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Vantage Point
Luke 19: 1-10 Preached FCCW 10-30-2016
Being tall has its advantages.
Statistics show that the voting public tends to elect the taller candidate.
And if you can combine being tall with an ability to shoot 3-pointers consistently, the
advantages of being tall can be numbered in the millions of dollars of an NBA contract.
It seems like a rule of thumb, that height translates into success for many people.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.
Zacchaeus had managed to acquire both wealth and political connections, even though he was,
as Luke describes him, “short in stature.”
But even if Zacchaeus had stood head and shoulders above the crowd,
that would not have changed the fact that he was looked down upon by his neighbors.
Zacchaeus’ name means, pure or innocent.
But trust me, Zacchaeus was neither.
Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in the bustling city of Jericho, which made him one of the
most despised people in town.
One day, Jesus shows up in Jericho.
The crowds line the streets as Jesus makes his way through the city.
They are there to catch a glimpse of this prophet, teacher and miracle worker whose fame was
quickly spreading across the land.
Zacchaeus is there, too.
We are not told what made him so curious about Jesus.
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Maybe he had heard that this Jesus befriended sinners… even tax collectors.
And Lord knows, Zacchaeus could use a friend.
But Zacchaeus isn’t having much luck seeing Jesus.
His view is blocked by the crowd.
I can just picture him jumping up and down,
attempting to catch a glimpse of Jesus over the shoulders of the taller people in the crowd.
Or trying to squeeze between them to get a clear view.
Maybe, if it had been someone else,
somebody might have politely stepped aside to let him through,
but courtesy was a gift that no one wanted to waste on the likes of Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus is determined, though.
He frantically searches for a vantage point from which he will be able to see Jesus.
Finding a sycamore tree, he runs to it and clambers up through its branches,
finding a perch from which he can finally see Jesus clearly.
In that time and culture it was undignified for a man to run or to climb trees.
Any man who did either of those things would be considered a laughingstock.
So, when Jesus paused beneath that sycamore tree and looked up into its branches,
the whole crowd followed his gaze.
Derisive laughter rippled through the crowd at the sight of Zacchaeus' inglorious position.
Only, Jesus wasn't laughing.
Jesus called him down from his perch.
Not to belittle him, as the crowd might have hoped.
Instead, Jesus invites himself to have dinner with Zacchaeus at the tax collector’s home.
Nobody who saw and heard what was going on, thought this was a very good idea.
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They openly complained that out of all the people in Jericho who had turned out to welcome
Jesus, Jesus chose the most unwelcome among them,
with whom to share the intimacy of table fellowship.
Jesus’ choice transformed a friendly crowd into a mob of suspicious and resentful grumblers.
But the most important transformation that day was in the character of Zacchaeus.
He climbed down from the sycamore tree and stood before Jesus.
Then he looked up at Jesus and pledged to give half of his possessions to the poor.
But he didn't stop there!
He said, “If I have defrauded anyone of anything,
I will pay back four times as much.”
Hearing that, half the people in the crowd turned to their neighbor and sneered:
“IF he has defrauded anyone?! There is no IF.”
Everyone knew that Zacchaeus had only gotten to where he was by defrauding others.
If you were a tax collector that’s what you did.
Yet, when you add up what it would cost him to give half of his possessions to the poor,
and to pay four times the amount he had extorted from others,
he had essentially bankrupted himself.
What Zacchaeus was offering went above and beyond what the Law of Moses required of him.
He wasn’t reluctantly calculating the minimum restitution he must give to be absolved of his
sins.
He was joyfully and gratefully giving as a response to being found and accepted by Jesus.
We don’t know what Zacchaeus expected to see when he finally got a clear view of Jesus.
Maybe he was as shocked as everybody else at the positive attention Jesus gave him.
Maybe he had already felt the stirrings of a guilty conscience about the life had been living,
and wondered if Jesus could help him turn it around.
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He might have heard about other tax collectors, and prostitutes, and lepers,
that had found acceptance when Jesus passed through their towns,
and wondered if such a thing were too good to be true for him.
Zacchaeus has a lesson to teach us all, I think.
It is so easy to lose sight of Jesus in our own lives.
He can get lost in the maze of commitments and diversions that congest our world.
Perhaps what obstructs your view of Jesus is some false image of him that got handed down to
you,
or some church that failed to express love and acceptance to you.
There might be pain from an unhealed wound or the ache of an unresolved grief.
There could be guilt or shame for a past that makes you want to hide in the crowd where Jesus
can’t find you rather than to go out of your way to look for him.
If Zacchaeus could be here today, he might tell you something like this:
“Don’t let Jesus pass through your life, the way he passed through Jericho that day, without
getting to know him.
Find yourself a vantage point where you can see Jesus clearly, just like I did.
You don’t have to climb a tree.
You can open a Bible and read for yourself who he is.
You can join a church where the love of Christ is lived out in a community.
You can make time in your schedule to be part of a Bible study or discussion group, like
Worship Connections, where you can learn more about Jesus.
Or a prayer group, like our Centering Prayer group, where you can find a voice for speaking to
Jesus,
and ears to hear what he is trying to say to you.
You can seek out a trusted friend or minister with whom you can talk
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about the deep yearnings and doubts of your heart.”
Most of these things that Zacchaeus probably would recommend will never happen
though, unless you find the determination to make them happen.
Zacchaeus was determined to see Jesus.
So, he ran and climbed.
He went out on a limb and was even willing to make a spectacle of himself
if that was what it took to meet Jesus.
Only you can decide what you are willing to do to encounter Jesus for yourself.
Whatever it is that you do, I guarantee that what you will discover is that
while you thought you were searching for him,
he was already seeking you.
Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see Jesus,
but Jesus was already on the lookout for him,
and called him by name into a new relationship with him.
Because Jesus is determined, too.
Determined to seek out and save the lost.
When Zacchaeus came down to earth Jesus said to him,
and to those onlookers in the crowd who were watching and listening:
“Today, salvation has come to this house, because Zacchaeus too is a son of Abraham.”
Jesus praised him as a son of Abraham, the Jewish ideal of a faithful servant of God.
When Jesus proclaimed that salvation had come to this tax collector's house,
the meaning of his name --pure and innocent -- ceased to be a laughable misnomer,
and became a description of what Jesus had made him.
I suspect that little Zacchaeus never stood so tall,
as he did when Jesus spoke those words about him.
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Today is Reformation Sunday.
In fact, it is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
Reformation Sunday reminds us how the Church at one point had lost sight of Jesus
in the crowded temptations of its own self-interest and intolerance.
How for most people, the only vantage point for knowing Jesus
was the words of priests and the proclamations of the Church.
The majority of the population could not even read the Bible for themselves.
Then Martin Luther and other Reformers made the Bible accessible to all,
giving people a new vantage point from which to see and to encounter Jesus.
But Reformation Sunday isn’t just a history lesson.
It’s a vantage point for seeing where the Church is today, and where it is headed.
History proves that Christ’s churches repeatedly lose sight of Jesus,
and need to be reformed again and again.
Many people in our world hold as low an opinion of the Church as the crowd in Jericho held of
Zacchaeus.
They point to Churches whose preoccupation with their own interests and agendas
indicate that they have lost sight of the mission to which Jesus calls them –
the mission of seeking and saving the lost.
Jesus calls us to demonstrate to the world justice and generosity because salvation has come
to THIS house; because we have experienced that salvation -- that being made pure and
innocent by God’s grace -- firsthand ourselves.
May we find our way to knowing Jesus better and by his power fulfilling every good resolve and
work of faith, where we are -with the same determination, energy and resourcefulness that Zacchaeus showed that day on
the streets of Jericho.