-“Guess whose coming to dinner” is a famous movie
-It is #99 on the American Film Institutes top 100 films of the last 100 years
-It has a star-studded cast with Sidney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy
-It is about a young African-American doctor who meets a young Caucasian woman and they fall in love
-They decide to marry so she invites him to her parents’ home for dinner
-It came out in 1967 when interracial marriage t was still illegal in most states
-There are some similarities to the story in our Gospel lesson for today
-It’s an interesting story – let’s take a look
-First, our text trails the story of Jesus who encountered a blind man, Bartimaeus, sitting by the side of the road as He was approaching Jericho
-Our text says that Jesus was approaching Jericho as He was passing through
-Where was He going?
-In the previous chapter, beginning at verse 31, it says “Jesus took the twelve aside and told them, ‘we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again.”
-Jesus had an important mission ahead of Him, that is where he was headed
-When you are on a mission to accomplish something, when you are really focused on a goal, do you try to be as efficient with your time as possible?
-Sometimes, if you are like me, you may forget to be nice to the people around you. You may not exchange pleasantries with people you normally would. You may even get so busy you forget to eat.
-But not Jesus
-When Jesus has a task to do – He dawdles
-Was He scared? Did He have cold feet about going through with His life’s mission? Was He having second thoughts?
-Maybe He decided just to put it off a week? People had been living in their sins for a long time, what was another day or two, either way?
-Why would He do such a thing? {PAUSE}
-Have you ever had the opportunity to meet a famous person?
-Did you ever hear that a famous person was coming to town and made arrangements to see them?
-I remember when I was in elementary school and we heard that then-President Jimmy Carter was coming to town and he was going to shake hands out at the airport
-My parents weren’t big fans of President Carter but we went out to the airport for a chance to see him and maybe shake his hand
-How about if the person were more important to us?
-I was at West Point when then President Ronald Reagan came to visit and give an important speech
-Once our leadership found out he was coming, people worked feverishly around the installation to get ready
-We only had a week to get ready
-For security reasons, the entire parade field had to be turned around
-All non-essential activities were cancelled and we spent all of our spare time parading on the new and improved parade ground, cleaning our weapons, preparing our uniforms, cleaning our rooms
-After three years of doing miracles, traveling around, teaching, even raising the dead – I’m sure there was not a person in 1st century Palestine that hadn’t heard of Jesus but there were sure people who hadn’t seen him or had a chance to meet Him
-Zacchaeus was one of those people
-He wanted to a least get a glimpse of the man
-He wanted to get a chance to meet the prophet, the healer
-He had a problem though, he was short and there was a large crowd {PAUSE}
-How bad off do you have to be in order to compromise your dignity?
-How good a gift has to be on the line before your do something that you wouldn’t ordinarily do?
-How bad do you have to want something before you go all out to get it?
-The day after Thanksgiving, there will be numerous door-buster sales
-Stores offer ridiculously low prices on some items in order to get people to come out at unbelievably early hours to snag up the deals
-They’ll normally show the opening of the doors on the news that evening
-It’s comical watching the people embarrass themselves pushing and shoving, doing things they teach their kids not to do
-Dignity and self-respect are a big deal for Middle Easterners
-To get ahead of the crowd, our text says Zacchaeus had to run. To run in a robe means you have to hike it up a bit in order to not trip and fall. If that weren’t bad enough, Zacchaeus, a rich and widely known man, stooped to climbing a tree like a school boy
-He must have really wanted to see Jesus badly in order to stoop to such a level {PAUSE}
-Have you ever been given a great honor? Have you ever been asked to participate in something that seemed beyond you?
-What would it have been like had the famous person you arrived to see, had reached through the crowd, called you by name and pulled you out to come and shake hands with him/her and then invite you to dinner? That would have been something. That’s what happened to Zacchaeu
-Jesus walks to the spot where Zacchaeus was perched, invites him to come down and then invites Himself over to Zacchaeus house
-That is what Jesus does for you and me too
-He invites Himself into our lives – He wants to have a relationship with us – He wants to have a closer relationship with us – He just asks us to not block what He’s trying to get done and respond to His leading
-That is why He came – remember where He was headed – to Jerusalem where He was to be betrayed, put on trial, mocked, beaten and killed
-All for Zaccheus, all for you, all for me
-How do you feel about terrorists coming to our country, enjoying its freedoms while they plot ways of destroying our way of life? Quite frankly, it makes me extremely angry.
-That’s how the people in and around Jericho felt about Zaccheus
-You see, he worked for the enemy – the Romans – who were bent on destroying their way of life and then taxed them in order to pay for it
-Zaccheus had a big problem – he hadn’t made any friends in doing his job
-Jericho, in Jesus’ day was a prosperous city
-Balsam was a major export of the area
-A tax collector was probably making a ton of money taxing the lucrative trade
-Zaccheus was not a very loved individual
-The people make it very clear that they didn’t much care for Jesus choosing to go to Zaccheus house
-Ever been slighted? Have you ever felt like somebody else got an award or an honor that you deserved?
-That’s how the people of Jericho felt – it should have been their house that was blessed with Jesus’ presence
-Do we pick and choose between people like these people did? Heck yeah we do?
-Who decides who is to go to heaven? Is that your job description? It is Jesus’ job and He wants all people to make it into heaven. That is what we should want as well.
-That is what Jesus came for – that is why He makes the pit stop to Zaccheus’ house – As it says at the end of our text, “for the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.”
