As a way of actually getting some content on here, I’ve decided to post my sermons/reflections in case they’re of value to anyone. Here’s yesterday’s, which is based on the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). You can watch the whole service here: https://youtu.be/tVAC5AAMOb4.
What do you see when you hear the story of Zacchaeus?
What do you imagine?
What pictures are in your mind’s eye?
Perhaps it’s a Sunday School or Junior Church group singing that song.
I suppose the trouble is that it stops about 2/3 of the way through the story.
Perhaps it’s a young children’s Bible or story book about Zacchaeus, with cute and cartoony characters on it, normally with the man himself either up a tree or rather awkwardly climbing down.
Now: I have no problem with children hearing and telling and exploring this story in their own way – after all, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God belongs to such as them.
But is that all we see this story as? A story of a short man who climbed up a tree to see Jesus and was rewarded by hosting a tea party for the Son of God?
A story about a short, but resourceful, man who was able to find a way to see Jesus when all other routes were blocked off?
A nice, sweet story about redemption?
Some see it as a story of the vindication of Zacchaeus: they claim in his little speech to Jesus, he’s saying that he always gives away half his possessions and refunds 4x anything he wrongly charged people. Jesus is merely pointing this out to the rest of the crowd.
What do you see in the story of Jesus?
The reason I ask about what you see is because the story of Zacchaeus is in a sense a story about seeing: about what people see, who people see, and how they see them.
For example: while the song and the storybooks see Zacchaeus as merely short, and maybe a bit funny, perhaps a little bit mean, the people of Jericho did not see him that way.
He was, in their words, a sinner: a traitor working for the Romans; an extortion artist; a man who’d got rich by ripping off the people of the town and, quite probably, the other tax collectors who worked for him.
He was, in short, a right… well, I can’t say that word. Use your imaginations!
That’s how they saw him: not as comic relief, but as someone to be righteously shunned. And maybe they were glad he couldn’t see Zacchaeus.
Which is, of course, another of the “seeings” in this story.
Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but couldn’t, because he was too short.
We don’t know why he wanted to: maybe it was the thrill of seeing someone famous, like the crowds outside Downing Street when something important’s happening, or the people waiting outside the Stage Door of the theatre.
Maybe he just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Or maybe he’d heard about how this Jesus treated people like him. He’d heard the stories – and the complaints – of how Jesus had a tendency to eat and drink and keep company with tax collectors and sinners.
To welcome them and not run away from them.
To show them – dare he think it – some love that no one else did.
We don’t – can’t – know the reasons why Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. But I wonder if this was part of it.
Because it seems like Jesus did see people like him differently to everyone else.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Jesus was oblivious to what they were up to; I don’t think he thought they were just “misunderstood”.
After all, in one parable he compares them to a younger son who takes his inheritance before his father dies and blows it all on wild living. That’s not good, or just “misunderstood”.
He knew their sin. He knew their state. And he knew the damage they’d caused others.
But he saw them not just as sinners, but as people who were lost. Who’d taken the wrong route, got themselves in a mess that they couldn’t get out of and needed someone to get them out of it.
And the only way they were going to undo that damage was by being found – by being seen.
So Jesus saw Zacchaeus. Looked up in the sycamore tree and saw him, perhaps before Zacchaeus saw him.
And Jesus saw what he’d seen in other tax collectors: a lost son of Abraham, who was hurting himself and others and needed bringing home.
So he invited himself round to stay – as you do.
And, Luke tells us, “all the people” saw this. More seeing.
Now, in the story before this, “all the people” had seen Jesus do something else – give sight to a blind man on the outskirts of the city.
And when “all the people” saw that, they praised God for this great miracle.
But when “all the people” saw Jesus go to Zacchaeus’ house, they did not praise God. They did not give thanks for a miracle. They grumbled and complained, “he’s gone to the house of a sinner”, as if Jesus wasn’t in the regular habit of doing just that.
Which is a shame, really. Because they were seeing a miracle of equal grace and power as the one they’d just seen.
They just didn’t recognise it. They didn’t see what was happening in the right way.
But Zacchaeus did.
He’d seen what Jesus was truly about. He knew that Jesus wasn’t a human reward chart for those who thought they did well; he was a human lifebelt for those who knew they were sinking fast, possibly taking others with them, and needing help urgently.
And Zacchaeus saw it, took hold hold of it and clung to it for dear life.
So he gives away half his stuff – right there and then. And he promises to give back 4x as much to anyone he’d defrauded.
I bet if you’d gone back to Jericho later on, what you’d have seen is a massive refund queue outside Zacchaeus’ house or office.
But what we saw at that moment was God’s grace doing its saving work in Zacchaeus’ life.
And what does Jesus see in all of this?
Salvation.
Mission accomplished. Someone brought back from the brink, rescued from ruin, someone who belonged in the family but who’d hurt it restored and renewed, able to stop hurting others and himself and give them life instead.
So back to that question: how do you see the story of Zacchaeus?
What about Zacchaeus himself: a short man in a tree? A scoundrel, thief and traitor? A lost soul who needed someone to bring him home?
What about Jesus: a nice guy who does something good for someone? A potentially good man with a bad habit of spending time with the wrong people? Someone who brings God’s grace to those who need it most?
And what about that grace of God that reaches out and changes Zacchaeus’ life?
The grace that refuses to see someone just as a write-off, or beyond the pale, but that goes after them to try and bring them back – how do you see it?
Do you see it at work in your life at all?
Have you seen it change or transform someone else’s life?
Who are the Zacchaeuses of our day who need to see, hear and receive that grace? The ones whom it might not be popular to go to, but who are longing for a change, a way back, someone to find them and drag them home.
We live in a world that loves to divide people into goodies and baddies: people it can praise and venerate and people it can dismiss, ignore, cancel.
Jericho saw Zacchaeus as squarely in the ‘baddie’ camp: but Jesus saw more than that.
How can we ask and allow Jesus to change the way we see people, the ones we’re tempted to write off as baddies?
How can he use us to help them to see him and his wonderful, saving grace?
Picture by Aaron Burden, unsplash.com
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