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