First Place ... In Everything!

Proverbs 8:22-31, Colossians 1:11-20

Christ the King Sunday 2013

            I’m already getting excited to follow the 2014 Winter Olympics.   The games will begin seventy five days from today in the Black Sea coastal city of Sochi, Russia.   Do you have a favorite event?  Freestyle skiing?  Luge?  Figureskating?   Oh, I know!  Given that Presbyterianism has some Scottish roots and this game originated in the frozen ponds, lochs and marshes of Scotland back in the 16^th century … your favorite is most likely Curling!   

             I usually most enjoy the Short Track Speed Skating.    A good reason for this is because this is the event of the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete of all time,[i] Apolo Ohno.   While I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the Olympics in months to come, today I’m wondering  -- do you know what Ohno is up to these days? [ii]    Well, he’s currently hosting the cable television game show “Minute to Win It.”     Yes, this great global victor is now cheering and coaching contestants to compete in a variety of silly, fun party games that are a speedy one-minute in length – games like stacking cups in a certain order or way, strategically shaking your body to get the jingle bells inside a tissue box attached to your back to all fall out, and using only your face muscles to guide and Oreo down from your forehead and into your mouth.

            During Camp Johnsonburg youth and family retreats, it’s always a crowd favorite when we play our unglitzy version of “Minute to Win It.”     Campers play the games I just mentioned, among others. I haven’t ever played the host and wouldn’t dare try to step into Ohno’s shoes!   

            Our contestants, of course, don’t play for hundreds of thousands of dollars.    Nor do they play to gain or increase their fame.    As with all of our other Presbyterian camp activities, our focus is having building up the Body of Christ.    Winning is about just spending time together in fun fellowship and encouraging one another to faithfully accept challenges.

             There sure is a lot of social pressure to be a winner in this world, to be the best, to take first place in all kinds of real-life contests.    As Christians, how have you faithfully responded to this?    From the high level of becoming an elite athlete, on down to becoming a master at moving a cookie across your face, and through all the ideas of winning in-between, here’s the Gospel -- first place in everything belongs to Jesus Christ alone.     And what’s really wonderful about this biblical truth is that we have every minute now and all throughout eternity to share in our Lord’s winning power.    The crown of victory is His, but it’s for us!    It’s for our everyday values, attitudes, and priorities to the glory of God.

            For deeper insight into this Good News, we turn today to our New Testament lesson, which was originally a letter written to a first century church located near what is now the modern town of Honaz, Turkey.   In case you’re wondering, I didn’t choose to preach from this passage right before Thanksgiving because of this turkey connection!   I chose it because Colossians reminds us of the following three Gospel truths worth briefly speaking about – Christ has been in first place since the beginning of Creation, Christ is first to rescue us from the darkness of sin, and Christ is first in all we do as the Church.

I.                     

            So first and foremost let’s understand that Jesus has always been first in everything.  I mean, from the very beginning of everything, of all Creation.    I know this is more than a bit of a mindbender because when we read the story of creation in Genesis, there isn’t any mention of the name Jesus.  But keep in mind the Bible as a whole teaches that we have only one God.  This one God is revealed to us in three ways, as the Holy Trinity.    I think most of us are taught to think in a progressive straight line, so when reading the Bible we seem to first meet God as the Creator, then as the Savior, Jesus, and then as the Holy Spirit.    But truly, we are meeting all three at once in every page of the Greatest Story Ever Told.    

            And so Colossians reminds us that Jesus, the Son of God, is the “firstborn” of heaven and earth, and that “all things have been created through him and for him.”   Especially each one of us!  We were created through Jesus Christ and … here’s a really big point … for Jesus Christ.    We have the faithful obligation of placing Him first in the center of our lives.  

II.

            When we center ourselves in the Lord as the first priority of every day, we stay focused and live according to our belief that He has rescued from all the darkness of sin in this world, and fully forgiven us for our participation in it.     We keep aware that long ago worldly powers entrenched in this darkness worked together to push Jesus of Nazareth into very last place behind them.  They did so by executing Him on a Roman cross.    Well they sure didn’t get the victory on that score!    His resurrection fully demonstrated that His powerful holy love, forgiveness, justice and peace prevails in first place.    

            This was not a one-time win.   Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s glorious power continues to rescue and forgive all God’s children from the sufferings of sin.   By grace and through faith, it strengthens us and empowers us to endure everything we go through in this life with patience and joyful thanksgiving.    That powerful Christ light of Easter morning eternally keeps shining upon and through us.    Generation to generation of believers inherit it and pass it on as great, global torch of hope.  This is the first and sole source of all our truly holy transformations and new beginnings.  

            In 2012, Cy Young Award winning baseball pitcher Barry Zito played a pivotal role in helping the San Francisco Giants win the World Series.    But he has told the world about how he’d been mentally and physically very broken down in the two years before this great victory.    It had really showed in his performance.    As he endured lots of pain and struggle, he also took a deep personal inventory.   He considered his reputation as sort of a Zen surfer dude.   He reviewed how he’d grown up “testing and reading and trying all different religious things and kinds of philosophical approaches.”[iii]    He came to face to face with his narcissism, his living for attention.  He realized that for far too long he had been relying on his own strength.    He came to confess how many things he’d been putting before God.  

            In the middle of 2011, he found himself fully accepting and placing Jesus Christ first in his life.    So much more than just his career was strengthened and turned around for the better as a result.   And a key part of all this is how the Christian faith provided something he hadn’t known he’d spiritually needed – structure.

III.

            When we think and talk about structure and Jesus Christ, we find ourselves considering church.  Not just buildings, but what happens through faithfully structured community.  And just as our human bodies have only one head, so too does the human institution of the church.    Colossians 1, verse 17 reminds us that this is Christ.    Christ, who has been ahead of all since the beginning of Creation, who is first to rescue all from the darkness of sin, is always to be turned to first in all things we choose to do as an organized gathering of those who believe and find salvation in Him.    When making decisions on every level of faithful life together, we need to first prayerfully pause and ask whether or not our priority is to shine the crown of Christ.  

             “The Christ whom we follow,” writes a pastor and professor who lives on the other side of the world whose writings I like to read, “is not just a founder of a religion, nor even a religious figure who was raised from the dead to delight and encourage a religious sect … He embodies both what humanity was made to be as the image of God and …the very wisdom which makes sense of the universe and helped set it in motion.”[iv]   This is the wisdom speaking to us in Proverbs 8, the wisdom that rejoices in this world and delights in the human race.    As those who have inherited Christ’s wise and wonderful kingdom of light, we shine His crown as we make it both our personal and collective priority to make the time to pray and to worship and to study and to serve together in His name.  To quote this same professor again, William Loader of Murdoch University in Australia, “In the best sense church is where the reconciling compassion of God is making some headway and is recognized and valued as such.  Our joy is then not the power of influence and control, but that love flows and change happens.  It’s when destructive powers … lose their deity and people see that what matters is love because love lies at the heart of the universe and is God’s wisdom and will.”[v]

IV.

            In a few moments, we will share in the sacrament set before us.   We partake of this holy supper because Christ our King commanded us to do so.    We do so as humble, grateful, rescued and ready servants of His kingdom of light.  We do so to ardently remember what he has done for the whole world since the beginning of everything and first and foremost through the saving grace of the Cross.   We do so to receive the cup and the bread as a physical reminder that we are “made strong with all the strength that comes from His glorious power” and so we may be further “prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.”    Amen!

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/sports/olympics/21ohno.html?_r=0

[iii] http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/barry-zito-talks-god-guns-interview-gq-magazine-191158721--mlb.html

[iv] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/CEpChristKg.htm

[v] ibid.

Blessedly Busy Bodies

Psalm 8, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

            How many times in your life have you been asked what you do or what you did for a living?  How many times have you asked this of others?     This is generally a polite, comfortable way of making brief introductions.  And, considered a little deeper, it’s a way we gently judge one another concerning worthiness and social standing. 

            There was a time when Jenee Woodward of Jackson, Michigan would answer, “I’m a pastor.”   But despite having been well educated, trained and having a go at this in various ministry settings, she ultimately says she, and I quote, “bombed” at this career.[i]    She had come to realize that her spiritual gifts oriented her to more solitary work.  Most especially, she nestled into the niche of engaging in serious academic study of the Bible and early Christianity.   So she shifted and started planning a career as an academic.  

            This planning was paused, however, when she and her husband Bob welcomed a daughter into their lives, followed a couple years later by a son.   The pause in doctoral plans became permanent when, in her words, “her life-reality changed.”   At the age of two, their son Phil was diagnosed with severe autism.    His care brought about the enormous responsibility of 24/7 home intervention, managing many personal frustrations, and dealing with social discrimination – unfortunately even in their home church.   Yet she remained committed to keeping her mind engaged in faithful study and to somehow developing a ministry around her spiritual gifts.  

            This was in the mid to late 90’s, and the computer internet as a tool for aggregating large amounts of information was still a relatively new reality.   Google news, for example, wasn’t created until 2002.   But given her very limited time for personal space and study, Jenee Woodward quickly realized this way the perfect way to read a broad range of old and contemporary Bible studies side by side.    So Jenee Woodward cataloged links to these websites and created www.textweek.com.    Then she showed it to her pastor.   He valued it and spread the word.   The people he told about it told others.  In this organic way, it has today grown into a very popular and influential go-to reference for many preachers and church educators getting ready for each Sunday – myself very much included.    She single handedly continues to manage this site, grabbing time to do this work as she can (which for a decade she received no compensation for), while continuing, among other responsibilities, to help Phil get through each day.  

            Jenee Woodward’s planned work and family life took some unexpected, very challenging turns.   Have you had that happen to you too?   She could have handled these by surrendering to overwhelming frustrations and despair.   She could have allowed her lively faith to slip into an idle state.   She could have turned away from God altogether.   But through it all she recognized her full worth and standing before God.  She kept engaging in her study of Scripture and the early church.   She kept using her strengthening, sustaining spiritual gifts.   By working things out in this way, she kept her spirit from growing too weary.   What does she do for a living?   She labors on learning about and serving her Lord.  I’m grateful that she does.   And I find in her story an inspiring witness to someone who is steadfastly true to Christian vocation.  

            Most folks hear the word “vocation” and think about what they do or did in their paid work life.   But for Christians it’s first and foremost a biblical word.[ii]   It has to do with God calling and equipping every one of us -- in all stages of our lives -- to experience, embrace and gladly share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.    Consider the biblical figure Saul of Tarsus.  He got paid to work making goat hair cloth tents.   He continued this work even as he lived into his holy calling, his vocation as the Apostle Paul.  

            All of us have and have had various occupations.   But we all share in the one common vocation of “living into our baptismal identity” by “answering the call to demonstrate the gospel in all we do and say.”[iii]    As we pray to receive our daily bread, we find ourselves blessedly busy being holy breadwinners!    

            By steadfastly loving and supporting her family while also working to help millions of scholars, educators and pastors through textweek.com, Jenee Woodward is fully living out her Christian vocation.  “It’s my ministry, what I do with my life,” she says, giving “more than I take” and using “my gifts for service to others … this is the heart of my own faith and of my task, as I see it, in the world.”  

            In this morning’s New Testament text, the Apostle Paul very strongly exhorts us to have an unwavering work ethic with regard to our Christian vocation.    Come what may, we aren’t to ever become idle in our faith.   He’s firm on this point because idleness had befallen many of the early Christians of ancient Thessalonica (which is today the second largest city in Greece and continues to be the capital of the historic geographic region known as Macedonia).    Paul knew well that East and West converged in that city, knew that it was central to the culturally unifying success of Alexander the Great.    He believed it would be the same for the kingdom of Christ.[iv]    But Christians there encountered great challenges.   They faced crippling persecution.  Paul himself had once been stripped, beaten with rods, flogged and imprisoned there.   Alongside persecutions were misconceptions about what to do while waiting for the Second Coming – “There were those in Thessalonica who had given up their work and had abandoned the routine claims of every day to wait about in excited idleness for Christ to come.”[v]    

            But this idleness and the idleness born of fear allowed sin to fester in that important faith community.   Instead of living in a blessedly busy way, many became busybodies.   Did you even know the word “busybodies” is right there in the Bible?    In its original Greek, it means what we expect it to mean – to bustle about uselessly, to busy oneself with trifling, needless, useless matters.   It refers to a person officiously inquisitive about other’s affairs.[vi]    Paul knew engaging in this kind of work had caused people to become unwilling to carry out their Christian vocation.  Unwilling is considerably different from unable.  It’s an unhealthy attitude of the heart that goes against God calling and equipping us to always labor on learning about and serving the Lord.   So instead, following Paul’s own stellar example, each one of us is called to be a blessedly busy body for our Beloved Savior.

            “What is it to work with love?” once asked the well-known universally spiritual poet, Kahlil Gibran.   “It is,” he replied beautifully, “to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth; it is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.  It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.  It is to charge all things you fashion with the breath of your own spirit … work is love made visible.”[vii]

            The all-encompassing love of Christ is indeed made visible through our working with the spiritual gifts bestowed upon us all for God’s glory.   I prayerfully give thanks to God for the many blessedly busy bodies we have in our faith community.    Being by your side fills me with gratitude, joy and hope.    You respond to your Christian vocation in a myriad of wonderful ways -- in what you give to and share with and through your families; through the communities where you live, receive education, work, volunteer and play; through this congregation, as you regularly worship and offer yourself and your gifts in support of every facet of our ministry life together; through taking care of yourselves so that weariness and the temptation of idleness does not wear you down. 

            We are all, as Psalm 8 reminds us, crowned with glory and honor and charged to help take care of all God’s good work.   May, then, the majestic works of our Creator and the redeeming work of Christ through the Cross be ever before us as our constant call to common vocation.   Amen.   

           

           

           

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[i] http://www.faithandleadership.com/profiles/the-woman-behind-textweekcom

[ii] http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/kaleo.html

[iii] http://oga.pcusa.org/section/mid-council-ministries/christianvocation/what-christian-vocation/

[iv] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, Thessalonians introduction

[v] ibid, p. 217

[vi] periergazomai

[vii] http://www.katsandogz.com/onwork.html

The Almighty Upholder

Psalm 145; 1 Peter 5:6-11

           Ancient Israel’s King David  was a military war veteran of mighty battles against the Philistines, Moabites, Syrians, Edomites and Ammonites.    All that he had to say about these intense experiences we will never know.   But our Old Testament pages clearly reveal what he did have to say about the good power of Almighty God that he steadfastly believed upheld him and his people through them all.  

            The vitality of his faith was first revealed before he was officially a soldier, when he was just a harp-playing shepherd boy, youngest and smallest of his father Jesse’s eight God-fearing sons.   It happened after her brought food to his older, more strapping brothers stationed with the Jewish troops in the Elah Valley, south of Jerusalem.    Upon arriving, David heard many blasphemous taunts uttered from the mouth of a fierce, enormous enemy Philistine standing right on the other side of the enemy line.   Goliath was his name, and his heckling was part of an ancient ritual that called for the best warriors from both sides of a battle to face one another.   

            Little, mostly overlooked David also noticed his well-trained brothers and their fellow soldiers were cowering in the face of this challenge.    So he faithfully decided to enlist himself for this battle.   King Saul was not easily convinced to let him, but did eventually send him out into the ritual, an unexpected military move Goliath found rather hilarious.   

            This is a famous Bible story, so we know what happened next.   We know how this formidable enemy was swiftly subdued by one smooth stone launched from a mere boy’s slingshot.   But before this miraculous action, young David launched something even more powerful.   He launched a great witness to the Almighty power upholding him and his people, shouting, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.” (1 Samuel 17).

            Thus began quite an incredible life of service to God and nation.    This journey took him from the provincial life of a shepherd boy on through to forty years ruling as Israel’s greatest Warrior-King.  All throughout, David committed his deepest trust to God’s greatness, goodness and active involvement with humanity.   He lived into this holy hope again and again.   His head and heart overflowed with words of praise.  

            These praises weren’t unfeeling, rote recapitulations of what he’d been taught was true.  They weren’t lip-service for personal and political gain.   They were born from his specific, very personal accounts of God’s powerful grace upholding him through conflict with all kinds of ungodly Goliaths.   He gave God singular credit for guiding him and delivering him through all his epic battles – the ones on fields constantly defending his holy nation against enemies, and the ones within himself as he sinned time and time again.   As a writer for the devotional Guideposts puts it, “He was a great military conqueror but he could not conquer himself,” so first and foremost “he trusted in God for the victory, not himself.”[i]    God alone was his strength, his commander, his king.

            All of our lives have been lived on a comparatively much smaller scale than all that David lived through.  But can you relate on some level to his remarkable and complicated journey of faith?   To how he trusted God was actively guiding and protecting him?   Perhaps it will help to take a moment to consider a time of conflict in your life when what you hold fast to in faith felt really, fully true.   

            This veteran Warrior-King’s born-in-the-trenches praise for God got expressed especially well when he wrote the magnificent Psalm 145.    This is an evocative witness to the transcending, cosmic power of Almighty God, as when he wrote that God’s “greatness is unsearchable” and God’s “kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” that endures “throughout all generations.”   It is also equally evocative witness to the strengthening, powerfully intimate presence of God in our  lives, as when he wrote that God “upholds all who are falling,” “is near to all who call on him in truth,” “is just in all His ways,” “kind in all His doings,” “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

            The sheer depth and breadth of poetic praise for God’s creative, sustaining grace for us all that King David presents in these twenty-one verses is summed up beautifully by theology teacher Paul Myhre in this way –

            “It is a reminder to the people of God who the God is that they praise, extol, and exalt, [that they are ] involved in a life giving relationship with a God who is great beyond measure, a mighty actor on the cosmological and human stage, a wonder worker and an active agent in the world, good to all, righteous and faithful in all things, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love … everlasting and ever God above and for all, intimately concerned with the wellbeing of people in whatever circumstances they find themselves in … there is great hope in these verses on which to cling in the difficult times and places of life.”

            As a shepherd body, as military veteran, as a mighty king, and as a spiritual leader, David did a lot of clinging to his own words.    It’s a gracious gift that these faithful words forged from intense personal and worldly battles were recorded and exist as an empowering companion to all of our own spiritual journeys.

            This morning, we are taking the time to appreciate King David’s life of service to God and nation because it’s a good Sabbath day practice to do so and, of course, because tomorrow is Veteran’s Day.  This is day dedicated to what we should do be doing every day as well -- honoring generations of America's veterans “for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.”  To quote the first Veteran’s Day proclamation, issued by President Eisenhower in 1954, it is nationally designated time for us to “solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom.”    This same decree also extends an invitation to us, saying, “let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.” [ii]     

            So along with public opportunities to express our unending gratitude to veterans for their service, such as the one I plan to attend at Chubb Park in Chester at 11 a.m., I hope you’ll also take time to honor our Almighty, upholding God by being in faith community.    I’m very pleased to be participating in the 7 p.m. Veteran’s Day ecumenical worship service at the Catholic Community of St. John Neumann in Califon.  It would be a blessing to so many to have you present as well.    This will be a blessed time to gather and affirm how trust and hope in the saving grace, the divine justice, and the powerful eternal peace of our one Lord Jesus Christ has sustained many a veteran through tours of duty and returns back home.  

            I think especially of a member in my former congregation named Bill.   On my frequent visits to his home, he talked a good bit about his military service.   Back in July of 1943, Bill was a principal at an elementary school in Harleysville, PA.   He was known to have a really dynamic way with words.   Then his country called him to serve in the army.    Before long, he was the sergeant in charge of the Survey Section of the 283^rd Field Artillery Battalion.   He went on to experience and survive four major battles of the European Theater Operations.    He especially recalled travelling 4, 241 miles and having 268 days of continuous combat from August 1944 to May 1945.  

            Near the end of this, he found himself staring at what first seemed to him to be the gateway entrance of a recreation resort.   As a liberator with the 45^th Division of the US Seventh Army, he marched through that gate on April 29, 1945, straight into the evil atrocity of Dachau concentration camp.   I recall listening intently and compassionately to Bill’s eye witness account.  And as a powerful keepsake of our talks together, and as a reminder to never ever forget the great cause for which he and so many others served, I have a folder that he gave me before he died with copies of horrific photographs he took that day.  

            I’m incredibly grateful to have known this veteran as pastor, neighbor, fellow American, and for the blessing of his sharing faithful Christian witness to me.    Particularly helpful to him were the letters he received while in service from his home pastor.   Having preserved them, he pretty much showed them to me every time I visited.   For these and so many other words of faith, and as with King David, Bill praised the amazing grace and mighty acts of our Lord, in whom he had firmly trusted to both watch over and to intimately uphold his life.   

             Amen.

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[i] http://christianity.about.com/od/oldtestamentpeople/a/King-David.htm

[ii] http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp

Saintly Stature

“Saintly Stature”

Luke 19:1-10; Ecclesiastes 3:11-15

            Growing up, my grandmother and I watched one particular television game show every Saturday evening.    This show premiered on CBS in September ’72 (when I was just three years old!)  From my earliest recollections onward, I was drawn to the pace of this audience member contest, to the theme music, and to all the colorful and creative aspects of the game.   Above all, I was captivated by this show’s original announcer, Johnny Olson.    After having watched so many episodes during my most formative years, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when his voice suddenly popped in my head while reviewing today’s New Testament lesson quite early on Friday morning.     Yes, I found myself hearing the words, “Zacchaeus the Tax Collector, come on down!  You’re the next contestant on the Price Is Right!”   

            It was, of course, Jesus’ authoritative voice that Zacchaeus heard calling him down from some spot up a tree in the vicinity of ancient Jericho.    Why had this fellow been up there?   And on this Sunday following All Saints Day, what can we learn from his story about what it means to be a saint?  

            By “saint,” I’m referring to our Presbyterian understanding of this as someone who strives to live a holy life.   I trust and pray this is all of us!   To very briefly build on my sermon from last week about living in hope, a fellow spiritual director has written that “saints are people who are windows in this world.  The light of God shines through them so brightly that people say they have seen salvation in them and in the household of their lives.”[i]

            Now, when we hear the name Zacchaeus, many of us immediately think about children and Sunday School and a certain song about a wee little man.   It’s a very popular Bible story with kids because they can relate to being and to feeling small. They know what it’s like to be at the back of big crowd, straining to see something exciting up ahead.   So a story about a short guy scurrying up a sycamore to rise above his circumstances in order to gain a better view of Jesus is heroic.    While it’s important to keep lifting this story up for the faith formation of our children and grandchildren, it also speaks loudly and inspirationally to our adult view of the world.    Zacchaeus went up the tree not only because he was physically short, but also because he experienced great limitation in his personal standing.   And so I see in his actions three particular ways to measure our stature as saints, as holy ones – he actively tried to see for himself who Jesus is, he joyfully responded to Jesus’ incredible invitation, and he understood that there is a cost to following the Lord.

I.

            Jesus’ reputation as a great healer had preceded his arrival in the vicinity of Jericho.    He drew a great crowd of people curious about or completely aware of the need for holy healing, a crowd that did not exactly welcome the likes of Zacchaeus.   This was no doubt in part because of some cultural discrimination against his short height.  But in larger part it was because of the powerful role in the Roman Empire he had chosen to elevate himself too. This is fully described in this way by leading New Testament scholar N.T. Wright –

            “Nobody in Jericho liked Zacchaeus … he was exactly the kind of man everybody despised.  Not only a tax-collector but a chief tax-collector; that is, not only did he make money on the side, in addition to his legitimate collections, but he almost certainly made more money from the tax-collectors working under him … everyone knew that this was their money and he had no right to it; everyone knew that there was nothing they could do about it.”[ii]   

            So despite his great wealth and social power, he did not stand tall or have any respectful worth in the eyes of his community.    We aren’t specifically told how he felt about this, whether he relished it or regretted it.   We are only told that something propelled him to actively see for himself who Jesus is.    And by doing so, by climbing that tree for a higher view, he learned that he was fully worth God’s time and attention despite his sin.   

            Isn’t this something we all want to see?   To come to accept that we are even more valuable than how we asses ourselves and how we are assessed by certain standards of this world?  I believe it’s a measure of saintly stature every time we take the time to try and see Jesus in our circumstances.   It’s how we can come to know His holy view of us and thus strive to honor this sacred identity with our lives.  

II.

            The Lord indeed took notice of the chief tax collector who’d crawled up that Sycamore tree.   Now, Jesus’ ministry called for repentance.    How curious, then, that He didn’t look up and shout something like, “Zacchaeus, you wee little woeful man, come on down and turn away from your sin!”   He instead invited himself over to this man’s house.   Oh how the crowd grumbled when Jesus declared that going to the home of such a sinner must happen!   They were absolutely indignant about this unjust, offensive, downright insulting invitation to a man who’d sinfully set himself above them for so long.   For Zacchaeus, however, it was nothing but the Good News of salvation.   He joyfully responded to this incredible invitation, and in doing so he came down from his heights to experience the humbling, unconditional love of God.  At the bottom of the tree, repentance took root!

            It’s a measure of saintly stature when we do the same, when we go out on a limb to radically open ourselves up to Jesus’ invitations for us to live a holier life on daily ground.   And not just while we are in church sanctuaries, but even more so right in our homes … the spaces that most reflect our core family and community values.     Jesus, after all, followed Zacchaeus home!

III.

            When Zaccheaus came on down, he then had something remarkable to say to the Lord.   As a further joyful response to Jesus’ invitation, he made a personally costly pledge.  He turned away from greed and graft and turned toward the unconditionally giving, accepting, loving way of the Lord.   He both pledged to give half of all his possessions to the poor and to repay four times over anyone he may have wrongly extracted money from.    Tree climbing led to holy invitation led to a full-on commitment to social justice!   His new life with the Lord was about more than just regret and a change of heart.  It was about restoration, making amends. 

            It’s a measure of saintly stature to not only turn away from sin, but also to make choices that reflect a personal cost to you in support of others, all to God’s glory.

IV.

            All in all, whenever you consider how Zacchaeus measures up as a saint –which again is someone striving to live a holy life – don’t focus on his height or on his wealth.    

            Focus on how great an effort he made to stand tall before the Lord.  In doing so, he got to see and to know Jesus and to trust Jesus saw and loved him.   Go and do the same by studying the Bible, being in prayer, regularly attending worship, supporting neighbors, and by constantly looking up and down and all around for God’s presence in your midst.

            Focus on how despite the negative opinions of others toward Zacchaeus, Jesus treasured him.   Believe our Lord loves you and everyone unconditionally, always inviting us to joyfully welcome Him into our hearts and our homes.   We experience this when we accept and value the power of His transforming Word over any and all negative voices that shake our self-esteem and over any and all crowds that strive to keep us from following Him.

            And lastly, focus on Zacchaeus’ sacrificial response.  Be inspired to do the same through your generous giving of time, talent and financial resources to our Lord’s ongoing ministry of reconciliation through our congregation and all across this world.

            When it comes to Christ’s free gift of salvation for us all, it’s always a measure of saintly stature when we too keep hearing the words, “Come on down!” for truly, that price is right!    Amen.  

           

             

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[i] http://biteintheapple.com/a-short-story-about-saints-and-bullies/

[ii] Luke for Everyone, Tom Wright