{"id":1463,"date":"2016-10-30T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2019-09-24T14:21:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:21:18","slug":"come-down-zaccheus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/10\/30\/come-down-zaccheus\/","title":{"rendered":"Come Down Zaccheus!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 19:1-10<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

Did we in our own strength confide<\/em><\/p>\n

Our striving would be losing<\/em><\/p>\n

Were not the Right Man on our side<\/em><\/p>\n

The Man of God\u2019s own choosing<\/em><\/p>\n

Dost as who that may be?<\/em><\/p>\n

Christ Jesus it is He<\/em><\/p>\n

Lord Sabaoth His name<\/em><\/p>\n

From age to age the same<\/em><\/p>\n

And he must win the battle<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>It is hard for me to tell, from this angle, which tree you are in.\u00a0 Given the troubles of this autumn, it is hard for me to tell which tree I am in myself, day to day.\u00a0 Has life chased you up the tree of doubt?\u00a0 Or are you treed in the branches of idolatry\u2014idol-a-tree? Or are we shaking or shaking in the money tree? Or stuck without faith in the religion tree?\u00a0 \u00a0Jesus calls us today, to come down out of the tree forts of our own making, and accept a loving relationship with Him.\u00a0 May we measure all with a measure of love.<\/p>\n

Doubting Zaccheus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the presence of unexplained wrong provokes you to doubt the benevolence in life or the goodness in God.\u00a0\u00a0 To doubt that \u2018God is at work in the world to make and to keep human life human\u2019 (<\/em>John Bennett).\u00a0 Randomness may have treed you.<\/p>\n

No one can explain why terrible things happen, as they do.\u00a0 But if you will come down a limb or two from your philosophical tree of doubt, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may hear faith.\u00a0 God can bring good out of evil, and make bad things work to good. This is not a theological declamation, and certainly not a paean to providence.\u00a0 It is just something we can notice together.<\/p>\n

We played golf one day.\u00a0 On the last hole, I pulled out a three wood and hit a grounder, that nonetheless rolled right to the green.\u00a0 If I had connected, I would have smashed the clubhouse window, for it was way too much club.\u00a0 Sometimes a bad thing, a worm burner golf shot, interferes with a really bad thing, a $1000 broken window.<\/p>\n

One Sunday, years ago, I drove late to church.\u00a0 I used to run early Sunday and finish memorizing the sermon along the way, as I did on that Lord\u2019s Day.\u00a0 I just forgot the time.\u00a0 We raced to church , and in so doing I cut a corner, literally, and so popped a car tire.\u00a0 I was not happy to hear my son say, \u201chaste makes waste\u201d.\u00a0 You know, though, both rear tires were thin.\u00a0 I had replaced the front two months earlier, and forgot about the rear ones.\u00a0 I have to admit, it was good that I had reason to replace them, before I had a blowout, on the highway.\u00a0 Sometimes it happens that a bad thing prevents a really terrible thing from happening.<\/p>\n

Joseph was thrown into a pit, and sold into slavery.\u00a0 He had to find his way, as a Jew, in the service of the mighty Pharaoh.\u00a0 He did so with skill, and rose to a position of influence, even with Potiphar\u2019s wife chasing him around in his underwear.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, a full generation later, a great famine came upon those brothers who had earlier sold Joseph down the river.\u00a0 They went to Pharaoh, looking for food.\u00a0 And who met them, as they came to plead?\u00a0 There was Joseph.\u00a0 He so memorably said, as written in Genesis 50: \u201cYou meant this for evil, but God meant it for good, that many might be saved.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it happens that a bad thing in one generation prevents starvation in the next.<\/p>\n

So in Jericho, as Jesus found the little man up in the tree, his fellows grumbled (vs. 8).\u00a0 Why would he take time with such a greedy, selfish person who makes his living off the sweat of others\u2019 brows?\u00a0 That hurts, to see divine attention given to those who have harmed you.\u00a0 Why would he have a meal with someone who takes no thought for the hurt of God\u2019s people?\u00a0 This is bad!\u00a0 And it is.\u00a0 We miss the power of the parable if we do not see this.\u00a0 This is Jesus taking up with those who have wished the church ill, who have used the church for their own very well intended but nonetheless self-centered reasons.\u00a0 This is Jesus consorting with sinners.\u00a0 But sometimes a bad thing in the little brings a good thing in the large.\u00a0 Zaccheus changes, and in so doing provides great wealth for others\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n

Come down from this one tree, doubting Zaccheus.\u00a0 I know that bad things happen to good people, and as a pastor hardly anything troubles me more.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, sometimes\u2014not always, just sometimes–a bad thing early averts a really bad thing late.\u00a0 I have seen it, and you have too.\u00a0 It is enough to give someone up the doubting tree a reason to come down at least a branch.\u00a0 Think of it as existential vaccination.<\/p>\n

It is the labor of faith to trust that where sin abounds, grace over-abounds.\u00a0 Even in this autumn of anxiety and depression. But one of the redeeming possibilities in this season of cultural demise is the chance that as a result, enough of us, now, will become enough committed to the realization of a just, participatory and sustainable world, that these darker days will move us toward a fuller light. Sometimes a bad thing in one part of history protects us from a worse thing in another part.<\/p>\n

Let us not lose sight of the horizons of biblical hope, as improbable as they can seem.\u00a0 The lion and the lamb.\u00a0 No crying or thirst.\u00a0 The crooked straight.\u00a0 All flesh.<\/p>\n

The divine delight comes still from saving the lost, including the forgotten, seeking the outcast, retrieving the wayward sons and daughters of Abraham.\u00a0 God wants your salvation.\u00a0 Your salvation \u201chas personal, domestic, social, and economic consequences\u201d (Craddock).\u00a0 Jesus Christ saves us from doubt.<\/p>\n

So come down Zaccheus, come down from your perch in that comfortable sycamore tree, that comfortable pew, that skeptical reserve, that doubt.\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus!\u00a0 The Lord Jesus Christ has need of your household and your money, and He responds to your doubt.<\/p>\n

Idolatrous Zaccheus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>Come down Zaccheus, down from your overly zealous leanings, hanging out on the branch of life.\u00a0 Idolatry comes when we make one or more of the lesser, though significant, loyalties in life to become a shadow of the one great loyalty, that which the heart owes alone to God.\u00a0 Zaccheus had governmental responsibility, community status, a welcoming home, a fine family, and we can suspect he was loyal in these regards.\u00a0 Curious as he was, up on his branch, he had no relationship with the divine.\u00a0 Into this relationship, Jesus invites him.\u00a0 More precisely, Jesus invites himself into relationship with a man up a tree.\u00a0 He is invited into a whole new life, a new world of loving and faithful relationships, that stem from the one great loyalty.<\/p>\n

We need to be careful about lesser loyalties this fall.<\/p>\n

Remember last week, and our prayer for forgiveness of sin?\u00a0 We confessed lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and\u2026\u2019integrity without humility\u2019, pride.\u00a0 Say you were an attorney general in a state with a governor\u2019s election ten days away.\u00a0 You find a folder on your desk, empty, but with a pending potential investigation.\u00a0 You feel that your integrity requires that you tell the whole inhabited earth about a pending possible investigation about which you know nothing.\u00a0 You remember your Boy Scout law (trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent), and decide your integrity requires a statement.\u00a0 But what of your humility? (The scout motto\u2014a good turn daily\u2014not just the law). \u00a0Humility would require you to consider due process, to consider past practice near elections, to consider the advice of your colleagues in law enforcement, and to consider the nuances of the situation and your conscience.\u00a0 Integrity, alone, bulldozes blazes and blasts\u00a0 past all these.\u00a0 Harm is done.\u00a0 Integrity without humility is the worst of the seven deadly sins\u2014pride.\u00a0 When we grow up, sometimes, we recognize the peril of integrity alone, the great steed of integrity, without the bit and bridle and saddle of humility\u2014pride.<\/p>\n

Yet all of this involves a lesser loyalty than the one owed to God.\u00a0\u00a0 We can forget whose water we were baptized into, if we are not careful.\u00a0 Rather, let us remember the student of Paul who wrote 2 Thessalonians: your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing (2 Thess. 1: 4).<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you see the danger?\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus, come down, before it is too late.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Make sure your lesser loyalties\u2014to government, family, home, all—do not cover over, do not shadow the one great loyalty, that all of your daily tasks do not eclipse a living memory of a common dream:<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>We harbor a common dream, a dream that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, will find peace through deft leadership toward nuclear d\u00e9tente.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make education, free education, available to all children, poor and rich.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our nation, fractured by flagrant unjust inequality between rich and poor children, will stand up and make health care, free health care, available to all children, poor and rich.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, will sit at a long Thanksgiving table, this autumn, and share the turkey and pass the potatoes, and slice the pie, and, if grudgingly, show kindness and pity to one another.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, a dream that women\u2014our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, all\u2014granted suffrage less than 100 years ago, will be spared any and all forms of harassment and abuse, verbal or physical, on college campuses, in homes and families, in offices and bars, in life and work, and long having suffered and now having suffrage, will in our time rise up to be honored, revered, and compensated, without reserve, but with justice and mercy.<\/p>\n

We harbor a common dream, finally a dream not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.<\/p>\n

Wealthy Zaccheus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Come down Zaccheus, come down, at last.\u00a0 Impediments to faith come through doubt and idolatry and resentment and religion, but none of these holds a candle to the harm that wealth can bring.\u00a0 In global terms and in historical terms, every one of us in this room is wealthy.\u00a0 Ours are first world problems.\u00a0 Luke\u2019s entire gospel, especially its central chapters, is aimed at this point.\u00a0 For Luke\u2019s community, the remembered teachings of Jesus about wealth were most important.\u00a0 That tells me that the Lukan church had money, and so do we.\u00a0 This is what makes the account of Zaccheus, \u201cone who lined his own pockets at other people\u2019s expense\u201d, so dramatic for Luke, and so Luke concludes his travel narrative with this clarion call:\u00a0 come down.\u00a0 Be careful as you do not to trip over wealth, power or health.\u00a0 We lose them all, give them all away, over time.\u00a0 They are impermanences.\u00a0 They go.\u00a0 Better that we see so early.\u00a0 Time flies\u2014ah no.\u00a0 Time stays\u2014we go.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t you love to know what Jesus said to Zaccheus that caused him to give away half of what he had?\u00a0 I would.<\/p>\n

It is a western, white, male, educated, wealthy, healthy, heterosexual, middle class, two handed world.\u00a0 I need to be reminded of that.\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus, and feel the pain of others.\u00a0 And:\u00a0 Soon we will all be dead.\u00a0 Maybe we could find ways to use whatever power we have now to honor God, love our neighbor, reflect our mortality, and affirm the powerless.\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus, come down!<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>Before we left seminary, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1978, an odd event befell us.\u00a0 I worked nights as a security guard in those years and would come home to sleep at 7am.\u00a0 Jan had the day off, and left to shop, but left the door to our little apartment ajar, by accident.\u00a0 About noon a street woman found her way into the building and up into our floor, and then into our room.\u00a0 I woke up to see a very poor, deranged woman, fingering rosary beads, and mumbling just over my head.\u00a0 Boy did I shout.\u00a0 She ran into the next room and I stumbled downstairs to call the police.\u00a0 By the time three of New York\u2019s finest and I returned to the apartment, the poor lady was in the bathtub, singing and washing.\u00a0 They took her away.\u00a0 Jan came back at 3 and asked how I had slept.\u00a0 The moment has stayed in the memory, though, as an omen.\u00a0 Our wealth is meant for the cleansing of the poor of the earth.\u00a0 Perhaps tthe Lord wanted me to remember that in ministry, so I have tried to.\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus, and use your wealth for the poor.<\/p>\n

Religious Zaccheus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk for a moment about religion, shall we?\u00a0 Come down Zaccheus, come down!\u00a0 No amount of religious apparatus can ever substitute for what Jesus is offering today, and that is loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of theological astuteness can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of sturdy churchmanship can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of righteous indignation can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of church music, instrumental or vocal, can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of formal religion can ever substitute for the power of loving relationship.\u00a0 Jesus invites us into loving relationship with him, and so with each other.\u00a0 That is salvation.\u00a0 Are we lovers anymore?<\/p>\n

Like Zaccheus in the tree, religion can dwell above Jesus, high and aloof.\u00a0 Is it good to be above Jesus?<\/p>\n

It was the German monk Martin Luther who, in 1517, went alone and nailed his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, and thereby splintered inherited religion to bits.\u00a0 The words of this same Luther were read, as interpretation of Romans 8, on the rainy night in London, 1738, along Aldersgate Street, as John Wesley\u2019s heart, at long last, was strangely warmed, and he came down from the tree of religion, to sit at table with the Faith of Christ.\u00a0 We remember Luther this Sunday every year.\u00a0 We pointedly remember that we are saved by faith, by faith alone, by grace we are saved by faith, and not by any or all the works of the law.<\/p>\n

Here is an old, ostensibly humorous story.\u00a0 A man approaches the pearly gates.\u00a0 \u201cTell me about the good in your life (says Peter):\u00a0 admission requires 100 points.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, I once gave to the United Way (1 point).\u00a0 And, I remember I shoveled a neighbor\u2019s walk (1 point).\u00a0 I used to go to church (1 point).\u201d\u00a0 (Pause).\u00a0 \u2018You, know I\u2019ll never make it to 100 points except by the grace of God\u2019.\u00a0 (GRACE OF GOD\u201497 POINTS).<\/em><\/p>\n

Luther recalls us down from the religion tree, to sit at the table of faith:<\/p>\n

\u201cSola Fide\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCrux Sola Nostra Theologia\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSin Boldly, but trust upon the Lord Jesus Christ more boldly still\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the midst of the affliction He counsels, strengthens confirms, nourishes, and favors us\u2026. More over, when we have repented, He instantly remits the sins as well as the punishments. In the same manner parents ought to handle their children
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThus every matter, if it is to be done well, calls for the attention of the whole person.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God. But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself. Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and is the debt I owe them\u2026My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed. Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is with all these qualities that we must stand before God and intervene on\u00a0behalf of those who do not have them, as though clothed with someone else\u2019s garment\u2026But even before men we must, with the same love, render them service against their detractors and those who are violent toward them; for this is what Christ did for us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching is of more importance than urging.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne learns more of Christ in being married and rearing children than in several lifetimes spent in study in a monastery<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne becomes a theologian by living, by dying, and by being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculation<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would it profit us to possess and perform everything else and be like pure saints, if we meanwhile neglected our chief purpose in life, namely, the care of the young?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWithout a doubt we are named after Christ \u2013 not absent from us but dwelling within us; in other words: provided that we believe in him and that, in turn and mutuality, we are a second Christ to one another, doing for our neighbors as Christ does for us.\u201d (“The Freedom of a Christian,\u201d The Annotated Luther, Vol. 1: The Roots of Reform, Timothy J. Wengert, Ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 525).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/em>Come down Zaccheus!\u00a0 Come down from the doubting tree, the tree of idolatry, the wealth tree, the tree of religion.\u00a0 Come down and receive the Gospel:\u00a0 Jesus invites us into loving relationship with himself, and thereby into loving relationship with our neighbors.<\/p>\n

Did we in our own strength confide<\/em><\/p>\n

Our striving would be losing<\/em><\/p>\n

Were not the Right Man on our side<\/em><\/p>\n

The Man of God\u2019s own choosing<\/em><\/p>\n

Dost as who that may be?<\/em><\/p>\n

Christ Jesus it is He<\/em><\/p>\n

Lord Sabaoth His name<\/em><\/p>\n

From age to age the same<\/em><\/p>\n

And he must win the battle<\/em><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Luke 19:1-10 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only Did we in our own strength confide Our striving would be losing Were not the Right Man on our side The Man of God\u2019s own choosing Dost as who that may be? Christ Jesus it is He Lord […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}