out of everybody's system. You can use the hand motions if you want to. You know what I'm talking about. Ready? Here we go:
"Zacchaeus was a wee little man
It seems to me that the story of Zacchaeus is one of the most universally known and universally loved stories in the Bible. Maybe that's because we think of it as a story where the little guy wins. (Well, he does, but not for the reason we immediately think) Maybe we love it because the tax collector ends up coughing up most of his ill-gotten gains. Maybe we love it because we learned "that song" in Sunday School when we were 3 years old. But for whatever reason or combination of reasons, this seems to be one of those stories that we all know, or think we know.
And therein lies the problem. It's kind of like watching our favorite movie for the fortieth time. We thrill to think of the next scene, which is already playing in our heads. We laugh before we hear the punch line because we know what they're going to say. But we aren't prepared to find anything new in it. Now, with cable TV and DVD players, we can watch our favorite movies as often as we want. Which is great, because we love them so much - but they don't always yield a lot of new insight for us.
You know the basic facts of this story: Jesus comes to town. Rotten tax collector takes notice. But rotten tax collector is little, nigh unto wee, and can't see him. Rotten little tax collector climbs a tree. Jesus calls him by name, and tells him to come down. Crowd grumbles. Little rotten tax collector gives back all the money. He and Jesus go to his house for dinner. It's a decent story line - action, movement, a little conflict. But to hear the story only at that level keeps it at the same level we learned it in kindergarten. Assuming we already know the story is to limit what we can hear from it. ---------------------------------------------------- One of the things I noticed when I read it again this week was the excuses that Zacchaeus seemed to be making. He was right. No mistaking the fact that he was short. And there were indeed a lot of people around that day because, like the time when Jesus was born, it was census season, and everyone had come into to be counted and to pay their taxes. Assuming that taxes were as popular then as they are now, it's safe to assume that no one was exactly standing around to spend time with one of those guys who in his day was known for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, especially himself! So here's Zacchaeus - a vertically challenged IRS agent who wasn't exactly the flavor of the day. We don't know his motivations, but we do know that he wants to see Jesus - enough to put those excuses behind him.
Another thing I noticed was the geography. Luke tells us that Jesus was coming through on his way to That's kind of like saying that you want to go from here to by way of You'd have to have a pretty good reason to go to if you were planning a trip like that. And apparently, Jesus had a pretty good reason for going through on his way to
Think about it! Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus so badly that he got over all the reasons he had to not see him. He put his ingenuity to work and made sure he had a really good vantage point. Even so, he had no idea that, in all those people, with all that parade going on, Jesus was making a beeline to see him. Luke even uses a little inside joke in here to make the point. He uses the same word for Zacchaeus wanting to "see" Jesus as he does when Jesus says that he came to "see" and save the lost. Friends, the good news of the gospel is that the seeker became the sought. Zacchaeus thought that he wanted to see Jesus; apparently, Jesus wanted even more to see him. --------------------------------------------- This church has said for some time now, since before I arrived, that "reaching seekers" is a priority. Look at it in your bulletins for a moment. It's the very first line of our Mission Statement: "Seek others to believe in the redeeming love of Jesus Christ." We get that from Jesus. Hopefully he is teaching us how to do just that, every day of our lives.
The danger, then, comes for us when we start acting less like Jesus and more like the crowd in this story -- when we find ourselves doing less seeking and more grumbling. That's when we begin to lose our ability to see, and to seek. It was the crowd who all began to complain that Jesus had gone to the house of a sinner, Luke tells us - and who knows, maybe even the disciples were part of that crowd. And we just thought Zacchaeus was the only one who couldn't see!
If we're going to stay close to Jesus, if we're going to break bread and drink wine with him, then we had better be willing to stay close to sinners, whether inside this church or outside of it. Jesus said straight out that he came to seek and to save the lost, so if we want to be close to him, we have to be willing to share him with those who need him most.
You and I may think that we have done our duty for the kingdom if we've invited a few of our good friends to church, maybe even all of our good friends, people that we know very well, some of whom ended up joining. That's a good thing. But if you look around this room, you can see that most of our friends and fellow worshipers look like most of us. If we've already invited all our friends to church, then it's time to make some new friends. It may require getting off our well-beaten, familiar paths. We might need to go through on our way to We might even need to make friends with vertically challenged IRS agents that we'd never think of inviting to lunch. But friends, it's not because we want more members for the church. It's not for better attendance or more money. It's because those are the kinds of people that Jesus is making a beeline to meet. And if we want to be true to our calling as followers of Jesus, then we need to be making a beeline to meet them as well. --------------------------------------- But this story is not just about strangers, and it's not just about other people. It's also about you. You are a seeker too. I don't see any sycamore trees in the room, but you've made the effort to get here on a Sunday morning instead of sleeping in. And so chances are that you've come here today hoping to see Jesus, and that's good. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, which on any given day includes you, and me, and every one of us here. In spite of our most misguided efforts and through our most halfhearted attempts at faithfulness, Jesus is calling you and me by name too, going way off the beaten path, going out of his way to find us, and asking you not to come over to his house, but asking whether he can come over and enter yours. This story tells us that if you can manage to take one little baby step towards Jesus, Jesus will take a giant step towards you, no matter what the world thinks about you, no matter what the world thinks. period.
This story is not for sissies, is it? It's not a cute little fairy tale to share only with anyone under six. There are lives at stake - yours, mine, and everyone outside these walls. If we want to be true to our call as seekers, if we want to avoid being part of the crowd, if we want to see Jesus even half as well as Jesus has already seen us, then we'd better get with it.
Amen. |
