Trying to See Who Jesus Was – a Sermon for Ordinary 31

This morning I preached this sermon as a candidating sermon.  I hope to write more about the process that got me here, but for now I need to figure out things like finding a place to live and moving.  And yes, I got the job.

Zacchaeus had lived in Jericho his whole life, but he didn’t feel at home among his people.  Yes, he was a Jew, but he was treated like an outcast by his neighbors because of his day job.  By trade, Zacchaeus was a tax collector.  In fact, he was the Chief Tax Collector – hired by the Roman Empire to collect the taxes for Caesar.  It was a hard job.  People didn’t like paying taxes to an occupying force.  He sometimes had to do nasty things to get people to pay.  But he was paid very well and had a lot of money.  Still he wasn’t happy.

Zacchaeus had heard about this Jesus fellow.  Here was a guy who was going around the countryside teaching about the way of God, teaching about what it is like in the Kingdom of God.  He didn’t really understand much of it, but he had heard stories about Jesus healing people – sinners even.  Zacchaeus knew he was a sinner, and he knew that something was missing in his life, although he didn’t know what it was that he was longing for.

One day, the news went around town that Jesus would be passing through Jericho that afternoon.  The town was all a buzz about this visit.  The Pharisees were planning on inviting Jesus to stay with them in their house that night – hoping to get a blessing for their pious work in the town.  People from all over Jericho began to gather along the street in hopes of getting a glimpse of this man.  Some were even hoping for healing from their various ailments.

When Zacchaeus heard about Jesus’ travel through town, a thought came to him – a thought from the depth of his soul – he just HAD to see who this Jesus guy was.  Is he who he says he is?  Zacchaeus couldn’t figure out why he had to see Jesus, he just knew he must find a way to see him.

Zacchaeus made his way through town to the road where the crowds were gathered.  Now, being a short man, he had difficulty seeing above the crowds in front of him.  He tried pushing his way through, but the people in the crowd wouldn’t let him get past.  Feeling more convinced that he just HAD to see this Jesus guy, he ran ahead of the procession a ways until he came to a large sycamore tree.  If you have ever seen a sycamore tree, you know they are great for climbing.  Seeing this tree, and its great limbs arch over the crowd and reach towards the street, Zacchaeus gets an idea.  He decided to climb the tree and shimmy along one of the branches until he was directly over the road.  There was no way he was going to miss Jesus now!

He saw Jesus come over the rise in the road, with a throng of people crowding around him and trying to get near him.  There was a group of people, his disciples maybe, that were trying to keep the crowds at bay.  And as Jesus neared the spot where Zacchaeus was perched, he looked up and saw the man in the tree.

“Zacchaeus,” Jesus called up to him, “hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

With excitement, Zacchaeus made his way down out of the tree and with a beaming smile welcomed Jesus, leading the way to his house.

As I sat down this week to study today’s Gospel lesson, one thing kept standing out to me each time I read through the text:

Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was.

He was trying to see who Jesus was.

And as I read this sentence over and over again, I began to wonder if Zacchaeus was trying to find something else as well.

• What if Zacchaeus was trying to find something to believe in?
• What if Zacchaeus was trying to find meaning in his life?
• What if Zacchaeus was trying to make sense of the world?

Does this change the meaning of this passage if we read it through this lens?  I don’t think so.

When I read the story of Zacchaeus as a story of a man on a journey to find something to believe in, the story that emerges from the text is a classic conversion story.  Zacchaeus embarks on a quest to see who this Jesus was and comes away converted to the ways of Jesus and forgiven of all his sins.

Zacchaeus, considered an outcast by society, was selected by Jesus out of all the others to stay with.  This singular act of welcoming by Jesus caused something to change in Zacchaeus.  A change of heart that spurred Zacchaeus to blurt out his repentance even before Jesus offered forgiveness.  It was a transformation that deserved to be celebrated.

How cool would it be if the Church was a place that sparked transformation in the way that Jesus did in Zacchaeus?  And how awesome would it be if the Church celebrated these transformations – big and small – as a community?

You see, I believe we are all a bit like Zacchaeus.  We come to church for a variety of reasons, and I think that many of these reasons are similar to why Zacchaeus had climbed up that tree.  We come to church because:

• We are trying to see who this Jesus was
• We are trying to find something to believe in
• We are trying to find some meaning in our lives
• We are trying to make sense of the world we live in
• We are trying to discover our true selves
• We are yearning for connections to God, to our neighbors, and to the world

The Church is the perfect place for this kind of searching.  The Church has been guiding people on their journeys for thousands of years, but in recent years I have begun to notice that there are some churches out there that don’t welcome this kind of faith exploration unless you ended up believing the correct doctrine that the particular pastor of that church was teaching.

What would it be like if we as a church consciously made room for this kind of searching?

When I was in confirmation class, this is exactly what happened.

In my confirmation class we were encouraged to ask questions.  There even was a “question jar.”  Each week we would take some time in class to take a question from the jar and answer it.  Instead of the pastor quoting some doctrinal answer for us, she always turned the question back to us, asking us what we thought.  What happened after the usual awkward silence of thirteen year olds, became a group discussion – sometimes very lively – about some deep and interesting theological questions.  I don’t recall if we ever came up with any satisfactory answers, but we sure did question.

It was during this time that I came to understand my faith not as a destination that I would arrive at when I learned all the answers to our questions, but began to understand my faith as an ever evolving journey in which I struggled to understand and constantly questioned, in the process believing even more deeply.

This was the first of my transformation moments.  A first conversion if you want to call it that.  And it happened because of the support of my church.

If I am called by the congregation to be the Associate Pastor of Children and Youth here at St. John’s United Church of Christ, I hope to encourage us to become a place that sparks transformation in the way that Jesus did in Zacchaeus.

In my work with the Sunday School, the Youth Ministries, and at St. John’s Camp, my hope is to make this a place that welcomes searching – welcomes people where they are on the journey and helps them find their own path towards Jesus.

My hope is to make this a place that allows God to be discovered.

My hope is to make this a place where the outcasts and the sinners are welcomed with open arms the same way we welcome our old friends.

My hope is to make this a place that reaches out to the world through mission work, showing the all encompassing love of God.

My hope is that when one of us has a transformation along our journey, we stop for a minute to celebrate that transformation.

When Zacchaeus was transformed by the amazing power of God’s love in Jesus, Jesus proclaimed to him and to the world that it was time for a celebration.

“Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Let us be a place where we welcome the seekers, welcome those on the journey – and walk with them hand in hand, celebrating our transformations.

Amen.

 

 

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