". . . a wee little man was he . . ." I grew up with this song, and I remember it always being so much fun to sing, right up there with such "chin-up-chin-down, spin-around, sit-down" riots as Father Abraham. So, naturally, I cannot read the story from Luke 19:1-10 without hearing the refrain about a "wee little man" in my head. Of course, the kid's Zachaeus song capitalizes on something that all children have in common with the "little man": Shortness. Children are accustomed to finding themselves unable to see over a crowd, standing on tiptoes, climbing up onto dad's shoulders, standing on their seats during a play. Yes, all children can identify with Zachaeus's struggle to see Jesus pass by.
But Zachaeus's shortness is only one of the important things about him. Pastor Harsha pointed out in his sermon yesterday that there is a certain contradiction in Zachaeus's character. First, his was a short man would could easily be lost in and unnoticed by a crowd. Second, however, he was rich, the tax collector whose visit everyone dreaded. He could not see over the crowd, and yet, he held the power of Roman authority over the heads of everyone else in Jericho. On the one hand, his height made him unnoticeable. On the other, his job made him notorious. By noticing Zachaeus, by staying at his house, Jesus steps over both these problems. He sees the unnoticed, and accepts the unacceptable. But Jesus's acceptance starts not with Jesus himself, but with Zachaeus, making the effort to climb that tree and see over that crowd in the first place. And the story ends not with Jesus giving Zachaeus anything, so that he might now be accepted by the people around him, but with Zachaeus recognizing his own resources, the ability he always had to help other people, and deciding to finally put those resources to use for God. We all have times when we feel lost in a crowd, insignificant, too small to do anything - times when even we grownups can identify with the "wee little man." The world is huge, its need is extreme, and each of us is only one person, who can do only so much. But Zachaeus's story reminds us that when Jesus calls, it is not to have us do something beyond our capability. We are called to use what we already have, to actually reach the potential that God has already given us. Zachaeus realized that he could turn his ability to make money into help for the poor. Perhaps he always knew this, but it took a sit-down with Jesus to actually get him and his resources set on the right path. So what good might your own resources do for this world, if you, like Zachaeus, took the trouble to sit down with Jesus today?
0 Comments
As we approach the coming Sunday and another worship service, I would like to turn back one more time to last week's message, and dwell for a moment on one of the most enegmatic statements from Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well: "A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks," (John 4:23).
In the last post, I spoke about misunderstanding, and how we have a tendency to put people into boxes. Jesus breaks through these boxes, or simply ignores them, in order to minister to people according to what they need, not what society says they deserve. In the statement above, Jesus is breaking through another box, one which humans often draw not around people, but around worship itself. We package worship, order it, build places for it to happen, so we can know exactly what to expect when we walk in the door, and see as little change as possible in ourselves when we walk out that door again. This was no different in the first century when Jesus walked the earth. Just as we today often argue over insignificant things like what worship looks like, how songs are sung, or where furniture is placed in the sanctuary, in the first century, Samaritans like the woman at the well and Jews like Jesus found themselves arguing over the place where worship should take place. The woman brings the topic up, stating the well-known fact that Jews claimed Jerusalem as the only place for true worship, while Samaritans worshiped on a holy mountain. The woman expects Jesus to join in this old debate, to support his Jewish side of it by some argument for why Jerusalem, the Holy City of David, was "more holy" than the mountain. Then the woman could come back with her own predictable argument, about a connection to her Samaritan ancestors, and the superiority of the mountain where those ancestors had always worshiped. It should have been a "safe" debate, one which had been going on for centuries, and one which neither side could win. Instead, as he so often does, Jesus breaks the predictable pattern. He sidesteps the argument, and declares that both sides have misunderstood what worship itself is all about. God is not about places, but about Spirit, and true worshipers will "worship in spirit and truth," (John 4:24). In Greek, the same word means both spirit and breath, and metaphorically can mean "life." Wherever the breath in your lungs connects you back to the Spirit which created all life, including yours, there is the appropriate place in which to worship. It is not a question of Jerusalem or the mountain, not a question of the church building or the beachfront, but a question of intention and honesty. This is still the relevant question for us today, because only a worship which consumes all our life, takes all the breath inside of us, and requires complete honesty, the telling of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, can be genuine. This means that at times worship may in fact come from a negative place inside us, requiring us to purge our darkest thoughts and talk about the worst parts of ourselves, in order to see those things taken from us, so that the good inside us can come out. God does not want the polished and whitewashed versions of ourselves that we put forward for job interview, first dates, and to attract new clients. There is a reason, after all, that Jesus in his ministry attracted the sick, the weak, the poor, the marginalized, the tax collectors, the sinners - not because these were the only people who needed help, but because these were the people who could admit it, who could worship in Spirit and in Truth. This coming Sunday, we will examine one such story, in which the hated tax collector Zacchaeus finds his way to Jesus (Luke 19:1-10). Join us on Sunday to see how his life is changed by the encounter with the ultimate Truth, Jesus Christ. This Sunday, in our journey through the Gospel of John, we stopped to consider the story of the woman at the well (John 4). In this story, Jesus meets a person with whom, according to the customs of his day, he should not have had anything to do: a Samaritan, who was also a woman, and had a questionable past at that. So, of course, in true Jesus style, when confronted with someone he shouldn't even make eye-contact with, Jesus goes ahead and begins a full on, rational, philosophical, theological debate with her.
On Sunday, Pastor Harsha tied this story of the woman at the well back to last three Sunday messages, speaking of how people constantly misunderstand Jesus and his mission on earth. We remember that in the very first chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus is the light that came into the world to bring clarity - but the world misunderstood, and did not accept. We remember one of the first disciples, Nathanael, who immediately dismissed the validity of this preacher from Galilee, and almost didn't even go to meet Jesus, because he assumed that no true teacher could come from that part of the world. And then there was Nicodemus, who in John 3, only one chapter before the woman at the well, never quite managed to wrap his head around the whole "be born again" thing. The story of the woman at the well highlights many misunderstandings that humans had and still have about God, Jesus, and the work of God's Spirit in this world. Specifically, we put people into categories, define them by their nationality, goodness, life circumstances, achievements, and even things as arbitrary as favorite sports' teams. The Jews of Jesus's day expected a Messiah who would affirm their biases, agree with their teachers, and in general confirm their own worldview - a worldview which said Samaritans were less than Jews, women could not engage in philosophical debate, and divorced women were impure. Likewise, many of us today expect a God who likes the people that we like, ascribes to the morality we find comfortable, and supports, in general, our way of life. What we get, however, and what the Jews of the first century got, is and was a Jesus who dealt with the Dishonorable Samaritan Woman in exactly the same way he dealt, a chapter earlier, with the Honorable Jewish Male Teacher. And ironically, while Nicodemus the learned scholar fails to completely grasp Jesus's message, it appears that the woman, whom Jesus should never have bothered to talk to anyway, actually does end up understanding him. Jesus's discussion with the woman at the well is very similar to his prior conversation with Nicodemus. Both deal with issues of God's Spirit and salvation through Jesus himself. With Nicodemus the scholar, however, Jesus never manages to move beyond abstract statements. To the end, Nicodemus is confused, and cannot come to understand who Jesus really is. Like the woman at the well, he declares that Jesus is a teacher from God (her word was prophet), but cannot go further, cannot comprehend exactly how great the man talking to him is. To the woman, however, Jesus is able to declare himself, to tell her that he is the Messiah for whom she, her people, and the Jews are all waiting. As one who has been misunderstood, she is now able to understand what learned Nicodemus could not. She is able to see Jesus for who he truly is, more than a teacher, and more than a prophet. And she is able to pass that knowledge on to her entire village. She set aside her preconceptions to speak with the Jewish man who by all the rules of society should never have spoken to her, and in that openness, she found the truth. Her story reminds us to be open to the guidance of a Spirit which does not always act as we expect, and a Savior who reaches out for all people, no matter what. |