Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This week we're continuing with our sermon series around the table as we explore the
story of Zacchaeus.
And Rob shows us how this story reminds us that Jesus really sees us, and that when Jesus
sees us and affirms us, it changes everything.
Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, verses 1 to 10.
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.
A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus.
He was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.
He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, he could not see over the crowd.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that
way.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately.
I must stay at your house today.
So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
All the people saw this and began to mutter.
He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, look, Lord, here and now I give half of my
position to the poor.
And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.
Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son
of Abraham, for the son of a man came to seek and to save the lost.
The word of the Lord.
Well we are smack dab in the middle of a teaching series, which is called Around the Table.
And what we're doing is we're looking at all the meals that Jesus ate with people throughout
the gospels.
And believe me, there were a whole lot of meals that Jesus ate with people.
But while we've been going through this series, we've also asked you to send us some photos,
some pictures of the meals that you are eating with people.
And a number of you have been doing that.
So for example, Linda Patchett sent this photo of her and her life group enjoying a meal
together.
That's a beautiful photo.
We also have this photo.
This is a photo of the beer and banter gathering that took place a few weeks ago.
This is a men's ministry here at Trinity where the men meet at the local pub once a month
to gather around a table.
So there was beer and banter.
This is a photo of our first community dinner that happened just this past Thursday.
It was an amazing event.
I think, I don't remember how many guests we had there.
I think it was something like 40 or 50 guests and all of our volunteers serving those in
our community.
It was a wonderful, wonderful event.
And this is a picture of the staff having some food together, gathering around a table
as we welcomed our discipleship year students.
There's Honor and Johanna.
So we of course had to have some food.
I want to show you one other photo.
This is a photo of me sitting down with a young man by the name of Finn Denine.
And this is an exciting photo because actually next Sunday at this service, Finn is going
to be baptized right here at Trinity.
And we're super excited about that.
Woo, yes.
And so Finn and I met at the Sunset Grill and did a little bit of baptismal preparation.
So hey, if you've got a photo or take a photo this week, tell us some of the meals you're
having.
Tell us who you're eating with and share those with us and we'd love to feature them in the
weeks ahead.
But here's a question for you to think about.
What is one meal that you have had that you will never forget?
Just take a moment and think about that.
You'll never forget.
It might have been a meal that you had with someone.
It might have been the very first meal you had with them.
Or it might have been the very last meal you had with someone.
Think of a meal that was a great celebration or maybe it was a great disaster, whatever
happened at this meal.
What's one meal you've had that you will never forget?
Would you just take a few seconds and turn to maybe someone who's sitting beside you
and just if you feel comfortable, share.
What's that one meal?
What's a meal that you've had that you will never forget?
Go for it.
Okay, one more thing.
Thank you very much.
Fantastic.
Now at that meal that you enjoyed or didn't enjoy, you may or may not remember what you
actually ate at that meal, but you definitely remember that meal because of the people that
were around the table.
And you see, this is what Jesus knew.
Jesus knew that there was so much more going on at meals than just the food.
Meals with Jesus were never about the food.
Instead, Jesus knew that meals had this incredible power, and here was the power that meals had.
Meals could either include people or they could exclude people.
They could do either of those two things, right?
And you just thought of a meal where you were included, but you can probably think of another
time, another meal, when you were excluded.
Maybe it was back in high school or elementary school or something, and you didn't get a
birthday invitation.
Everybody on the block got an invitation to so-and-so's birthday, but you didn't get one.
You never understood why.
Why didn't I get an invitation?
Or maybe it was during one of your jobs that you had, and there was this habit in the office
that every Friday after work, everybody would go out for pizza and wings together, and for
some reason, they never invited you to go along with them, and that kind of hurt.
You felt very excluded and left out.
You would just kind of go home at the end of the day on Friday while everybody else
went out, and it was hurtful.
Or maybe you were expecting to get invited to someone's wedding because you thought you
were close to them, and you waited for the invitation, and you waited, and you waited,
and you checked the mailbox every day, but you just never got that invitation.
You never got that invitation.
We've all maybe experienced that feeling of being excluded.
In fact, my wife, Sally, she told me that I could share this story with you, but once
when her family was moving to a new town, it was right in the middle of the school year,
and one of the hardest things was for her to kind of feel included in the new school
that she was part of, and she didn't feel included.
Everybody already had their groups.
Everybody already had their friendships, and it was especially at lunchtime, it was hard
to find someone to sit with, and so in fact, for the first month that she was at that school,
can you believe it?
She ate her lunch in the bathroom because she didn't feel included, and actually, I
think that's probably one of the reasons why Sally's such a great newcomer and connections
director here at Trinity is because like you, she knows what it feels like to be excluded.
Whenever I see a picture of somebody eating alone, I always do feel a little bit sad,
and that's maybe a bad judgment because maybe some people eat alone because they want to
eat alone or they have work to do or they're making a phone call or reading the newspaper
or whatever, but it's still something just makes me feel a little sad because I think
we all really do long to be included and to be welcomed in, and if that's not concerning
enough, we may also have this deep niggling question within us.
What about God?
Am I included with God?
Will God welcome me in?
We've all done things we're ashamed of.
We've all hurt people.
We've said things, and we may wonder, deep down, we may wonder, geez, does God want me
on the guest list?
When the end of my life comes and I go to that heavenly mailbox and open it up, will
there in fact be an invitation for me to be with God?
Now that is what the story of Zacchaeus is all about, and we're going to get to that
in a second, but this story answers a very important question very clearly for us.
The question is, do we matter to God?
If the question is, are we important to God or are we included by God, then here's a
spoiler alert.
The answer is yes, we are, because Jesus doesn't want to condemn you.
He wants to invite you.
He does want to change all of us, of course, but he wants to be with us, and this is one
of the hardest things that I think we can get our heads around is this, is that Jesus
wants to be with us just the way that we are right now.
You see, our culture conditions us to believe that if we want to be included, if we want
to be liked, if we want to be invited with others, then it depends on a few things.
I've actually given you some notes and you can follow along if you want to get some of
these, but one of the things that we look for to find significance and to feel like
we're included is we ask the question, well, how do I look?
We work so hard on our appearance because we believe that the better looking we are,
the more people will want to be with us.
And there's a whole advertising and entertainment industry out there that tells us every day,
the more beautiful you are, the more you will be included.
And we actually equate our appearance with our significance.
Well, I just want to say this, the trouble with that is most of us are not all that stunning.
I'm looking around the room here this morning and I mean, no offense, but most of us are
pretty average looking Joes.
And so if us being included in life depends on us being like great looking and on appearance,
then I think we're all in a little bit of trouble.
The second question though is what do I own?
Right?
Meaning if I have lots of money, then I'll have lots of friends.
If I have the right possessions, then I'll be surrounded by the right people.
So get the right house, get the right car, the right shoes, the right hoodie, the right
phone, go on the right vacations, attend the right school, and then you'll be included.
This is what culture tells us because we equate status with stuff and we equate self worth
with our net worth.
How do I look?
What do I own?
Or what have I done?
What have I accomplished?
A lot of people today are workaholics.
They work nonstop because they believe that it's through their accomplishments that they're
going to be included and invited to be with the people they want to be with.
The more trophies you have, the more plaques you have, the more accolades you have, well
then the more friends that you'll have.
And really this all kind of gets summed up in this last one, but how well am I like?
That's a question that drives us all the time.
And it is easy to spend your entire life trying to please certain groups of people and trying
to get others to approve of us.
If I could only get them to like me, well then things would be great.
If I could only get my parents' approval, then my life would finally turn around.
And just as a side note, if you haven't got your parents' approval yet, you're probably
not getting it.
If you want to be included in life, if you want to be invited and welcomed in by others,
then how do you look?
What do you own?
What have you done and how well are you like?
But do you see how unstable all of these things are?
Because as the saying goes, beauty fades.
It doesn't matter how good looking you are today, it's going to fade away.
What do I own?
Well, money comes and money goes and every single possession you own will one day just
be worn out and turned to dust.
Even your greatest achievements are going to be surpassed.
Somebody's going to come along and do what you did and do it even better and the history
books will not remember you.
And you know that friendships can change on a dime and that you cannot make everyone like
you.
I've learned that lesson.
Tim Keller once said that what we think about ourselves doesn't define us.
But what the most important person in our life thinks about us defines us.
So who is that for you?
Whose opinion are you hanging on?
Right?
Is it a parent?
Is it a spouse, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a friend, a boss, some colleague?
You are so concerned with what that person thinks about you that that defines your self-worth.
And if only they would include you, then you would feel included.
Your self-worth is dictated by what the most important person in your life thinks about
you.
And if that is true, then wouldn't it make sense for you to make Jesus Christ the most
important person in your life?
Because I can tell you what he thinks about you.
He's crazy about you.
He loves you.
He thinks you're precious and so, so valuable no matter what the world might say.
Now this brings us to our reading this morning from Luke's Gospel, chapter 19, the story
of Zacchaeus.
Oh, and by the way, by the way, Zacchaeus doesn't especially do well on this list either,
does he?
I mean, what do we know about how Zacchaeus looked?
The scriptures tell us that Zacchaeus was short.
The song tells us he was a wee little man.
And in Luke 19, the word for short there actually means kind of abnormally short.
The legend has it, you know, the legend that Zacchaeus was the shortest person in Jericho.
And maybe today we would call him a person with dwarfism.
I don't know.
But probably throughout his whole life, Zacchaeus was laughed at and ridiculed for being short.
Now that second one, what does he own?
Yes, he probably did pretty well when it came to that category.
We are told that he was a wealthy tax collector.
And those next two questions, I mean, that's strike two and strike three.
What have I done and how well am I liked?
The Roman tax collecting system was corrupt to the court.
To even become a tax collector, you had to bribe somebody, which means that Zacchaeus
was not an honest man.
And he was the chief tax collector, we're told, the chief tax collector, which meant
that he headed up the whole racket.
And so if, and you know that tax collectors actually, they don't even really get paid.
The idea is you just collect the taxes that Rome wants you to collect and then you collect
whatever you want on top of that.
Rome doesn't care.
As long as they get their share, you can keep the rest.
And so basically you were this thug and everybody hated you.
In fact, the Old Testament puts tax collectors in the same category as murderers.
And so no, people did not like Zacchaeus.
I don't even think Zacchaeus liked Zacchaeus.
It is hard to be happy with who you are when you have this sense of guilt going on inside
of you.
So Zacchaeus struck out in just about all of these categories.
And yet in the story, the amazing thing about this story, Jesus still eats with him.
Jesus still wants to be with him and includes him.
This teaches us four things that I got to share with you this morning.
Okay, so here's the first one.
No matter how small you feel, Jesus notices you.
See this story begins by telling us that Zacchaeus really wanted to see Jesus.
So he runs down the street and he climbs a tree.
This is an incredibly undignified thing to do, of course, for a first century Middle
Eastern businessman to run, much less climb a tree.
But Zacchaeus really, really, really wanted to get a sneak peek at Jesus.
But the irony of the story is that when Jesus comes by, it's not actually that we're told
Zacchaeus saw Jesus, but we're told that Jesus saw Zacchaeus.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and called Zacchaeus' name.
Now just imagine that.
Zacchaeus went looking for Jesus, but it's Jesus who noticed Zacchaeus.
Now how did that even happen?
Why on earth?
How could it be that this one person gets singled out and noticed by Jesus?
It seems to insinuate that Jesus knew exactly where Zacchaeus was.
So yes, no matter how small you may feel, Jesus notices you.
And this is a little an aside.
Doesn't it remind us just how important it is for us to notice others in our own lives
as well, to stop and pay attention to the people who we walk by each and every day,
to stop our busy lives?
It's one of the greatest gifts we can give to someone is just to notice them.
And Jesus does this.
No matter how small Zacchaeus is, he's noticed.
Now I don't know what's going on in your life, whether you're up a tree, financially up
a tree, or whether you are personally out on a limb somehow, or whether you are just
hanging on for dear life, spiritually speaking.
But you could be sitting there saying, nobody sees what's going on.
Nobody knows what's happening in my life.
No one's noticing how much I'm struggling.
But you couldn't be further from the truth because God knows exactly where you are right
now.
Okay, secondly, not only does God notice us, but God knows us, right?
No matter who else out there may ignore you or not care who you are, Jesus knows you and
wants to know you.
Jesus looked up in the tree that day and he did not say, hey, what's your face?
Or he'd say, hey, you loser, come on, come on down.
No, what he said was Zacchaeus come down.
He called Zacchaeus by name.
How on earth did he even know Zacchaeus' name?
It would be shocking, wouldn't it, to hear Jesus call out your name when you had never
even met him before.
What's even more shocking this is, do you know what the name Zacchaeus means?
Zacchaeus comes from the Greek root zake, which means pure or innocent.
So Zacchaeus' name actually means pure one or innocent one.
Now if there was ever a person in the world who deserved the name pure one or innocent
one, surely it should not be Zacchaeus.
And I am sure that Zacchaeus had been called a lot of names in his life, you know, from
the time he was a kid, hey shorty, short stuff, half pint, whatever, to the time he was an
adult when every day I'm sure the passersby were yelling out expletives, words that I
can't even use in church to describe who Zacchaeus was, because they knew what he had done.
And they probably had never uttered, I wonder when the last time Zacchaeus heard someone
use his name to describe him.
When was the last time he was actually called by name?
Because people knew what that name meant.
It meant pure one and Zacchaeus was not a pure one at all.
So while everyone excludes him, Jesus comes along and says, hey pure one, come down, let's
go to your house.
And Jesus I think can only be doing one thing here.
He is seeing in Zacchaeus not all of his problems, but he's seeing his potential.
He's not seeing Zacchaeus' past, but he's seeing the possibilities for Zacchaeus' future.
You know, I would say good parents know this, that if all you do is harp on your kids and
beat your kids down and tell them what they're doing wrong and all the problems that they
have in your life, that is not going to go well.
That is not going to go well, right?
But good parents actually are constantly reminding their kids of who they are and who they were
made to be and what their potential could be, because when you call someone by their
potential, you actually help them live into that potential.
And the same is true for us.
God didn't send Jesus to speak words of condemnation to you and to point out all your faults to
you and all the things you've done wrong.
No, instead God calls you by name and he says, listen, listen, I know who you are.
I made you and I know what you're meant to be.
So no, not loser, not, not idiot, not bleep, whatever they call Zacchaeus, right?
Pure one, Zacchaeus, come down.
I'm going to eat at your house today.
No matter who ignores you, Jesus knows you.
And thirdly, this story tells us that no matter what you've done, Jesus wants you.
Zacchaeus is about as guilty as anyone I can think of.
Deep down, we're not that different, are we?
I mean, like Zacchaeus, we've all screwed up.
We probably all sold out at one time or another.
You know, I'm not the father I should be.
I'm not the husband I should be.
I'm not the pastor, the friend.
There's so many ways in which I fall short.
And there's so many ways in which you fall short of the person that you are called to
be and yet, and yet Jesus still wants to eat with me and Jesus still wants to eat with
you too.
You may say, oh gosh, surely I have to clean up my act first.
I got to get my life in order, fix my life, be a better person.
But does Jesus say, Zacchaeus, if you give away half of what you have to the poor, I
will come and visit you.
Or does he say, Zacchaeus, if you pay back everyone you have wronged four times what
you took from them, then I will invite you into my presence.
No, that is not how it works.
That is the wrong order of grace.
Grace works the other way around.
While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us.
And Jesus says, I want to be with you now, not later.
Even though you and me, we may still be swimming in sin, Jesus still wants to be with us.
So no matter how small you feel, Jesus notices you.
No matter who ignores you, Jesus knows you.
And no matter what you've done, Jesus wants you.
And finally, and quickly, no matter what others say, Jesus affirms you.
Look at the reaction of all the people who were there that day.
All the people saw this and they began to mutter, oh goodness, he's going to be the
guest of a sinner.
You may know what it's like to be called names or labeled by others.
People have said all sorts of horrible things to you, maybe to your face, behind your back,
or especially these days online.
But listen, it doesn't matter what names people call you or may call you.
What matters is that Jesus affirms you and Jesus defends you.
And here's the scary thing about this story.
Who is Jesus defending Zacchaeus against?
Mostly religious people.
Ouch.
Was the religious people who were against Zacchaeus.
Jesus was actually for Zacchaeus.
It was all the churchgoers and the religious people who were against him.
And I have to say, unfortunately, today, the church is known more for who it is against
than who it is for.
Christianity is against this.
The church is against that.
I don't know how the most inclusive message, the most loving message, the greatest message
that the world has ever known got somehow turned upside down to the point where many
people think that the church is against them rather than for them, that God is against
them rather than for them.
The story of Zacchaeus shows us no matter what other people say, Jesus affirms you.
So let's wrap up.
How do we respond to a story like this?
You can't just read a story like this and go home and watch TV and remain unchanged.
This is calling us to change in radical, radical ways.
So here's the first possible response we could take from this story.
And that is simply this, to take Jesus home.
Did you know that in the language of the scriptures, to go and stay at someone's house in those
days actually meant room and board?
So if you understand that, then what Jesus was doing when he went to Zacchaeus' house
is he wasn't just going for dinner.
He was going to stay for a little while.
Hey, Zacchaeus.
Do you mind if I move in for a few days?
Zacchaeus, therefore, was not just inviting Jesus to a one-off dinner.
He was inviting Jesus into the very center of his daily life.
And in Middle Eastern culture, the center of daily life, and in fact, the most intimate
place in daily life, was the table.
It was the family home.
So I hope all of us can take Jesus home with us today, because the point of what we're
doing here every Sunday is not just to get you to come back here next week to hear more
about Jesus next week.
Our goal is rather for you to take Jesus home into the center of your life, because that's
exactly what Zacchaeus did.
That's one way to respond.
A second way to respond is this, and that is to be generous to others.
The way we know for sure that Zacchaeus' conversion was real is that he became incredibly generous
with other people.
Zacchaeus stood up and he said to the Lord, look, here, I am giving half of my possessions
to the poor.
If I've cheated anyone, I'll give them four times what I took.
This is a telltale sign of someone who has had an encounter, really had an encounter
with Jesus.
Their attitude toward money changes.
Their attitude toward their possessions just changes, because now Jesus has become their
true treasure.
And then finally, as we leave this place, here's one more thing that we can do.
As I said earlier, let's make sure we pay attention to others.
Jesus noticed Zacchaeus.
In a crowd of hundreds, he noticed him, he saw him.
Let's make sure that we are paying attention and looking for others, that we don't just
walk by those people who are up a tree or out on a limb or hanging on for dear life,
but that we look at them in the eye, that we call them by name and we say, hey, I want
to be with you, just like Jesus wants to be with you too.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This episode was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario on September
29th, 2024.