In 1988 Tom Hanks stared in a wonderful movie titled Big, though Hanks is not the main character, Josh, at the beginning or the end of the movie, he is for most of the picture. David Moscow plays Josh at the beginning and end and wants more than anything to be “big.” The boy is at a fair and drops a quarter in a machine that is supposed to grant his wish. When he does, nothing happens, at least not at that moment.
When Josh wakes up the next morning, he hops down out of the top bunk, wearing nothing but his super-hero underwear, unaware that anything has changed in his life. He feels no different, he thinks no different. Everything seems the same, until he looks in the mirror and discovers that he is not the same kid that went to bed the night before. Now he is big.
His immediate reaction is one of fear. The same could be said of his mother’s only reaction. She thinks that Hanks has taken her son. His best friend Billy is the only person who realizes that Hanks is still his old friend.
Throughout all but the last five minutes of the movie we follow Hanks’ adventures as a boy in a man’s suit. In many ways nothing in this character’s life has changed, at the same time everything in his life has changed. Physically his life has changed. Everyone around him except Billy sees him as an adult and treats him that way. Yet his appearance is the only thing that has changed. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, Josh is still a boy.
II What we see that changed in Josh’s life is the very thing that is least important in life, appearance. We come to understand that as we read and study Scripture. We read again and again of matters of the heart. When God was about to have Samuel anoint David to be King of Israel, David’s oldest brother, a tall good-looking man first comes by Samuel and Samuel is ready to make Abinadab king. But God scolds Samuel telling him that he is looking at the outside, what is most important is what is in the heart. If we read further we find Jesus talking about looks and later still, Paul.
It seems to me that we can’t rush getting big. It is every kid’s dream to hurry up and get big. They want to hurry up and get to be 10, double digits in age. Then it is thirteen so they can be a teenager. Then 16 to drive and 18 when you can vote and you are an adult.
Yet all of those things are the very things that God is warning Samuel against, they involve the outward. They are all getting physically big.
III Our lesson this morning is the story of one who probably wanted to get physically big. Zaccheus, Scripture tells us, though a grown man, was a man of small stature. I still remember when I was a kid singing, “Zaccheus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree to see what he could see.”
But I would submit to you this morning that while Zaccheus was a wee little man, in stature, he was also a wee little man emotionally and spiritually. I believe that because before the encounter that is our lesson this morning Zaccheus was all about what he could get from life. We see it in his profession and we see it in his climbing the tree to see Jesus.
Zaccheus was like so many people in our society today who live out their lives looking only at what is best for them. They take from others in a vain effort to better themselves. Zaccheus was a Roman tax collector. The Jews hated tax collectors period. TO start with, all Roman coins had Caesar’s image on them. The Roman’s considered Caesar a god, so to have a Roman coin in one’s possession was to have a graven image, a violation of law.
At the same time Roman money was also legal currency and the Jews used it to survive. And, like any of us, they wanted to have at least enough money to live comfortably, and they wanted to pay as little tax as possible.
The Roman system made that idea difficult. The government would hire tax collectors and they were told to get at least a required amount of money from each person. What the government did not do, however, was pay tax collectors. Tax collectors were free to get however much they could out of people. What was in excess of the requirement they got to keep. This made the tax collector a legal thief. To make matters worse, tax collectors who collected from Jews were Jews themselves. The people saw it as Jews stealing from Jews. And, to a great degree they were right.
By the time of our lesson, Zaccheus was probably mentally, emotionally, and spiritually drained. He was a hated man who probably felt as small inside as he was on the outside. He needed a life, a life change.
It is probably safe to assume that Zaccheus had heard of this man Jesus and the ways Jesus had changed lives. It may well be that Zaccheus knew Matthew, another tax collectors whom Jesus had already changed. Zaccheus wanted to have what Matthew had. The truth is, we really don’t know what happened, or even how or why in Zaccheus’ life. We just know that he wanted to see Jesus and went out of his way to make that happen by climbing up in a tree in an effort to see what was going on around him.
IV That is when it happened. As Jesus came walking by he took notice of the little man in the tree. And in the words of that old children’s song Jesus said, “Zaccheus, you come down, for I’m going to your house today.”
In simple words Jesus showed an emotionally and spiritually beaten up man that he cared, that he was loved. Jesus loved him just the way he was.
There is a word for that. It is called grace. Grace is what God pours out on each of us that helps us to grow in spite of whatever we may have done in our lives.
It has been said that we grow mentally and emotionally through the choices and decisions that we make in our lives, particularly through the wrong ones. We grow because we suffer the consequences of those wrong decisions. Suffering the consequences helps us to make better decisions down the road when new opportunities present themselves.
We grow spiritually when we realize that God accepts us for who we are, as we are and where we are. Whether we are a thieving tax collector or the most giving person around, whether we are tall or short, young or old, mentally challenged or the biggest genius on earth, God loves and accepts us. God pours his grace out on our lives and we come to realize that we are blessed. Through every step our lives grow spiritually.
In the movie Big Josh comes to realize that when he may have grown physically he is very much still a boy and he wants to go back and be a boy again. He finds the machine, drops in another quarter and asks for his old life back. Once again his wish is granted. As he walks down the street one second he is a twenty something year old man and the next his is a boy again.
Of course life doesn’t work that way. We don’t grow big over night. We can’t grow in an instant. The same can be said for our mental and emotional states. It is a process that is gained over time, even a lifetime.
But the one way that we can grow big quickly is spiritually, when we allow God to touch our lives. But, when we grow big spiritually, we make some real and important changes in our lives.
In the lesson, when Jesus touched Zaccheus’ life some things changed immediately. Zaccheus said that he was going to give half of what he had to the poor and if he had wronged anyone he would pay it back four times over. Some might argue that Zaccheus was trying to buy salvation, but nothing is further from the truth. Zaccheus had grown up spiritually. He recognized that his life had been touched and changed when Jesus entered the picture. His response was praise and thanksgiving. Zaccheus’ response was one of gratitude because he knew his life would never be the same again.
The same should be true for us. Jesus has touched our lives. Because of that we should be giving ourselves to the poor, the poor in spirit, out of gratitude for what God has done in our lives. We should search out those we have wronged or even who have wronged us to that we can make things right.
Friends we don’t reach out in an effort to touch people’s lives for what we get. To do that is to be spiritually immature way and we aren’t getting big spiritually and with an attitude like that we may never grow up.
When we get big spiritually, we are responding out of gratitude, out of thanksgiving for all the ways that God has touched and blessed us.
We are about to come to the Lord’s Table. It is another opportunity to allow God to touch our lives. It is my prayer that we do just that, that we all get big, not in stature, not in a physical way, but that we get big in spirit. When we are big in spirit we become a person with a heart like God’s. We become a person that God can use to make our world and our community a better place.
