"Do they See Christ in Me?"
Luke 19:1-10
By Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor, Grace United Methodist Church, Soddy Daisy, TN graceumcsd.org
Let’s ask ourselves this question.
Would the most reviled of sinners feel welcome and loved in our churches?
Would drug addicts, prostitutes, those who have lived with multiple partners, those who have addiction problems, the homeless, the mentally ill, the depressed, the marginalized, those who have spent time in prison feel welcomed and loved unconditionally?
Would they know that we love them just the way they are…
…sins, warts and all—no matter what their lifestyles, no matter their appearance, no matter what is in their bank accounts…
…would they know we love them just the way they are…
…For God loves us just the way we are as well, does He not?
For while we yet sinners, Christ died for us…
…and Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.
When folks come to our churches do they see in us the kindness and richness of God’s love and tolerance and patience and forgiveness?
Do they see Christ in you, in me?
When they see our churches, drive by them…do they think we are a bunch of hateful hypocrites or loving, inclusive, non-judgemental sinners—saved by grace—but in no means—stuck up or holier than Thou?
Zacchaeus was a hated sinner.
Zacchaeus was chief among tax collectors, and I’m sure his parents never would have dreamed that he would turn out the way he did.
You know why?
Because Zacchaus’ name means “Pure” or “Righteous”.
He was given that name as a baby.
Zacchaeus’ mother and father looked down at him and thought he was the most precious little fellow in the world…so they named him “Pure.”
They knew and believed that God had great plans for his life…just like God has great plans for all our lives…so they named him “Righteous”.
And I would imagine that Zacchaeus’ parents probably did the best they could to help Zacchaeus to live into his name.
They probably took him to the Temple.
They probably taught him about God and the Scriptures.
I would imagine they loved him so very much…just like you all who have children love your children!
And through their showing an unconditional love for Zacchaeus…
…I would imagine that Zacchaeus was given just a little glimpse of the kind of love that God has for all people—including himself!
This is one of the reasons that it is of utmost importance that we bring our children to church and encourage others to bring their children to church and to Sunday school every week and to Youth Group…whether they feel like it or not!
Church is one of the most significant places we learn about God’s unconditional love.
And, as you know, we only love God when we find that God loves us!
What a horrible thing to know that there are so many children who do not know…
…have not experienced…
…have not been taught about…
…the God of love…
…within the community of faith…
…the God Who loves them more than they can imagine!
No matter what!!!
When I attended church as a child I was witness to a kind of love and acceptance that the world did not have nor offer.
I knew that there was something better than the backstabbing, conditional fake love of the World!
Today, many children think Jesus is just another curse word!
And whose fault is this?
We may want to blame their parents, and they may carry some of the blame…but, could it be that we—the Body of Christ in this world carry some of the blame as well?
After all, we are the privileged!
Have you ever thought of yourself in this way?
In Romans Chapter 5, the Apostle Paul writes: “Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand…”
Do we think of “where we now stand” as a place of undeserved privilege?
And what difference would it make in our lives, in our community and in our churches if we did?
We know something about life that many folks no nothing about.
We know that God loves us.
And we know that God loves everyone!!!
And Jesus said that people will know we are Christians by how much we love.
Love is what attracts persons to Christ.
Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment—the two things that everything hang on are love for God and love for our neighbors.
How are we doing in these departments?
Do people see in us something that the world can’t offer…
…a superabundance of unconditional love toward all people no matter what?
Pastor and Author, Neil Cole, is doing some amazing ministry.
In his book, Organic Church, Cole writes about a time he decided to have a baptism in the parking lot of a ghetto apartment complex in Los Angeles.
He and other church members brought a barbecue and let the smell of steak grilling over the fire fill the apartments, and lots of people started coming out for the free lunch.
They started singing songs and filled a little kiddie pool with water.
Cole writes, “Curiosity kept everyone watching; in fact, the balconies were filled with onlookers.
We had the new believers sit down in the little pool, and we baptized them in front of everyone.
Then we presented the message of the Gospel and asked if any others wanted to come down and accept Christ and be baptized.
Cole continues to write, “Three more people gave their lives to Christ and were baptized.”
He adds, “Our presence was now well known in the whole neighborhood, and we were being watched closely.”
And this is the really neat part.
Cole writes, “One evening we were sitting in a circle discussing the Bible, I noticed a young woman watching us.
She was not entering into the circle but observing at a distance with her two small kids, simply listening to the Word of God.
As the weeks went on, Juanita eventually worked her way into the meeting.
She would sit quietly and listen to the Scriptures.
A few weeks later we read about the suffering of Christ.
The scourging and crucifixion were described in detail.
Juanita was sitting on the edge of her seat, speechless.
Then I read about the resurrection, and she couldn’t contain herself anymore.
Cole continues, “When I said, ‘He rose from the dead,’ she raised her hand and without hesitation asked, ‘Do you mean His spirit rose, His ghost?”
“I (Cole writes) said ‘No, not just His spirit, His body came back to life.”
Cole says, “I asked, ‘Do you remember Doubting Thomas?”
“She shook her head.”
At that point Cole “realized that this girl, who spent twenty years living in Los Angeles, had never heard the story of the Gospel before.
“She was amazed by the message.”
Cole says that after the meeting he spoke with her.
He asked her about her kids.
They had different fathers, both in prison.
Her younger child had never even received a name.
They just called him Pudgy.
His father was in jail, without possibility for parole.
When Cole talked with the kids, he noticed that they were shy about speaking.
Later he found out from others that they both had serious speech impediments.
The following week, Juanita came to the meeting they were now having weekly in the parking lot of this dangerous area, and announced to Cole, “The devil doesn’t want me to become a Christian because he will lose a recruiter.”
Cole affirmed that the devil does not want her to become a Christian, and then he asked her what she did to recruit people to the devil.
She told him, “I am a drug dealer. I have been doing this since I was thirteen years old.”
A week later, Juanita’s two boys came running up to Neil Cole.
They were calling out his name in joy!
Their speech problems were apparently cleared up entirely.
Then Cole saw Juanita, and she ran over to him and gave him a big hug and announced to him, and to everyone within a mile, that she had given her life to Christ.
She also told him that she had found a real job.
She had to drive a lot, work long hours, and not get much money for doing it, but it was legitimate, and she felt good about it.
There are folks like Juanita living all around us!
Unlike Juanita, but in a similar fashion to Zacchaeus, I knew the love of God…
…but like Zacchaeus and many others…
…I, as a teenager, allowed myself to become un-comfortably numb!
It seemed easier to just go along with the way of the world.
It seemed easier to just turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the love of God and neighbor and instead live for self.
But it was un-comfortable because I did know a better way…
…I knew better…
…I knew I was not living into the person God had created me to be.
When my friends and I would listen to the song, “Comfortably Numb,” by Pink Floyd…
…I would become melancholy, because I was numb…
…but I wasn’t comfortable in that condition.
How many of you can relate to something similar?
It’s easy for us to allow ourselves to become numb to the cry of the needy, to the voices of the poor, to those who do not know the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s easy to block those things out, but it’s not a comfortable place to be…
…if we are Christians…
…or at the very least…
…if we know the love of God, but have not yet given our lives to Christ!
I remember a week or two before I gave my life to Christ…
…it was my freshman year of college, and a friend of my roommate was coming to visit for the weekend.
This guy was very friendly.
But he brought with him this suitcase which was filled with bags of marijuana which he intended to sell.
I was no angel, but I was overcome by the evil of spreading such a dangerous thing…
…a dangerous thing, in that it causes folks to lose their motivation, to loosen their morals, and to become apathetic and unproductive…comfortably numb…shall we say?
I was extremely disturbed by the thought that all these bags of weed would be distributed to kids…
…kids whom God loves and has such great plans for…
…I was most definitely un-comfortably numb…
…and that’s not a bad place to be…
…that comes from knowing the love of God, but being convicted by the fact that you yourself are not living into it!
It’s a great place to be, because there is only one cure for it…
…give your life, your all to Jesus!!!
And there is nothing more important in all the world!!!
Would I have been un-comfortably numb if my parents had not brought me up in the church and modeled the Christian faith in their own lives?
I doubt it.
So what about folks who know nothing about the Love of God?
Is it not our great privilege to share God’s love with them?
And what about persons like the hated Zacchaeus who knew about God’s love but had not yet lived into it…
…nor had he experienced it first-hand from the religious people ever since becoming a tax collector?
Are we called to be Christ to persons who are uncomfortably numb…but have lost their way…
…perhaps they have been hurt by the church…
…have gotten caught in the cycle of sin and denial…
...are marginalized…
…lonely…
…Perhaps they feel unlovable.
Zacchaeus was a chief among tax collectors.
That means that one night the Roman occupation had come to Zacchaeus with an offer…
…an offer that promised lots of money.
All Zacchaeus had to do was turn away from his religion and sell his soul to Rome.
And Zacchaeus did it, and he did it well.
He would collect taxes from widows who didn’t have enough to pay…and therefore they would be put out of their homes.
He would cheat and steal from many persons, but he would be rich!
And he would have power—power over other people’s lives.
But this power, this money wasn’t doing it for Zacchaeus was it?
For God had great plans for his life.
Zacchaeus knew this fact.
But a lot of people don’t know.
But because Zacchaeus knew, Zacchaeus was un-comfortably numb!!!
And perhaps some of us here this evening are feeling a bit un-comfortably numb.
Perhaps many of our neighbors, co-workers, classmates, family and friends are feeling un-comfortably numb.
Will we share Christ’s love with them?
Will we invite them to come and join us at church where they will be enabled to give all they are to Jesus?
No doubt Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus, and he had probably heard what people were saying about Jesus: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Do we welcome sinners—no matter what that sin may be—and eat with them?
And if we do, is everyone in our community—whatever they do and whoever they are—aware of this?
Zacchaeus may have also heard that after Jesus eats with these sinners…
…something about their lives change.
They become like new people.
It’s as if they have been born all over again.
So when Zacchaeus heard that Jesus was passing through Jericho, he wanted to see Jesus!
And he wanted to see Jesus so desperately that he “ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him…”
And there in the tree Zacchaeus waited for Jesus, and sure enough Jesus came by…
…and much to Zachaeus’ surprise…
…Jesus knew Zacchaeus was in that tree.
As a matter of fact, Jesus knew everything there was to know about Zacchaeus.
Jesus knew that he was one of the lost sheep.
Jesus knew that Zacchaeus was not living the kind of life God had created him to live…
…and Jesus knew Zacchaeus was un-comfortably numb and ready to be loved into the Kingdom!
So Jesus reaches the spot where this spiritually impoverished man is hiding in a sycamore tree…knowing that this man is hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for love, for God.
Jesus said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”
And what did Zacchaeus do?
“he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.”
And that is all he had to do!
Jesus did not force Himself into Zachaeus’ home, but He certainly did ask him for a welcome.
And this is what Jesus is doing for everyone: “Here I am!” Jesus declares in Revelation Chapter 3, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
We are all sinners.
But there is something that none of us will ever be without Christ dining in our hearts and lives—that is, sinners, saved by grace…
…the lost, whom Christ has found!
So Jesus goes to Zachaeus’ house, and there is a lapse of time—how much, we are not told.
Jesus had dinner with Zacchaeus, but Jesus didn’t stay the night.
They shut the door and the crowd milled around outside and gossiped, but no one knew what went on inside.
Finally the door opened and there stood Zacchaeus!
Something radical had happened to this man!
He admitted that he had been robbing the poor and promised to give half of his goods to the poor and restore fourfold to those he had falsely taxed.
Yes, something had happened inside Zacchaeus and he was a new man!!!
What Paul said in 1 Corinthians Chapter 5 was true for Zacchaeus—“If anyone is in Christ, [they are] a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Is this true for us as well?
Zacchaeus’ parents had named him “Pure,” and they had brought him up to love the Lord.
But somewhere along the way, Zacchaeus had made some horrible choices…
…he had tried to become numb to God…
…but instead ended up un-comfortably numb!
Which is a fantastic place to be.
And one day Zacchaeus was given that great privilege to make the most important choice of all…
…and he made the right one…
…he made the decision to repent, accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and turn from his old ways of life—Zacchaeus was born again!!!
Lloyd C. Douglas wrote this about what might have occurred inside Zacchaeus’ house:
“Zacchaeus,” said the carpenter gently, “what did you see that made you desire this peace?”
“Good Master—I saw—mirrored in your eyes—the face of the Zacchaeus I was meant to be!”
Do we see—mirrored in Christ’s eyes—the face of the person God meant for us to be?
Jesus said to Zacchaeus: “Today salvation has come to this house…For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
Jesus is still entering and passing through the Jericho’s of this world…places like Chattanooga, Hixson, Soddy Daisy…you name it!
And Jesus wants to have dinner with those who do not know Him.
Are we intentional in telling others about this fact so that they too may have the opportunity to run to see Him?
And how about us?
Has Jesus entered your home…your heart?
He’s knocking.
Have we let Him in?
