"A Strangely Christian Thing to Do"

Christ the King Sunday

Luke 23:33-43

Rev. Everett L. Miller

It is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. It is ridiculous really. The early Christians knew that much more thoroughly than we do as when Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Here is a peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, rejected by the leaders of his own people, sentenced to death by the local representative of the real king of kings, the Roman emperor Tiberius, and now fastened to a cross between two dying criminals. What kind of king is this? Can you imagine having been among the first generation of Christians trying to explain that to people?
If you had been alive in the year 9 BC, about 40 years before Jesus’ death, and just a few years before his birth, you could have read a proclamation about the Roman emperor at the time, Caesar Augustus, that calls him Savior and god manifest. It also says “Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times, and even the birthday of Caesar Augustus “has been for the whole word the beginning of the good news.” Sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it?

We could have also read an inscription on a statue of Augustus, which read, "The God Augustus, Son of God, Caesar, Absolute Ruler of land and sea, the Benefactor and Savior of the whole cosmos.”

In the ancient Roman world, it would have been quite common to hear the words, “Caesar is Lord” on the lips of most any citizen and many subjected peoples. It was a statement of allegiance to the empire, like a pledge of allegiance to Caesar and to Rome. So to say “Jesus is Lord” was ridiculous, offensive, and an affront to the government, because what you were supposed to say is “Caesar is Lord.” The implication within the confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord,” is that Caesar is not.

In Acts, which was also written by Luke, there is a report of a controversy in the city of Thessalonica. A crowd comes looking for Paul and Silas, but finds only Jason, a local man who had been working with them. Luke writes, “they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: ‘They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus’” (Acts 17:6-8). You can see why so often the early Christians were persecuted and executed at the hands of the government.

Luke was a Gentile living within the Roman Empire writing to people like him, Gentiles living in the Roman Empire. He states, himself, in the introduction to his gospel that he is writing not to convince people to become Christians but to encourage those people who already believed in Jesus so that they “may know the certainty of the things [they] have been taught.” Luke’s readers are people who have already taken the risk of saying, “Jesus is King” or “Jesus is Lord.” Yet, they look outside their windows and all they see is the influence of Caesar and his empire.

Towards the beginning of Luke, the angel of the LORD says to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” Luke is dangerously reminding his readers that it is not the birth of an emperor which is the beginning of the good news, but the birth of Jesus.

At the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, Matthew, Mark, and John all have the crowd yelling, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.” But Luke has them calling out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” It is very important to Luke that the readers of his gospel, which includes those of us on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, get the point that no matter what it looks like outside our windows it is Jesus who is the real king.

So now we come back to Jesus on the cross. In addition to being executed, he is also being tempted one last time. If you recall when he was tempted by Satan in the desert, the last temptation was, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” Now they are saying things like, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen one.” They are saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” Then one of the other men being crucified with Jesus says, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” He is being tempted to prove that he is the King that his disciples claim him to be by saving himself instead of dying on the cross for the salvation of others. They are saying, “If you are the King, then show us some power. Kings don’t die on crosses. Criminals do. What kind of king is this?”

But Jesus is not a king like the kings of this world. He is not the king of the Jews that was expected, coming with violence to overthrow the Romans. He is not a King of Kings like Caesar in his palace in Rome with millions of soldiers at his command. He said it himself, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” and “I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus will not prove his Kingship by saving himself, for that is not the kind of king that he is. And it is a strangely Christian thing to say, but Jesus proves that he is king, by being up there on that cross. Jesus proves his strength through taking on weakness.

But according to Luke (he is the only one who reports this) one of the criminals comes to Jesus’ defense. Luke tells us that one of the criminals had “hurled insults” at Jesus. But the word in Greek actually means “blaspheme,” as in breaking the third commandment, “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.” Luke is saying that to say something against Jesus is to say something against God. So the other suffering criminal, groans out in agony to the other man, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then the man speaks to Jesus, saying something we should all pray every day. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” By saying this to Jesus, this man is professing his faith in Jesus as King and showing that he realizes that Jesus is not the usual kind of king and that the Kingdom Jesus announced is not the usual kind of kingdom. Despite what the leaders of the people, and the Roman soldiers, and the other criminal say, this peasant from the backwoods of Galilee, who is fastened to a cross in between two dying criminals is, in fact, the real king of kings. And Jesus’ last interaction with another person in Luke’s gospel before he dies is to turn to the man and say, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” His last act of ministry is to welcome a criminal into his heavenly kingdom. That is the kind of King that Jesus is, not the kind who will prove his kingship by saving himself, but by saving a man who has been lost every day of his life but this one. This criminal, by losing his life, is gaining it. That is another strangely Christian thing to say.

Claiming that Christ is our king does have implications for eternal life, but it also has implications for the way we live our lives right now. We have to make decisions everyday as to how we will live in culture and with other people. We have to keep reminding ourselves that Christ is King. Culture is not. Christ is King. Addiction is not. Christ is King. My desires are not. Christ is King. Wealth is not. Christ is King. I am not.

Sometimes our affirmation of Christ as King has to do with big, public issues. I recently saw the movie Amazing Grace, which is about the efforts of William Wilberforce to abolish slavery in the British Empire, something he did because he knew that on that issue he could not support the king’s policies on slavery and claim that Christ is King. In Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s Christians like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were adamant that Christ was their King, Hitler was not. Also, it is no accident that the civil rights movement in the American South grew out of churches and was led by a Baptist pastor, people who claim Christ as King. Living in culture and having Christ as king is often difficult. Sometimes we have to make difficult, even dangerous decisions when there is a conflict between what culture tells us to do and what Christ would have us do.

There has been an instance of this quite recently for thousands of Christians here in Oklahoma. Oklahoma House Bill 1804, the new law that cracks down on undocumented immigrants in Oklahoma has caused many Christian churches and individual Christians to ask themselves if they can both follow Christ as King and follow this law. Adding to the fire is the fact that it has also been announced that in the next legislative session there will be an additional bill proposed that would “essentially make it illegal for anyone to help an undocumented person.” Many churches have decided that the answer is that they cannot completely follow this new law and at the same time be able to say in truth that Christ is their King.

Many Christians have signed what is called a “pledge of resistance,” which has been sent to Governor Henry. Interestingly enough, resistance to this law has united Christians from many different denominations in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime. The pledge itself was written by a Quaker and a Nazarene. The Oklahoma Conference of Churches, which is made up of the sixteen Christian denominations including the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Episcopalians has come out in resistance to the law.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City declared in a document sent to the state government: “We stand together, in solidarity, in defiance of this law because of our allegiance to a higher law; the law of love of God and humanity.” The Southern Baptist Convention said: “As Christians, that should be our No. 1 focus -- God first, government second. While we will obey the law to the best of our ability, when people come to our church to worship with us, we are not going to ask for proof of citizenship."

I have never heard of anything uniting Southern Baptists, Catholics, Nazarenes, Presbyterians and many other parts of the body of Christ the way that support for immigrants, documented or undocumented, has united us. And here is why so many churches have come together on this: We all answer the question, “Who is the ultimate authority in your lives?” the same way. The answer is Jesus Christ. We are united because Jesus is Lord, Christ is King, which means that we do everything we can to obey the laws of our land, but if that law would cause us to break the laws of God, we have a decision to make.

Here is why there is a decision to make with this particular issue. Throughout the Old Testament, God said things like this to the people of Israel: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19: 33-34). In addition to this we read in the New Testament Scriptures of Joseph, Mary, and an infant Jesus having to flee Judea, to become immigrants in Egypt. We read of our Lord Jesus reaching out to the Samaritans, who the Jews did not want around. We read of our Lord saying, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” We read of our Lord saying, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared from the creation of the world…I was a stranger and you invited me in…Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me.”

A question that many Christians have been asking themselves and others lately is this: If a family of undocumented immigrants came to Jesus’ door asking for help, would he help them? Well, he healed people on the Sabbath even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to people who were declared unclean, even though the Law said he couldn’t. He reached out to the Samaritans, although the leaders of his people said he couldn’t. Of course he would help them because that is what he came to do, “To preach good news to the poor.” And because that is what he would do, those who have faith in him are to do likewise, because Christ is King. So whether or not you personally agree with the stand all these churches and individual Christians have made, you at least have to admit that they mad this stand because of their belief in Christ as King.

As I said, it is a strangely Christian thing to do, declaring a day to be Christ the King Sunday, then celebrating that day by reading the story of his being crucified on a Roman cross. But, ironically, Luke’s telling of Jesus’ death on the cross helps to answer the question, “What kind of king is this?” He is the king who refuses to save himself to show his authority, but instead he gives his own life for the salvation of others to show his authority. He is the king who refuses to fit the expectations of culture, but instead fits the expectations of God, forgiving his executioners and turning to a dying criminal and assuring him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” So may we be willing to face the same accusations faced by Jason and others in Thessalonica. May there be enough evidence to convict us if we are accused of “saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.’” We can’t expect everybody to understand this. After all, “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

May Christ reign as the King of our lives. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving"

Psalm 100, Luke 17:11-19

Rev. Everett L. Miller

This past Wednesday, when the wind was fierce and the air was cold I decided to venture out to the church sign to change the message. Since Thanksgiving is this Thursday I wanted to put up a message that has to do with giving thanks to God. So I put on my sweater and grabbed the two boxes of plastic letters and headed out the door. I set the boxes on top of the stone sign and bent down to unlock the sign cover. As I was turning the lock a great gust of wind came up and picked up both boxes and spread hundreds of little white plastic letters all over the sidewalk and throughout the churchyard. As I reached out for them to no avail I’m sure that some very unthankful words came to mind. Then I looked around to make sure no one had witnessed my embarrassing moment and I had to make a decision. Would I pick up all of the letters first, then put the message on the sign, or would I search through the grass for the letters I needed for the message, put it up, then pick up the other letters.

I got down on my hands and knees. For some reason or other I decided to look for the specific letters I needed first. I looked for E’s, G’s, N’s, T’s, and so on, finding some in the grass, some in a pile of leaves, one or two over by the bushes. As I did it I asked the question, “Why did I bring two boxes of plastic letters out here on a windy day?” And feeling somewhat unthankful for the time I was wasting hunting letters like an alphabet Easter egg hunt, I spelled out the message that I had planned to put up in the first place, Psalm 100:4. “Enter God’s Gates with Thanksgiving.”

I locked the sign door back but before I began to pick up the scattered letters I thought about how the choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for me to pick up the pieces in a thankful way. By stopping what I was doing to offer a message of thanksgiving my whole attitude changed. “ENTER GOD’S GATES WITH THANKSGIVING.” How could I spend twenty minutes searching for the letters to spell that out, then turn around and in the next moment not live it out? How beautiful are those words: "Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving."

In today's gospel passage, Jesus has come across ten men who wanted to pick up the pieces of their lives and who probably felt they had no reason to offer thanksgiving. In fact according to Jewish law they could not even enter God’s gates (meaning the temple gates). They were suffering from skin diseases. In those days, if you had almost any skin disease you were considered a leper and unclean until it healed. What it meant to be unclean is that you had to live outside of the camp or town where everybody else lived. You couldn’t touch other people and they couldn’t touch you. Can you imagine the solitude? Can you imagine not being able to touch your husband or wife, your children or grandchildren?

I remember patients when I was a student hospital chaplain who everybody who came into their rooms had to wear a plastic gown, a thick mask, and rubber gloves. It really affected people when they couldn’t touch the skin of their loved one, when they couldn’t kiss each other, when we held hands to pray it wasn’t skin touching skin but rubber glove on rubber glove. Being in that situation made people feel like lepers. And lepers like these ten men who Jesus met that day were even supposed to call out to people if they approached them, “Unclean, Unclean!” so they would know to avoid them. So these unclean outcasts would form colonies and they would call out from far away for people who traveled by to show mercy on them by giving them alms or charity.

But this is no ordinary man that is passing by today. They have heard of him and what he has done for others. So they yell out to him, “Jesus, master, have pity on us!” Anybody else may have given them a few coins, or maybe as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, they may have seen them, then moved to the other side of the road and kept walking. Surely we have all done that at one time or another when a homeless person is on the sidewalk. But Luke tells us that when Jesus saw them he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” He didn’t even say that they were healed, he simply told the ten men to do what the Law said they must do to be declared clean again. So they started heading off to present themselves to the priests. That was a huge act of faith in itself. Their skin still looks the same, yet they believe in Jesus’ power enough that they believe they will be made clean. These ten men with cracking, pimpled, discolored, infected skin, had been cast out from society, could not be close to their families or friends, could not enter the temple in their unclean condition. But today Jesus had come into their lives and he was going to bring them back into the community.

They are walking together, an act of both communal and individual faith, but surely they had questions in their minds. “Am I being a fool?” “What if I show up at the priest and I’m not clean? They’ll throw me out of town again.” “What if the others are made clean but I am not?” Then Luke tells us “as they went, they were cleansed.” They had reached out to Jesus. They had been obedient. They had taken steps of faith. And now they are clean and are included in the community once again. How happy must they have been? They probably took off running toward the temple, with eyes filled with tears and screaming for the first time in years, “Clean! Clean!”

But one of them “when saw he was healed” turned around and started walking the other way, back to where he had met Jesus. The others must have called out, “What are you doing? Do as the master said. Go to your priests and be declared clean.” But he just kept walking, praising God in a loud voice so anybody out there, so the trees and the rocks and the animals could all hear him blessing the name of the LORD. And when he made it back to Jesus “He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Jesus had told him to go to the priests but he was so filled with joy and praise and the urge to thank Jesus that he had to stop what he was doing, even though it was what he had been told to do by Jesus himself, because his gratitude to God was boiling over. So he fell down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.

Luke likes to tell stories about people placing themselves at Jesus’ feet, which is a sign of faith and humility and honor. The Gerasene man who had been tormented for years and was living naked in the tombs from whom Jesus cast out demons had clothed himself and sat at Jesus’ feet. Jairus, whose daughter was dying fell at Jesus’ feet and asked for help. When Martha was so busy in the kitchen that day in Bethany, her sister Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet.

And there is the story of the "sinful" woman who placed herself at Jesus' feet while he was reclining at the table of Simon the Pharisee. She began to weep and the tears fell onto his feet, so she wiped them off with her hair then pour perfume on them. Simon can't believe that Jesus is letting this happen. Jesus responds by telling Simon, "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon agreed that it would be the one who had the greater debt. "He who has been forgiven little loves little," Jesus says. Then he turns to the woman, blessing her, "Your sins are forgiven...Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

“He who has been forgiven little loves little.” The leper in today’s passage has no need to be forgiven. He is not a leper because he has sinned, although surely people believed there to be a connection. He was not a “sinner” per se, but he might as well have been. And it gets even worse for him because the next thing we learn about the leper who had been made clean is that he is a Samaritan. Most Jews did not like Samaritans. Actually, they despised them. They saw the Samaritans as mixed-blood, perverters of religion, who were unclean for reasons that I don’t have time to get into now. Jews didn’t even travel through the area of Samaria. It’s a little bit like Israelites and Palestinians these days. But Jesus wasn’t willing to go along with his people and how they viewed the people of Samaria. He only cared how his Father in Heaven viewed them.

Throughout the New Testament we read that “Jesus rebuked his disciples for their hostility to the Samaritans, healed this Samaritan leper, honored a Samaritan for his neighborliness, praised a Samaritan for his gratitude, asked a drink of a Samaritan woman, and preached to the Samaritans. He even challenged his disciples to witness in Samaria.” The Leper was a double outcast, but Jesus did not ask for credentials before he offered him mercy. It was the way of society to hate the Samaritans. But it was the way of Jesus to include them in the Kingdom of God, to treat them as brothers and sisters, and to offer them healing and salvation. And that was most certainly worth going back to give thanks for, so as the other nine lepers continued to walk the other way to do their duty, this man who was an outcast two times over lies at the feet of the Lord.

By the way, have you ever met someone who is duty-bound, but is not joyful or thankful? I can recall muttering under my breath as I raked leaves as a kid. I was performing the duty I had been given by my parents but I don’t remember ever being thankful that I was outside in the cool autumn air, doing my part for our family. I’ve had teachers in my years as a student that I wondered why in the world they ever became a teacher, because it seemed all they were willing to do was to perform their duties by showing up and giving assignments and tests. And I never really noticed how bad it was until I had a poetry professor in college who overflowed with joy and excitement every class and every time I stopped by his office. He loved what he was doing and he was thankful that he got to spend his days opening up the minds of young people to the beauty of language. I’ve met farmers who did it out of duty. “This is what my father did, and his father, and so on so I had to do it.” But then I’ve met farmers who gave thanks and praise to God that they’re days aren’t spent in a cubicle but under the endless blue sky working the land God created.

But an attitude of thanksgiving doesn’t only need to be there in what we do for a living but in everything in our lives. This Samaritan man shows us that the Christian life is more than simply doing what Jesus tells us to do, although that is incredibly important. After all, Jesus does say in John’s gospel, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, that is the one who loves me.” But Jesus certainly didn’t mean that his disciples should just robotically do whatever he tells them. Life in Christ is not a list of rules; it is so much more than that. It is about being so transformed by Jesus’ offer of salvation and God’s grace that we look at life, the good and the bad, the duty and the sacrifice, the sorrowful and the fun, in a totally new way. Being thankful isn’t about being happy all the time, but it is about being grateful to God all the time.

With the healed man at his feet, Jesus looks down and asks, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Actually, something interesting about what Jesus is saying here is that in the Greek the word translated as “made you well” can also be translated as “saved you.” It is the exact same word that is used when Jesus tells the "sinful" woman, "Go, your faith has saved you." It is a word with multiple meanings and it is a different word from that which is used by Luke when he says the ten lepers were cleansed. In the English all we get is “made you well,” but that one Greek word can mean save (as in Christian salvation), save as in rescue, deliver, keep safe, preserve, cure, and finally make well.” Jesus is blessing this man in a different way than the other nine have been blessed. The great preacher Fred Craddock writes of this, “What we have, then, is a story of ten being healed and one being saved.” This man has been made anew and he has gone past that initial act of faith, and just dutiful obedience, to the realization of what James 1:17 says; “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” So he has returned to give thanks to the Lord.

Like almost everyone else in the Bible, we don’t know whatever came of that Samaritan man. But I’d like to think that he went on living his life with that moment at Jesus’ feet in the forefront of his mind and heart. I’d like to think that his choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for him to pick up the pieces of his life in a thankful way. I’d like to think that he lived a life of praise, gratitude, and joy and translated his personal experience with Jesus and his gratitude for God’s grace into years of bettering other people’s lives, while giving thanks to Jesus all the way. I’d like to think that every doorway he walked through and even every tree’s branches he ever passed under were like God’s gates to him and that he entered them with thanksgiving.

So this week, as we pause for a few hours from our busy lives filled with duty, let us keep the story of this healed Samaritan man in the forefront of our minds and hearts. Let us give thanks for this man who stopped just long enough, even while he was finally picking up the pieces of his life, to offer thanks to the Lord. And let us give thanks to our Lord who has offered us the same salvation, the same new life, the same opportunity to live in gratitude and thanksgiving. And may every door we pass through and even every tree’s branches we pass under be as God’s gates to us and may we enter them with thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.

"What is Zacchaeus Seeking?"

Luke 19:1-10

Rev. Everett L. Miller

You may have heard of the book title, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Well, we could probably write a book called Everything I Know about Zacchaeus I Learned in Kindergarten because what most of us know about the man probably comes from the children’s song that starts out, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.” That song gives us the gist of the story. Zacchaeus was short so he climbed up a sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus as he passed through Jericho. When Jesus came to the tree he told Zacchaeus to come down from the tree because Jesus was going to visit his house. The song really does hit the highlights, but if all that we know about this encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus comes from that great little song, we miss out on the power of this story and it becomes for us just a cute little tale about Jesus being nice to a short guy.

The story of Zacchaeus only takes up 10 verses in Luke’s Gospel and does not appear in any of the other gospels. But we can actually learn quite a bit about the man and the situation he finds himself in from these few verses. The first thing we learn is his name—Zacchaeus. It actually means “innocent,” which is ironic because the next bit of information we get about him is that he is a chief tax collector. If you think the regular tax collectors like Matthew were hated, then imagine how people felt about their bosses, the chief tax collectors. These men would contract directly with the Roman government to collect a certain amount of taxes from their own people. Usually the chief tax collector would pay that year’s full amount to the government before he ever started collecting the taxes. He would then higher underlings, like Matthew for example, to collect the money from the people, but he wouldn’t just recoup the amount that he had paid the Romans. He would hike up the taxes he collected from his own people so he could make a huge profit. If you think the IRS is stealing from you, just be happy we don’t use the Roman system. Chief tax collectors were extremely rich men and they were considered thieves and traitors to their own people. Zacchaeus would also have probably been considered unclean by Jewish law most of the time because of how often he worked directly with the Gentile Romans. Zacchaeus was anything but innocent and he was probably ostracized within his community. His wealth had come with a price.

The next thing we learn is that Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was but there was a crowd gathering in the city of Jericho and he was short so he wasn’t going to be able to see anything when Jesus walked through town. Then we often picture him climbing up a tree. But he did something else first. He took off running. He ran out ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore-fig tree, which was extremely common in the Holy Land, with low limbs that produced inferior figs that would only have been eaten by the poor.

That’s not so important, however. But here are a few facts that are: in the extremely formal society of ancient Middle Eastern Judaism it was considered shameful for a man, especially a man of social standing, to run. Kids ran. Men didn’t. Secondly, but in the same vein, it would be shameful for a rich man to climb a tree. Only poor people looking for food would climb a tree. Poor people and kids climbed trees. Grown, rich men didn’t. It may seem cute or goofy to us what Zacchaeus is doing but in his own society he was throwing his inhibitions away, making a fool of himself, and bringing shame on himself and his family. What could have been worth that?

Why did Zacchaeus want to see Jesus? Was he just curious what he looked like? Well, the Greek word for what Zacchaeus was doing was “to seek.” He was seeking to see who Jesus was. But why? It doesn’t make any sense. Zacchaeus, the man who has become rich by exploiting others, is seeking to see the Jesus who earlier in Luke’s Gospel said, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” Zacchaeus is seeking to see Jesus who once told the parable of the rich fool who wound up dead and in trouble with God, saying, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” Zacchaeus is seeking to see Jesus who told the parable of the rich man who goes to hell and the poor man who goes to heaven. Zacchaeus is seeking to see the same Jesus who just a chapter earlier told a rich man to sell everything he owned and give the money to the poor, then when the man refused told his disciples that “it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” It seems that Jesus is the last person who Zacchaeus should be seeking. So something must be going on within Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus must have also heard that Jesus had been called a friend of tax collectors and “sinners”. He must have heard what chapter 15 tells us, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” He must have heard that Jesus had told a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector, in which the Pharisee brags to God and the tax collector says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” then Jesus says it is the tax collector who went home justified instead of the Pharisee. And he must have also heard that after Jesus said what he did about how difficult it would be for a rich man to enter heaven, his disciples asked him, “Who can be saved?” And Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

It must have seemed impossible to Zacchaeus that he could ever be saved from his life of dishonest wealth and his being ostracized from his community. He was surely left out of society, looked down upon. People talked behind his back. His kids probably got beat up because he was their dad. He was branded a sinner and everybody loved to grumble against him. It seems that his own people didn’t even consider him a Jew anymore. He wasn’t a son of Abraham to them. Everybody loved to hate him. Everybody offered him advice about what he could do to make life better for everybody else, like take a long hike off a short pier. But I think it is a pretty safe bet that nobody ever offered Zacchaeus what he really needed: FORGIVENESS--an OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE--and SALVATION, which is always wrapped up with forgiveness and the opportunity to change.

Zacchaeus must have heard that Jesus once said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” So he is seeking to see the one who said, “everyone who seeks finds.” Zacchaeus is seeking forgiveness. Zacchaeus “sought to see who Jesus was, but could not, because he was small of stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way.” He was willing to lose any tiny little bit of respect that other people might have had for him in order to gain what he truly needed. He was willing to let it all go just for a glimpse of the one who proclaimed God’s love and forgiveness, even for chief tax collectors, especially for chief tax collectors.

He must have been terribly surprised when Jesus and his group of followers approached his tree and Jesus looked up at him and calling him by name although they had never met, said, “Zaccheus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Then the NIV tells us “he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.” But “welcomed him gladly” doesn’t really give us the power of the word in the Greek. It means “rejoice.” Here in Luke’s gospel it is the word that Gabriel uses when he tells Mary how she should react to the news that she will bear the Savior of the world in her womb. This is the word that is used to describe the reaction of the shepherd who finds his one lost sheep. And this word is the reaction of the father who receives his prodigal son back after he thought he’d lost him forever.

This isn’t just saying, “Sure, Jesus, come on over. I’m glad you’re here.” This is rejoicing because what you have found is so much more magnificent than what you were seeking. This is rejoicing because you are an outcast and you are alone and you are in need of forgiveness and you are in need of an opportunity to change and you need to be saved from all kinds of things and you’ve made a fool out of yourself hiking up your tunic and running down the road and climbing a tree and Jesus, who you were hoping to catch a glimpse of, knows you and wants to come break bread with you. This is rejoicing. So Zacchaeus hopped out of the tree and rejoiced because Jesus is coming to his house for lunch!

So the crowd sees Jesus walk off with Zacchaeus and rolls their eyes and sticks their noses up and huffs and puffs, “[Jesus] has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” Of course Zacchaeus would have expected that, but who cares, Jesus isn’t sitting down to sandwiches at anybody else’s house. And Jesus was surely used to it by now. He’d been hanging out with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners of all kinds for quite some time. And all this that is going on, the seeking and the finding, the fact that Jesus knew his name and was giving Zacchaeus the opportunities he so sorely needed causes such a change in Zacchaeus that he stands up and tells Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

What a change! John the Baptist had once talked about bearing fruits worthy of repentance. James would later write, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” Jesus talked a lot about repenting, which means changing the way you think and live. Jesus’ acceptance of Zacchaeus has inspired such a change in Zacchaeus that he is standing up, possibly in the middle of dinner, and repenting. The Zacchaeus who cheated people and who didn’t give to help the poor, that man is dead. From now on he doesn’t want to hold on to money for himself but to give as freely as he has received. Zacchaeus wants to change his life but no one would give him the chance. It was like he had been on an island surrounded by burned bridges, and Jesus was the only one willing make the swim. Jesus had once said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Zacchaeus had gained a lot, but he had forfeited his very self. But even if the whole city of Jericho had given up on Zacchaeus, Jesus hadn’t.

So Jesus replies, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.” Jesus has given Zacchaeus his identity back and re-included him in God’s covenant community of faith. It doesn’t matter if everybody else in town looks down on Zacchaeus and says he’s such a traitor, that he’s not even a Jew, not even a son of Abraham, because Jesus says he is and that is what matters. We don’t know exactly what Jesus means by salvation here. We are not told if Zacchaeus has made a profession of faith in Jesus. We are not told if he wants to join up with the disciples. But what we do know is that whatever happened in Zacchaeus was so powerful that Jesus sensed that and that Jesus proclaimed that salvation had come to Zacchaeus and his family because of what had happened that day with all the running and tree climbing and rejoicing and repenting.

And here it gets even more interesting. Jesus says, “For the Son of Man (by which he is referring to himself) came to seek and to save what was lost.” I thought it was Zacchaeus who was seeking to see Jesus, not the other way around. And Zacchaeus was certainly seeking Jesus because Zacchaeus was lost and he thought Jesus might be the one in whom he would be found. But Zacchaeus wasn’t the only one who was seeking someone that day. Jesus was seeking for him as well. In fact, Jesus says that is why he came to earth, to Israel, to Jericho, to Zacchaeus, a grown man in a tree. He came to seek and to save the lost. So Zacchaeus may have been a wee little man and a wee little man was he, but he was also lost and he knew it, but so did Jesus. The world wouldn’t give Zacchaeus another chance but Jesus would, because Jesus is the seeker and the savior of the lost.

And here is the best news of it all: that is just as true today as it was then. If you are lost, if the world has given up on you, if you have gained much but forfeited your very self, if what you seek is forgiveness, if what you seek is the opportunity to change, if what you seek is salvation, seek Jesus. He has promised that if you seek him, you will find him, because although you might think you are the only one who is seeking for something, for someone, he is seeking for you too. Like a miraculous birth, like a lost sheep found, like a long lost child returned, that is worth rejoicing over. Rejoice, for Jesus came to seek and to save what was lost. Praise God.