Zacchaeus

Finally!

An easy one!

Zacchaeus - the pantomime villain

rich, corrupt, short

Scurrying ahead, pulling up his skirts and climbing a tree

All the ingredients are there for the “baddy” to get his comeuppance.

The people in the crowd must be holding their breath, giddy with excitement.

They know who Zacchaeus is. They know what he has done, and how he makes a living.

You see, Roman tax collectors were’nt paid a salary, as such. Instead, as long as they collected the tax that was due, they could top it up with however much they felt necessary to meet their own needs. They literally got rich enforcing oppression.

Surely, Jesus will make an example of this traitor!

But Jesus, as he so often does, has other ideas

“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today”

And we have this great reversal.

The crowd are spitting tacks

the disciples are amazed

And Zacchaeus, well, Zacchaeus is saved. Transformed. His life is turned inside out and upside down. And as a sign of his transformation he pledges to right the wrongs, give to the poor, pay back his debtors as set out in the law of Moses. (I’ve often wondered how he could pay back 4 times?)

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”

No matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, salvation comes to our house this day too.

Amen?

Amen.

OK, thanks for coming, we can all go home now.

But wait, there’s more!

It’s easy for us to zero in on Zacchaues in this story. I mean, it’s right there in the heading: “Zacchaeus the tax collector.”

But their are two other actors in this encounter.

There’s Jesus, and there’s the crowd.

Jesus is there to bring Good News to all, and to Zacchaeus in particular. Why him? Word of Knowledge? Mutterings of the crowd? We’ll never know, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Jesus sees Zacchaeus and must get involved. There’s a driven-ness, an urgency, a necessity in what Jesus does. Some break-through needs to happen, for Zacchaeus, for the crowd, for the Gospel, even for us perhaps.

You see, salvation doesn’t just happen.

Even in this instance, which is about as sudden and radical as salvation gets, there’s a process at work here.

I’ve thought about this qquite a bit over the last few years.

We tend to think of salvation as dramatic and immediate - think Paul on the Damascus road. And we seek out stories like that and we reinforce the idea that salvation is something that happens like */*

But more often than not there’s a process that speaks of relationship, and speaks of community, and, I believe, is the foundation of so much of the outreach that we are involved in as a church.

Noticing, Presence, Shared experience, Trust, Relationship, Transformation

We see all of these in Zacchaeus’ story, just at an accelerated rate

And that’s where the crowd come in.

Because they do not want this to happen

Luke 19:7 NIV

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

You see what they’ve done there? They’re attempting to interrupt the opportunity for salvation by cutting off the relationshiop before it even begins. Jesus and Zacchjaeus can notice each other, fine. But being present together? An outrage! Shared experience? No way! Trust? Relationship? You’ve got to be kidding!

And you can understand it. Relationshiip is a risky business. Think about what could go wrong? Zacchaeus could betray Jesus, after all, he’s already betrayed his own people. Jesus could be tempted, influenced, , contaminated, watered down in his faith by spedning too much time with such a sinner.

The thing is, if you never risk the relationship, you never give the opportunity for transformation to occur. You never give teh Holy Spirit a chance to work in your life, or in the life of the “sinner” you avoid.

And, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have a sad history in the church of excluding people because we think that they will contaminate us in some way, or that their sins make them impure, and we will be made impure if we spend too much time with them, or include them in our lives.

He’s gone to be the guest of a sinner.

Purity and Holiness

In the time of Jesus, a large part of a life of faith was focused on keeping yourself pure.

The logic goes like this: God is a Holy God, and cannot abide unholiness.

So if we want to be in God’s presence, we need to keep ourselves pure and holy.

Unholiness is like old grease, that stains everything it touches.

The answer?

Don’t let anything, or anyone touch you.

Keep yourself pure and holy. Separate from anything and anyone that might contaminate you with their unholiness.

But that has two unintended conequences: First it is an ever decreasing circle.

Second, it puts limits and boundaries on love. How can you love anyone who might spoil your relationship with God, and with other holy people?

If we’re honest, how much of this thinking do we see in the Church (big c) today? I think it’s a lot.

Contagious Holiness

But Jesus was different. Most of his ministry was spent trying to break that mould. Convincing those on the inside that the barriers between themselves and the lost were not so big as they thought. Reaching out and touching people - often wuite literally - and, instead of being contaminated by unholiness, everything and everyone was made holy by Jesus’ touch.

Instead of the contagious infulness that everyone around him feared, Jesus brought contagious holiness.

Through his courage, through his breaking of barriers, lives were transformed, the Spirit was given freedom to work, and everything that we know and love about our lives of faith was made possible.

The good news? Contagious holiness didn’t start and finish with the likes of Zacchaeus. It didn’t start and finish when you and I were saved. It goes on and on, and we are invited to take part by being like Jesus.

Noticing

Being Present

Sharing Experiences

Building Trust

Building Relationship

And being open to transformation - in those we meet, but even in ourselves too.

Amen