Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Invitation to Be Reformed"

Text: Luke 19:1-10

since we were children in Sunday school …

that is, if we "did" Sunday school when we were children.

And if we heard the story,

we probably also learned the song, didn’t we,

about how "Zacchaeus was a wee little man;

a wee little man was he."

But even if we didn’t –

and I confess, I didn’t learn that song till I was an adult;

I must have been deprived –

chances are, still, the song summarizes

everything that we remember about Zacchaeus.

He was "a wee little man,"

or as the text of the NRSV more kindly puts it, "short in stature,"

or in these days of political correctness,

we might say he was "vertically challenged."

Anyhow, he can’t see Jesus because of the crowd,

who are all taller than he is.

So what did he do?

"He climbed up in the sycamore tree,

for the Lord he wanted to see."

Simple enough, and logical.

There’s the tree, there’s Zacchaeus; up he goes.

Then what?

"And as the Lord was passing by,

he looked up in the tree."

Wow … when I’m walking along the street,

I am not standing there looking up in every tree, are you?

How did Jesus know to look up in that tree?

And then, not only did he see Zacchaeus up there,

he talked to him.

"And he said, ‘Zacchaeus, you come down,

for I’m coming to your house today,’"

And they all lived happily ever after.

Now, if you want to keep that story

in the children’s Sunday school,

you can end it right there.

A cute story about how Jesus is nice

to people that many of us overlook.

It is a significant message for children,

who are, after all, short in stature,

smaller than those around them,

and who sometimes feel pretty unimportant.

But the song leaves out some important details.

Detail #1:

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.

That tells us a number of things about him right off the bat,

in just those two little phrases:

He was opportunistic,

he was willing to do anything to make a buck.

To be a tax collector then

was to even worse in the public mind than to be an IRS agent now!

(Especially since the IRS is trying the

"kinder, gentler" mode of being.)

But as much as we whine about taxes and the IRS,

at least we know that the money goes to our own government,

and we do derive some benefit from it.

Well, a Jewish tax collector, on the other hand, in this day and time,

took money from Jewish people

and handed it over to the Roman government.

So that it could, for example, pay the salaries of the soldiers

who kept you in line and oppressed you.

Wouldn’t you love to pay taxes for that reason!

So, most of Zacchaeus’ own people

would have considered him a traitor.

And if that weren’t enough, not only was he a tax collector;

he was a chief tax collector.

The head honcho of traitors.

And, he was rich.

And the only way for a tax collector to get rich

was to cheat.

Not on his taxes, on your taxes..

Let’s say that this year you owe Rome 50 denarii in taxes this year.

Zacchaeus or one of his cronies would come along to collect,

and tell you to cough up 70 denarii.

You knew he was messing with you,

but you couldn’t refuse.

He’d simply report you to the Romans

as "unwilling to pay taxes,"

and pretty soon there those soldiers would be, on your doorstep.

So you knew you were being cheated;

Rome knew you were being cheated,

but they didn’t care, as long as they got what they were owed.

All of which is to say that

people knew all too well who Zacchaeus was, what he was,

and they would have shunned him insofar as they had power to do it.

As he’s shoving through the crowd there in Jericho,

trying to get to the front and not succeeding,

they must have been thinking,

good heavens, what a hypocrite.

Why would he of all people want to see Jesus?

Even more, why would Jesus want to see him?

We’re not about to let that little shrimp push his way in front of us

fine, upstanding citizens,

when the celebrity preacher du jour is on his way.

We probably didn’t learn all that

when we heard the story, or sang the song, as children.

Yet it’s important,

because it makes detail #2 all the more extraordinary.

Detail #2 has to do with what Zacchaeus says

when he comes down out of that tree

to go with Jesus.

Strictly speaking, we don’t know whether he said it immediately,

as soon as he climbed down,

right there where the crowd could hear him,

or whether maybe he said it after dinner and visiting with Jesus.

It doesn’t really matter.

What makes it so extraordinary

is that Zacchaeus would say it at all,

given what we know about him from detail #1.

"Look," he says, "half of my possessions, Lord,

I will give to the poor;

and if I have defrauded anyone of anything" … well, duh …

"I will pay back four times as much."

Good heavens! Zacchaeus has done a complete turnaround.

In an incredibly short period of time,

he has changed entirely:

he’s gone from regular cheating not only to scrupulous honesty,

but beyond that, to restitution;

he has gone from getting all he can to giving all he can;

from selfishness to generosity.

How can that be?

How can such a thing happen?

How can Zacchaeus #2 result from Zacchaeus #1?

The answer is and isn’t very simple: Jesus Christ.

Somehow, in that brief time together,

Jesus "got through" to Zacchaeus,

and he became a different person.

We don’t know how that happens:

there is no chemical equation to describe it;

there’s not even a psychological or religious formula.

All we know is that when we allow ourselves,

our whole selves, even the ugly bits, to come into Christ’s presence,

that we come away from that transformed.

I wonder sometimes if that’s why the outcasts

were so much more eager to seek Jesus out

than the religious leaders were.

The tax collectors, the prostitutes, those who were sick in body and in mind …

they knew their lives needed fixing.

And it might have been, on their part, a selfish choice to begin with;

they might have been willing to anything at all

to ease the pain of their lives.

Imagine what it would have felt like

for one of them to come to Jesus,

and find themselves loved rather than judged,

empowered instead of put down …

Jesus didn’t tell them they had to change –

they knew that!

He simply loved them enough to make it possible.

Ironically, it may be harder for those of us

who aren’t living such outwardly unacceptable lives.

When we have made an effort to be ethical,

and to make moral decisions,

and to choose the right paths,

it’s hard for us to hear that Jesus

nevertheless expects to transform and to reform us.

It feels kind of … insulting.

Like … excuse me, haven’t I been trying hard enough here;

were you not noticing?

Everything I am and everything I do is not good enough?

Surely I don’t need to be totally transformed;

perhaps just a little tune-up would do.

Yet, it seems to me, that this also may give us the reason

that Christianity is growing so rapidly in Third World nations,

in Eastern-bloc countries;

whereas it has stagnated here, and in western Europe.

To us, it is an old, old story.

But for those who have never heard before,

they can see with crystal clarity

the difference in their lives that the love of Christ makes.

It is transformative for them.

And it needs to be, once again, for us.

As we celebrate Reformation Sunday together,

we need to be reminded of the power that Jesus brings

to transform us, to reform us, in the image of God.

We need to ask ourselves, as we come into his presence:

Are we willing to hear his message anew?

Over again,

perhaps even as if for the first time?

Or do we kind of like being stuck in old ways of doing things

while God’s Holy Spirit passes us by with new ones?

Are we like Martin Luther,

encountering for himself Christ’s love instead of judgment,

and hearing something new in his word and wanting to share that …

or are we like the Catholic Church of his day,

encountering Christ but hearing only the same old thing we’ve always heard?

Are we like Zacchaeus,

allowing Christ’s presence and interest and concern

to shape us into something better than we were?

Or are we content as we are,

perhaps not the very best we can be,

but certainly better than some others we could mention?!

God invites all of us to this table,

and as we prepare ourselves to receive that invitation,

to hear it and to respond,

a part of that preparing is opening ourselves up to the possibility

that we might be changed in that encounter.

That God might have in mind for us

something better than we have ever even imagined …

much less, than something we have ever gotten around to living yet.

The table is set,

and God, our host, has welcomed us.

Will we reciprocate?

Will we welcome God into our lives,

to reshape us, to reform us, to love us into something and someone that is new?

It is perhaps a risk,

but not much of one.

If Zacchaeus could be changed that much

and welcome it,

then surely, we can, too.

The table is set.

Let us receive with joy.

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)