Luke 19.1-10 4 November 2007
“CELEBRATING THE LOST”
Anybody who ever spent a day in Sunday School knows all about Zacchaeus. We relate to him as kids because Zacchaeus was a little guy who couldn’t see over the crowd. If we remember being a child at all, we recall what that felt like.
Considering Zacchaeus now as grownups, we have all known someone like him. Picture the man or woman not very charming or ingratiating, not very interesting or insightful, not very attractive or winning, not very noble or even honest. But this man had a high opinion of himself. This woman had a lofty, even exalted self-image. Where did that come from? you wondered. My first roommate in college was Zacchaeus. No, that wasn’t his name, he was Bob. But this little guy loved to sit and gaze at himself in the mirror, despite even worse acne than mine.
So Zacchaeus was this sawed off little guy who was full of himself. Why was he so full of himself? Likely because he had buckets of cash and grandiosity comes naturally to the nouveau riche. But how had this nebbish of a guy become so wealthy? He had collaborated opportunistically with the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. He was a tax collector. And his system of tax collection went something like, “One for Rome, two for me; four for Rome, ten for me…” Jews in Jesus time felt about tax collectors like our construction workers would feel about the guy from OSHA who stops by the work site. Or like Red Sox fans feel about Alex Rodriguez stealing the thunder of a precious championship by announcing his free agency during that last game when the Sox faithful are poised to rejoice. As a crook and collaborator with Israel’s enemies, Zacchaeus was an outcast.
We remember he shinnied up a tree in Jericho to see Jesus, a sycamore tree. Zacchaeus had to climb a tree to glimpse Jesus because the townspeople were not about to let this weasel up front with them as a fabulous rabbi-prophet-healer came to town. Making his way through the winter capital of Jericho, Jesus spied overdressed, grinning Zacchaeus up in the tree. “Get down now,” he instructed. “Tonight you and I are having dinner at your place. And I will be spending the night.” Zacchaeus was hardly the man that the Jericho Chamber of Commerce had selected to present the key to their fair city to Jesus. So the people on the street were appalled. But Zacchaeus was so pleased he did a fist pump in the air.
I am telling you, this story is the Gospel in sycamore. I can only imagine that the tacky splendor of Zacchaeus’ Jericho home must have rivaled our modern day cocaine mansions of Miami or Bogota. I don’t know how Mrs. Zacchaeus reacted to a surprise dinner guest. I can’t imagine that happened very often. Not many visitors in that home. She probably sent out for a rotisserie chicken or something.
No sooner did they break out the styrofoam cups of coleslaw than Zacchaeus rose from the table, lifted his wine goblet, and offered a lengthy toast--to himself. “Thank you for coming here, Jesus.” he started in. “Finally, someone appreciates me for who I really am. Finally, someone is smart enough to see my important contributions. And to show everyone how civic-minded I really am, I will donate new plasma televisions for the children’s wing under construction at the hospital.”
Jesus rolled his eyes. “Zacchaeus, I appreciate your hospitality and respect your gestures toward the suffering. But let’s not kid each other. I am not here to justify you to your neighbors. Maybe justify you to your God, yes. But you need to make right by them. Instead I bring you a message. The message is this: God sent me to catch up everyone in this new cause that I represent, to leave no one behind. I figure the only way to include everyone is to start with the lost. That’s you. So relax a little, live into the moment, notice what God’s up to and let go of yourself.”
Zacchaeus doesn’t fully get it. But he’s overjoyed anyway. And maybe his joy is all that matters in the final analysis anyway. Jesus had made a good call, despite ruffling the feathers of the Jericho Chamber of Commerce and Ladies Auxiliary.
This is the kind of God we worship: one with a soft spot in his heart for the lost.
That’s the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the Gospel in sycamore. So what does it mean to us on All Saints Sunday, 2007? It makes vivid to us God’s promises in a way that is very special. For me All Saints at the beginning of November is the autumn equivalent of Easter. Easter is the springtime celebration of resurrection unto eternal life revealed from the top down. After all, it’s the story of God coming down from heaven in the baby who became a man whose goodness and love was stronger than the worst hatred and evil that we could hurl at him on a cross.
All Saints is the autumn celebration of resurrection unto eternal life revealed from the bottom up. After all, it the story of how God has done incredibly miraculous work through people as fallible as you and me advancing that same cause Jesus brought to Jericho 2,000 years ago. We have a word for their willingness to allow God to make a difference through their lives. It’s holiness. By holiness we don’t mean that they were necessarily always morally superior to the rest of the world.
Goodness gracious, Paul the Apostle himself was a hit man for the Pharisee goon squad before God struck him down and turned him around on that road to Damascus. But God was able to use his life in powerfully transformative ways.
That difference he brought was something holy that no one will ever be able to take away. That is a saint, like Mother Theresa shining as light in the dark of the lepers dying in the gutters. But evidently, we’ve learned, having trouble shaking loose of the darkness herself. It seems we have a chance to be saints ourselves.
After 28 years serving as a pastor, I can hardly sing that opening hymn without choking up. I choke up because I see the faces of the saints I have buried. Many of them were much better Christians than I will ever be. Jerry Morrow, moderator of the church I served in Columbus, Ohio with a heart of joy for the Gospel of Christ, was struck by a brain tumor at my age. Some of them lived out of a place of deep struggle. Lydia Reston was a mentally ill woman who would slip into the back pew and couldn’t make eye contact with others. Every pastor in the county knew she would eventually take her life, and she did. I did her service and proclaimed that she wasn’t beyond the circle of God’s saving care in Christ. For even if hope couldn’t take hold in her heart she came to us, like Zacchaeus, seeking a way beyond her own answers, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, desiring God. As pastors, Kathy and I get to stand with them on this holy ground.
Today I see the faces of the departed here from the past year. Kathy and I shall read those names at this table. While sad to miss them, I weep because of how true God is to them, how God does not abandon God’s own, how God honors them in their hour of need, offering them a crown of gold until we are all reunited.
Isn’t that the greatest possible promise that could ever be made or ever be kept?
So here is what it has to do with our Gospel lesson. If God is sending Christ to seek out the Zacchaeus of this world to initiate this great campaign of salvation; if God is sending Christ first to the drug dealers and car thieves and prostitutes so that no one gets missed, then how much more must God have in store for the Don Days or the Sheldon Bradleys, the Isabelle Fullers and the Dick Howlands. Honest people of integrity. Loving people of sacrifice who trusted God despite the threat of any encircling darkness. I’m so humbled by their faith and example.
Did you hear the promises embodied in our introit striking the keynote for today? They come from the Wisdom of Solomon and I use them at memorial services. The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall ever touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die. But they are at peace. Because grace and mercy are on God’s holy ones and he watches over his elect.
Such promises seem too good to be true, almost like a mirage to one crossing the desert. Every year All Saints helps me see that nothing is more true than this. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen. Amen.
