The Promised Land

   Deuteronomy 6: 1-11

            Moving day. No matter how much preparation we put into it, we are seldom really prepared. Too much stuff. Too little time. Too far away. Too hard on the family. Being uprooted from what you know can be very disconcerting. We leave our families to follow our husbands and wives, who have been transferred to places far away and go to further their careers. We leave to make a new life because there is no work where we are. We leave because we are trying to escape from sadness or misfortune. We leave because we are trying to find happiness and good fortune. Moving day. It’s not for the fainthearted. Even a move across town can be rough.

          After forty years in the wilderness, the Exodus is about to end and God’s people stand poised to enter the Promised Land.  God’s people have wandered in the desert for a generation. Now they are finally at the doorstep of their new life. The book of Deuteronomy is essentially a large collection of sermons, apparently from Moses, as he prepares the people to cross into their new home. It has been called “farewell instructions for a nation.” In the twenty sixth chapter, Moses reminds the people once again how they got there and what they need to do to keep that memory alive. He inaugurates a tradition that is to be observed every year. He reminds these wandering nomadic people that they are descended from Jacob, a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt. But God now has other plans for his people. He has delivered them to the Promised Land. It is not only the land promised to Abraham so long ago; it is also a land flowing with milk and honey. It is a land where crops may be grown. The wanderers are about to put down roots. And so Moses instructs the people to make a memory. He tells them to institute a ceremony that is to take place every year. This new agricultural society is to offer the first fruits of the land as a reminder that God has heard, that God has delivered, and that God has provided.

          Centuries later, a little band of pilgrims gathered together in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 to celebrate having survived their first winter in America. A goodly number of them had perished, either on the voyage to this new world or through that first harsh winter, but now the first crops had been harvested and they were still there. They took time to celebrate their first year in another “promised land.” Like their predecessors in the land of Canaan so many years before, they brought their first fruits of the land to remember their deliverance from their harsh environment. Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, but its roots are strongly religious and agrarian, just like the people of the Exodus. It is a blend of two traditions, that of religious prayers and fasting from the Puritans and that of rejoicing for a successful harvest, brought over to New England from similar festivals in ancient English traditions.

          Moses reminds the people that the land is an inheritance from God. It is God’s gift for them to live upon, plant and harvest. Moses repeats what is to become the refrain of the people of Israel. The verbs in this passage tell it all: We cried…the Lord heard…the Lord brought us out…the Lord brought us into…you shall rejoice…the Lord has given. In second temple Israel after the exile, the people cried and God restored them. In Jerusalem, God comes as Jesus our Savior. We cry, he hears, he gives, he restores.

          And here at the edge of the river Jordan, a historic crossing is about to be made. God’s people are crossing into the Promised Land. It will not be without bloodshed. It will not be without tears. But God had promised and God will deliver.

           At Plymouth in 1621, people had survived an Atlantic crossing in a boat called the Mayflower.  By today’s standards, we would hardly call it a ship. One hundred two people made the crossing. While eighteen women made the voyage, only four were left to celebrate that first thanksgiving. The Israelites had the desert. The Pilgrims had the Atlantic. Getting to the Promised Land is no cakewalk, even with God’s blessing.

          Where is the Promised Land? It can be different places for different folks. For the people of Israel the Promised Land wasn’t that far away from Egypt. It certainly was not a forty year journey. They had issues to resolve before God would let them in. For the people of Plymouth, they sailed for almost two months before they really left England. They started out with a sister ship, but had to make port twice for repairs before they left. Even when they did, they had to turn around after 300 miles to come back for more leak repairs to the sister ship. Finally they set out by themselves for a hard passage that ended up several hundred miles north of their original destination of Virginia. Did they miss the Promised Land and settle for something different? Hardly. But they did have to redefine their definition of where and what the Promised Land was to be. They had to leave that with which they had become familiar. Even slavery looked like a good idea to the Israelites when they got to the Red Sea.

          Brent Mitchell tells a story about lobsters. It sounds a lot like what Moses…and those Plymouth pilgrims…were getting at when they stopped to remember and celebrate the experiment they had undertaken. Mitchell reminds us that from time to time, lobsters have to leave their shells in order to grow. They really need the protection of their shells so that they are not torn apart, but they continue to grow. At some point, they have to leave their shell. If they don’t, their shell will first become their prison and later, their coffin, for growth is not an option, but the way of life to which they must adapt.

          For the lobsters, the tricky part is that brief period of time when they discard the old shell and during which they have to wait for the new shell to be formed. During that time, they are very vulnerable. They are without protection. It is a scary, uncertain time. For the lobster during this time, that old shell must have looked a lot like the shore of England looked to those pilgrims on the Mayflower, getting smaller and smaller until they couldn’t see it at all. All they could see was that gray ocean for as far as their eyes could see.

          We aren’t much different from the lobster. We may not be spending forty years wandering around in the wilderness, but there are plenty of deserts in the life of a Christian. We may not have to cross the Atlantic in a boat half the size of this sanctuary, but there are plenty of oceans to cross in the life of a believer.

          When Moses stood and gave his sermon to the people of Israel, he reminded them of where they had been and why they had left. When the Pilgrims sat down to that first harvest with ninety or so Native Americans who had befriended them, they took pause to give thanks for what they had survived and to remember why they had braved the change to come to America. They were looking for the Promised Land. To change and grow, we must sometimes, most times, shed that protective shell on which we have depended. It’s the only way to grow. That’s the cost of discipleship…stepping out, taking risks, accepting change. If we want to follow God, we will have to grow.

The Promised Land has lots of shapes and sizes, colors and tastes. For some it is by the sea. For others it is deep in the woods. For yet others it is a pew where we worship on Sunday morning. The Promised Land might be off the coast of Africa or inside the fence of our own back yard. For most of us, the Promised Land is probably not land at all, but rather a place in the heart that God takes us. Wherever it is, it is the place God has set aside for each of us to grow. It is the place promised to us by our Savior.

          And when we have those growth experiences, we need to stop and remember. We need to do as God’s people everywhere always do. We need to bring the first fruits to the feet of our Father. We need to rejoice in all that the Lord our God has given to us. We cried…he heard…he brought us out…he brought us in…we rejoice…and give thanks!

Let us pray.

11/24/13

Bread and Busybodies

2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13

            Ever been on a mission trip? There are always surprises. Sometimes, people come to Christ right in front of our eyes. Sometimes, nothing much seems to be working, but in every case, things happen, both to those who are served and to those who serve. Often, it takes time to see the evidence of the seeds that we plant. Christian leadership is not only a process of delivering truth; it also is an art form. It can be done effectively through the sheer will power of one, but it works better through the mutual cooperation of many. While he was still a general, Dwight Eisenhower used to demonstrate the art of leadership with a simple piece of string. He’d put it on a table and then he would say “Pull it, and it’ll follow wherever you wish. Push it and it will go nowhere at all.” 1

          Thessalonica was one of the strings that Paul had to learn to pull. It was a stop on Paul’s second missionary journey. Silas and Timothy were his companions on this three year trip to the port cities around the Aegean Sea. Paul preached there in the synagogue for three straight Sabbaths. Obviously, he and his companions had quite an impact, as they ended up having to leave town under cover of night. Their teachings were taken as a threat by local businesses and some of the local tradesmen wanted them run out of town.

          Although Paul preached in the synagogue, he obviously found time to preach to the pagan Gentiles there as well. Apparently, Paul succeeded in his efforts in Thessalonica, for the seeds of his ministry surfaced in the form of a church there, which was composed mostly of Gentiles. Paul’s first letter to that church is probably his first writing preserved in the New Testament.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he dealt with some community issues. Some people were not working. They were waiting for the second coming of Christ. They were worried about what would happen to them if they died before he came. In his second letter, he again addresses some of these same issues. This time he is more forceful about what should be done. Even here, though, we can feel Paul engage in the push and pull tensions of leadership as he tries to help this new church.

Paul talks to the Christians in Thessalonica about idleness. There are people who are not pulling their load. Some of these same people are using that spare time to no good use. Paul calls them busybodies.  He says that if you are able to work and don’t, then don’t eat from the table where the church provides food. Either help to put it there or don’t partake.

Paul is not talking to those who cannot work. On the contrary, that is one of the ways in which the church served. It helped to provide food for the needy and less fortunate. This issue is not about work, but rather the willingness or unwillingness to work.  Paul reminds them of his own example. He talks about the time he was with them and his refusal to take money from them. He earned his own way. Elsewhere in Scripture, Paul has pointed out that it is his God-given right to be supported in ministry. [1 Cor. 9: 13-15, 2 Cor. 11: 7-9, 1 Thes. 2: 9] Nevertheless, he chooses not to exercise this privilege. He did not want to be a burden on the people he served.  Paul may have taken his example from Jesus himself. Legend has it that before his ministry, Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all of Palestine and that men came from all over the country to buy them.  So Paul says that idleness and Christianity don’t mix.  No work, no food. That covers one point in today’s passage, but Paul is not done.

Not only does Paul not like idleness, he also doesn’t like what these folks are doing with their new found spare time. These idlers are stirring the pot with gossip. Paul doesn’t like busybodies. He doesn’t like them so much that he tells his church friends to keep away from them. He still calls them brothers, so he is not dismissing them from the congregation. In fact, he talks directly to them in verse 12, saying that they are both commanded and encouraged to “do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” Why would Paul give such strong advice and yet not dismiss these people from the congregation?

Last week, a friend and neighbor of mine underwent a complicated surgery to remove a tumor from his brain. Examination of the tumor prior to surgery had indicated that it was growing, that it was invasive and that it was probably cancerous. But my friend is not a young man and such a surgery has risks. Why would he allow the surgeon to cut so close to the source of all his thinking, to the command center of his life? His decision was based upon the surgeon’s advice. Better to take the risks associated with the loss of some brain function than to allow the cancer to continue to grow and take over his ability to think.

Such was the case with Paul and the Thessalonian church. The idleness and the inevitable gossip that flowed from it were like a cancer on the congregation. Left alone, the situation would continue to deteriorate and the problem would continue to grow. Theologian William Barclay says that there may be greater sins than gossip but there is none which does more damage in the Church. Paul’s suggestions were like those of the surgeon. He advised cutting the idlers off from normal contact. But he didn’t go to extremes. Like the surgeon cut away the damaged tissue from the brain, so the idlers were cut away from the communication of the church. But also like the surgeon leaving the rest of the brain to function, the idlers were not cut off from the church itself. The cancer was their behavior, not themselves. They were not to be regarded as enemies, but rather warned as brothers, and Paul continues to refer to them that way.

How important was it for this action to be taken? In the case of a growing brain tumor, it must be cut away or its tentacles will reach out and co-mingle with good tissue. After awhile, you can’t tell the good from the bad. In the case of a group of idlers and gossips in a church setting, it is only a matter of time until they infect the healthy members of the congregation. Paul felt so strongly about this that not once but twice, he commands them in the name of Jesus Christ. This places his instructions in the strongest of language.

It’s a tough act to push someone away and yet do so in a manner that says they are not banished. It’s tough to accept the person while condemning his actions. It’s tough but it’s certainly doable. When our children get in trouble or do something out of line with what they have been taught, we don’t throw them away. But neither should we accept their behavior. To do so would be to put the proverbial fox in charge of the henhouse. Christian discipline is between brothers, ignoring anger, rejecting contempt and always acting in love.

Paul closes with an exhortation to the good guys in the church. He has chastened the idlers and the gossips. He has given advice as to how the situation should be handled. Now he turns to the faithful. Like the coach in the locker room at halftime, he exhorts and encourages. “Do not grow weary in doing good.” he says. That too is a tall order, but an order that we as Christians know all too well. The Christian life is not a sprint, but a marathon. We must never cease our efforts in Christ’s behalf. This is our act of love and it plays out on the stage of life in the ways we deal with our friends, our families and our brothers.

Do not grow weary of doing good. Do good to your friends. Do good to your neighbors. Do good to your family. Do good to that person who acted so nasty to you for no good reason yesterday. How can we live up to that standard? Easy! Do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray.

11/17/13

1 1001 Quotes, Illustration & Humorous Stories, Edward K. Rowell, baker Books, 2006.

Sons of the Resurrection

Luke 20: 27-38

          Did you watch the Presidential debates last year? It’s not important whose side you were on. All that was decided last year at the ballot box. But the debates themselves were quite interesting, especially the second one. That was the debate that the sitting president pretty much blew. He was not well prepared and it showed. He didn’t measure his opponent or his knowledge well enough. In fact, the political scientists of the day said that if he didn’t recover in the last debate, that one event could decide the presidency.  

A similar point was hammered into me in law school. It was about trial law and it was this: In cross examination, never ask a question unless you already know the answer. That was a very good piece of advice. Every time I forgot it, I got reminded the hard way why I should have heeded that advice. I won about as many cases not asking the wrong question as I did asking the right question.

           Apparently some Sadducees in first century Palestine didn’t get the memo. Teacher, they say mockingly, Moses wrote the law. He said you have to marry your husband’s widow if he dies and you’re still single. He said you have to bear children with her. What happens when seven brothers marry the same woman and none bear children? Who is she with in heaven? The Sadducees were happy with themselves. They had come up with a riddle to stump the teacher.

          They had done it to the Pharisees. The Torah, the first five books of our Old Testament, was their bible. The passage they used was from Deuteronomy 25, which mandated such a practice. It required a brother to marry the widow of his brother to produce children, or seed.  No matter that almost certainly the practice was no longer used in Jesus’ day. There it was in the Old Testament law. The Sadducees paid no attention to the writings or the prophets. The recognized only the law. They did not believe in a bodily resurrection and they used that passage as one of their bases for denying the resurrection of the body. The Pharisees, who did believe in such a resurrection, had no comeback. If the law-fastidious Pharisees couldn’t give an answer, neither would Jesus.

          The Sadducees partially based their unbelief in some practical reasoning which went roughly like this: If there is a bodily resurrection, then we have our bodies in heaven. We must, therefore, have our relationships in heaven. That would include marriage. Marriage would include conjugal relations between spouses. For the Sadducees, the case of the seven brothers with one wife illustrated the sheer impossibility of sorting out such relationships, so bodily resurrection could not be true.  One can’t really fault the Sadducees for such reasoning. The problem is that it didn’t apply.

          Ever been around a know-it-all? I don’t mean someone smart and well prepared. I mean the kind of person who has some power and can’t be told anything. That person has all the answers. The Pharisees could be a pain in the side for all their legalism, but they were a religious body that rigorously studied all the scriptures of the time and cared nothing for personal gain. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the ruling class of their people. They are mentioned only once by name in Luke’s gospel, but indirectly on a number of other occasions, for theirs was the sect from which came the high priests. They were very political and wealthy. They were used to being right because they wielded the power. The Sadducees were the know-it-alls of Jesus’ day, even more than the Pharisees.

So Jesus takes the priests to Bible school.  He talks of “this age” and “that age.” “This age” is the one in which we live, the one in which the Sadducees lived.  In this age, we marry and we are given in marriage. We have children. We have families. We die. “That age” is the age to come, the age in which, thanks to Jesus and the grace he brought to earth for us, we have one foot in the door, the age of the already, but not yet. As believers, we already participate in that life through our relationship with Jesus. The full expression of that life is yet to come. It awaits the promised second coming of our Savior and in that moment, our bodies, our resurrected bodies, will join our immortal souls in heaven. That is part of what awaits us in “that age.”

What’s it like to be in “that age?” Well, we don’t know a lot, but what we know is wonderful. Jesus tells the Sadducees and us that in heaven, there will be no marriage and no one given in marriage. There will be no death. He tells us that those who are resurrected from the dead…that’s right: Jesus refers specifically to the resurrection of the dead…will be equal to angels and sons of God, that we will be sons of the resurrection. These are not the revelations of Paul or Peter or John. They are not the predictions of some Old Testament prophet, as powerful as those testimonies and prophecies may be. They are the statements of Jesus Christ himself.

What is Jesus telling us? For one thing, he tells us that we cannot understand the character of heaven by understanding how things work on earth. Heaven is much more than a perfect earth. Heaven is not a daily string of 68’s on the golf course or a constant series of perfect shots at a 14 point buck or a size 2 dress figure. Heaven is wonderful, but the details are a mystery to us. Little has been revealed, and yet more than enough is known to make us hungry for it. We can infer from Jesus’ comments that earthly relationships, while instituted by God as one way in which we can begin to understand the love and character of our Creator, are not a barometer for heavenly relationships. On earth, we think of husbands and wives and brothers and sisters and children. In heaven, says Jesus, we are sons of God, sons of the resurrection. Does this mean that we will not recognize our loved ones? I doubt it. I just think it means that the most important, the most intimate, the most compelling, relationship, will be the one we each will share with our Savior and our God.

Back to the know-it-alls, the smug quoters of scripture. Jesus turns again to the Sadducees and in the same way he answered Satan in the desert, Jesus quotes Scripture to answer Scripture. He refers to the third chapter of Exodus, where Moses refers to the Lord as the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. This is not a history lesson. This is a pedigree. Jesus says further that God “is not God of the dead, but of the living…” What is the inference? Clearly, it is that the patriarchs are not dead. Yes, their bodies are at rest, but if God is God of the living and not the dead and if God is addressed as God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, figure it out. They may have changed state, but they are not dead! The Sadducees are silenced. The scribes, part of the Pharisaic sect, were so impressed that the Sadducees had been silenced that they actually complimented Jesus. They also quit asking questions.

Our Savior has never been without an answer for our questions. Sometimes, the answers may be out of this world, but he has all the answers we will ever need. What is heaven like? I don’t know. I just know that my Savior promised me that if I am considered worthy to attain to that resurrection, I will be equal to angels and I will be a son of God. That’s enough explanation for me.   

In the children’s praise song Heaven Is a Wonderful Place, Salty is asked if he knows anything about heaven. He says “Sure. I know that Jesus is there, and if he’s there it must be a wonderful place.” He sings a song adapted from Psalm 53:

Heaven   is   a wonderful place

Filled   with  glory and grace

All I wanna see is my Savior’s face

‘Cause heaven is a wonderful place.

“Then some of the scribes answered. “Teacher, you have spoken well.”

Let us pray.                   11/10/13

Lost and Found

Luke 19: 1-10

            Remember when you lost it? The engagement ring…or the class ring. Maybe you lost something with which you had been entrusted. Remember that initial panic? Then the systematic search with no results. Finally the admission to someone what had happened and then more searching. Most of the time there is a happy ending. After all, lost usually just means misplaced. As you re-trace your steps, eventually that which was thought lost is retrieved. It was never really lost…just out of place.

           My wife is forever bringing me stuff from the lost and found basket at her work. She always waits until it’s time to either throw it out or take it home. You know the story: “one man’s trash…” I really appreciate all those forgetful people. They have enhanced my wardrobe.

          Sometimes today, and in Jesus’ day too, “lost” is the word used to connote the absence of purpose or direction or conviction. Sometimes ministers and evangelists talk about saving the “lost.”  By implication, I guess that means that those of us who are not “lost” must be “found.”

I’m not sure that on occasion, one can’t be a little bit of both. I know I have days when my belief in God may not be in question, but about everything else is. Does that make me lost? I guess it depends on one’s frame of reference.

          Today’s frame of reference involves a big wealthy city, a small wealthy man, a sycamore tree, and a Savior. The bit players are the Pharisees and other doubters. The scene moves from street to dinner table. These are the props and players. The story is salvation: where it is, what it is and what it isn’t.

          We think of a person as lost when he or she has wandered away from God. That’s fair enough, although I think we ought to expand the definition to include someone who has never really been introduced properly to God. Like rings and other lost things, we might say that when one is away from God, then he or she is misplaced. If that’s the case, then taking our rightful place with God would amount to being found.

           There are lots of misplaced people wandering around. The situation is more complicated than it first appears. Sometimes, those misplaced people, those lost people, are sitting right down front in church. We don’t have a list of those who are found and those who are not. If only we had some way to know who is and who isn’t. Then we could be more effective in our witness. Actually, Jesus had something to say about that. In fact, he had quite a lot to say about it. We can find some of that advice in the passage for today.

           The first ten verses of Luke 19 are a multi-colored palette of themes. There is the universal appeal of the gospel (vs.2-4), evidenced by the crowd that continues to follow Jesus. There is the ethical problem of wealth (v.2). We have seen this before in Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler. There is Jesus’ “call” of a person in social disfavor (v.7). The religious leaders called these people “sinners” and criticized Jesus for frequenting with them. There is the very real presence of urgency in the way that Jesus goes about injecting God’s presence into the scene (v.5, 9). There are also sub-themes of necessity, joy and outreach to the poor. All the themes and sub-themes work together to tell this story of the little man in the sycamore tree, the seeker. They tell a story of how he finds Jesus, but the real story is how Jesus finds him.

           Then there is Verse ten, considered by many to be the key verse of Luke’s gospel. Jesus states the reason for it all. It is often said that if you want your argument to be remembered, then you must observe the rules of primacy and regency. Put more simply, people will be more likely to remember the first and last things you said.  Let’s apply that to this passage. Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. He came to seek and to save the lost.  Who was lost? Zacchaeus. Where was he? Lost in the crowd. Lost in his selfish life and pursuits. What did Jesus do? Seek him and save him. Why? To save someone. That’s the message of this passage, the message of Jesus. It is the message of salvation. Jesus says: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”    

Jesus talks about money a lot in Luke’s gospel. He talks about it more than he talks about heaven and hell combined. The subject of money comes up once every seven verses in Luke. Eleven of his parables (39 total) contain some reference to money.  Remember the story of the rich young ruler? He had a lot of money and he just couldn’t deal with giving it up. Or the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying together? The Pharisee was rich with pride and the tax collector’s riches plagued him to ask forgiveness.  Now we have Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. This is a guy at the top of the financial ladder. And yet, Jesus is about to hand him the keys to the kingdom. You see, it’s not about the money. It never was. It’s about our attitude with the money. Are we generous with what we have or do we horde and protect it as if it were our salvation and security? How we answer that question will have a lot to do with whether we meet Jesus. I’m afraid it applies equally at every financial level. Ask the widow who gave her last penny. The fact that she had little did not exempt her from her responsibility to give of that with which she had been blessed.

          The thing that most captures my attention here is that Jesus is doing the seeking. While Zacchaeus is curious and is bounding down the street to climb the sycamore tree to get a better look at the local hero, we have no reason to think it is more than curiosity. We might surmise that Zacchaeus is probably more than a little dissatisfied with the way his life is turning out. He has every material thing he could want and it’s boring. It isn’t all it was cracked up to be. He has all this money, but no one respects him. He’s probably having trouble buying friends.

          But look at what’s going on with Jesus! He comes to the tree and he looks up and calls Zacchaeus by name. By name! This is Jericho, the City of Palms. It had aqueducts, a winter palace for Herod, even a hippodrome. This was a flourishing city with a large population. These two men did not run in each other’s circles. And yet Jesus calls the man by name. Not only that, he tells Zacchaeus to hurry, that he must stay at Zacchaeus’ house today! Zacchaeus may have wanted to see Jesus but Jesus wanted to see Zacchaeus even more.

           This is a classic example of Reformed belief, which reminds us that God is sovereign and that we cannot even reach for God until he has first reached for us. Before we ever make a move, God draws us to him. He plants the seed in our hearts. He reaches out to us. He activates that seed and then we receive him joyfully just like Zacchaeus.  Jesus tells us in John 6 that “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Jesus has sought out and found Zacchaues. The lost is now found.

          The church leaders are grumbling. He doesn’t come to synagogue, they say. He is a tax collector, a sinner. Look at him. He makes a fool of himself, a grown man climbing a tree to see this Jesus. Everything is out of order. There are systems for this sort of thing. There are rules to be observed. No self respecting churchman would be caught in the house of a sinner! Jesus is a rule breaker, a regulation buster. He must be a fraud! And he most certainly can’t be successful this way!

          But Jesus was successful. He sought Zacchaeus and he saved him. Zacchaeus set new records for giving and doing penance for his past acts of selfishness. He went far beyond the requirements of the Jewish law.  Jesus called him a son of Abraham, not because he was Jewish, but because he was a believer and thus a spiritual descendent of Abraham.

It didn’t matter that Zacchaeus was a sinner. We’re all sinners. It didn’t matter to Jesus that Zacchaeus was not a churchman, that he was in a business known for cheating. It didn’t matter to Jesus what other people thought about his actions. It didn’t matter where or how they met. What mattered to Jesus was Zacchaeus. Jesus didn’t come to preserve institutions. He came to save people. What mattered to Jesus was that he had come to seek and save the lost. In that one afternoon, a man went from lost to found. Jesus sought him, Jesus found him. Jesus saved him.

Though the setting of this story is first century Palestine, it sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it. We sit in our pews and wonder why they aren’t full. And all the while, Jesus is walking around out there in the street. He still does that, you know. The history we read in Luke is most relevant when we realize that at some point we are the Zacchaeus’s, and that Jesus is looking for us, drawing us to his arms of grace. He seeks us, he finds us, he saves us.

I heard it said recently that the thing about grace is that it always finds us right where we are, but never leaves us where it found us. Doesn’t that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck! That’s Jesus. He’s calling your name. Hurry down from your perch wherever that might be, for he may be having lunch at your house today.

10/20/13