Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13-11-14 and Matthew 24:36-44
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, November 28th 2010
A printable PDF file can be found by clicking this link
Having feasted on good food for Thanksgiving and looking forward to feasting again at Christmas time, I invite you this morning to feast on hope as we worship God together.
The particular hope that our lectionary readings point us to today is the hope of God’s Coming Kingdom. This includes the hope of Isaiah’s vision when God shall “judge among the nations: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” The hopes of a world where the living Christ is given His rightful reign in people’s lives and darkness will be abolished by the light of His glorious presence.
Isaiah visualizes a Kingdom where the ways of God will be lifted high and justice be restored to all, in such a way as there will no longer be cause for war among the nations.
Paul calls his Roman readers to wake up and change their ways of living, because God's salvation was just around the corner.
Matthew’s gospel tells us that the day of the Lord will arrive unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, and cautions us to be ready for the kingdom to come.
Each reading has wonderful images of hope to feast upon
First of all feast on Isaiah’s vision.
Things Isaiah spoke of had a habit of coming to pass. Some of his visions had to do with the immediate future of the life of Israel. Others foretold of Christ. Other visions concerned the distant future of all the world..
He tells us that the day will come when God’s rule will tower above all other principalities and powers. The instruction of God will be the highest power of all. People from all around will want to know God’s direction in their lives. He tells us that justice and righteousness will be restored, that war will be at an end and that nationalism will be no longer a cause to fight about.
This fills me with hope. For at the present time God is dethroned from many people’s lives. At the present time many are not looking to God for direction. At the present time people are ready for war at the drop of a hat. At the present time our world is a place of injustice and unrest. It is good to know that these things will not always be so.
Armed with this hope every time I see someone opening up their lives a little more to the love of God, every time I hear of an initiative towards peace, every time some injustice is put right, we hear a whisper of greater things to come. “You ain’t seen nothing yet”.
Such is also a tremendous incentive for ourselves to be involved in intatives to create a fairer and more justice world in the present. To work towards the fullfillment of the glorious vision of peace and justice that Isaiah proclaims. To support all those efforts that feed the hungry, bring good news to the poor and bring light to those held captive in the darkness.
Such actions are not of this world, but carry the trademark of God’s Kingdom. Whenever we commit ourselves to change we are declaring ‘The Kingdom IS coming’. Maybe as Bob Dylan said in one of his songs, it is “A slow train coming”, but every now and again you can hear a distant rumbling on the tracks. The glorious hope in this passage from Isaiah is the knowledge that one day all will be well. That our efforts make a difference.
Secondly, Feast on Pauls wake up call
Not only shall all be well in the wider world, but there will also come a time when all will be well with our own lives. Those Paul wrote to in Rome were surrounded by all sorts of ungodliness and subject to all the problems that being sinful human beings places upon us.
Although they had converted to Christianity they still struggled to truly live a Christian life. They often found themselves paying more attention to bodily appetites than to their spiritual diet. From what Paul tells us they had a battle going on in the area of self-control. Some struggled with alcohol abuse. Some had no control of their sexual lives.
Some were argumentative and couldn’t control their words. Others were consumed with jealousy. Some just couldn’t resist a chance to party the night away. You’d think he was writing to guests on the Jerry Springer show, not the members of First Presbyterian Church in Rome!
Take heart from this passage. From the raw material of imperfect human lives God builds the church. Never despair of your self or of others. Be hopeful. If at times you feel your life is about as far from being holy as it could be, realize you have friends in high places and low places! If at times temptation wins, well, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last to lose a battle with temptation. Put your hope in God. Listen for His alarm bells and wake up calls and respond to them.
Thirdly, Feast on the unpredictability of it all
Many times the return of Christ is presented to us in terms of cold analysis and as though it were a doom laden fact. At various times across the Christian centuries there have been groups of folk convinced that their generation was the last and that Christ was coming especially for them, right then and right there to rescue them from the evil world around them.
Such certainty of instant redemtion obscures for us the really important element of Jesus teaching. The motif of surprise. There is a glorious sense of tension in Jesus words. On the one hand He tells us get ready, the son of Man is coming, like a thief in the night, one will be taken, one will be left behind. But on the other hand He tells us, “Well if you think you know when all this is going to be going on, you are completely and totally wrong”. “The Son of man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will” (Matthew 24:44).
So rather than speculate about dates and times, I suggest we interpret our passage from Matthew in this way. “Always leave room in your life for God’s surprises”. Never close your soul to the unpredictable nature of God’s love. Never let your Christian life become a humdrum routine affair that leaves God’s Spirit no room to move. Never think that God is through with you or that you have reached the end of the road in your spiritual journey or that there is not more you can do to bring about change in our world.
As our lives go through their different seasons there comes times when we can no longer serve as we would wish. This element of surprise is an incentive for us to seize the day. To do what we can with what we have while we still have the opportunity to do so.
As we move through Advent towards Christmas it is worth reflecting why Jesus was born and the nature of the mission He pursued. When invited to preach His first sermon in Nazareth he unrolled a scroll containing the words of Isaiah and proclaimed: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Whenever we work towards such aims we are working with Christ, suprising the world with His presence and spreading His hope where it is desperatly needed. As we do so, we find our own lives are challenged and changed. We are called to not only believe in the coming of the Kingdom God, that great vision of Isaiah, but also to work towards making God’s Kingdom a present reality.
Today we can hope to have our broken lives renewed through God’s Holy Spirit.
Today hope can spring eternal and life be made new.
Today we can look forward in hope to the coming of God’s Promised Kingdom.
Today we look forward in Advent hope.
Today we can recommit our lives to being carriers of the hope of Jesus Christ.
Praise God!
Every worship service is truly an opportunity for feasting on hope.
Amen.
Adrian J Pratt
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
THE LIVING DIFFERENCE
Readings: Psalm 98, Exodus 3:1-6, 2 Thessalonians. 1-5,13-17, Luke 20:27-38
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, 7th November 2010
A printable PDF file of this sermon can be found here.
Some Mormons believe that if you are a faithful Mormon then after you die you are resurrected to the third or celestial heaven, where you are given a kingdom for yourself and your family. There you will rule, as a god like being whilst you populate a separate planet of your own.
One form of Islamic belief is that heaven is filled with earthly pleasures, a paradise of sensual delights. Other belief systems suggest that when you die you are sent back again to this earth, maybe as a human or maybe as an animal. Still others see life as circle that only reaches it’s end once the soul has achieved a sense of oneness with Creation.
For sure these questions of eternity and after-life have vexed many minds over many centuries. In Jesus day there were Pharisees and teachers of the Law and Essennes and Herodians and Greeks and Romans, all of who had very different ideas about what happened after death. And amongst them there were also the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in Resurrection. As the joke goes… that’s why they were ‘Sad –You - See.’
They believed in the Scriptures, but only the books of Moses. They figured that once God had given the commandments, everything else was unnecessary. Just get back to the ‘true’ bible and things will change. One thing they were convinced that their bible didn’t teach was that there would be any kind of resurrection from the dead for those who believed.
The Sadducees saw Pharissees as over burdened with laws and far too sure that they alone knew the purpose of God. They saw the temple authorities as tied up with the politics and ceremony of the day. They saw the common people as… well…‘common’. And they didn’t like Jesus. His popularity was a threat to their respectful position and His teaching about God seemed dangerous.
So they come to Jesus with a trick question about marriage. According to the Levitical law in Deuteronomy 25:5 (one of the books they did believe in) if a man died childless, his brother must marry the widow and beget children to carry on the family line.
‘O.K Rabbi’, they say, ‘answer us this one’. This guy marries a girl, dies, so, as the law says, his brother marries her, then he dies and so and so on right through all the brothers.” “If there is a resurrection” they challenge, “Whose wife will she be in the after-life?”
Jesus, as He often did, turned the question around and left them with more questions than answers. In the first part of His answer Jesus cautions the Sadducees not to think of heavenly things from an earthly perspective. Constructing imaginary scenarios and trying to logically think of what heaven may be like, on the basis of the life they were experiencing on earth, was doomed to failure.
We too can construct heavens in our imaginations, heavens based on our likes and dislikes. Do we really want to sit on a fluffy white cloud, strumming a harp in the company of overfed cherubs and anaemic looking angels? There has to be more to it than that! So Jesus throws some powerful word pictures our way. He firstly, no doubt in response to their question, plays with the idea of marriage.
Marriage, He explains, is something that belongs to this life on this earth. Marriage, as Scripture elsewhere affirms, is a high and holy calling; relationships between husband and wife are a reflection of the relationship of Christ to the church. But only a reflection.
Relationships with people in heaven are to be more beautiful, more committed, with greater depth and intimacy than anything you may experience on earth. To make a comparison between that heavenly situation and the too-ings and fro-ings of earthly relationships was wrong.
Not only was marriage not going to be happening in heaven but neither was death. Verse 29 ‘for they cannot die anymore’. The same would apply to the bearing of children. Jesus scolds the Sadducees for their lack of appreciation that life on earth was not life in heaven and suggests that they were indeed foolish if they thought they could work the one out on the basis of the other. But He doesn’t leave it there. He also takes issue with them on their understanding of the Scripture.
He doesn’t take issue with the fact that they only thought the first five book of Moses were Scriptures worth taking note of, rather that they hadn’t grasped the significance of what was contained in those first five books. They claim that in those Scriptures there was no reference to any kind of resurrection.
Jesus takes them on a bible study in the Book of Exodus, the passage about Moses and the burning bush. In the passage, Jesus points out that Moses calls God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was impossible that God should be the God of the dead. Therefore Abraham and Isaac and Jacob must be the living. God was God of the living! So there was such a thing as the resurrection. Their own Scriptures said it was so. The Saduccess are silenced by this answer.
At the end of the day the Sadducees were left looking foolish because they thought they knew more about the Scriptures than Jesus did. They argued about the concept of resurrection with somebody who was about to exemplify for all time and all people the real thing.
For ourselves, who profess Jesus Christ as Savior, we do well to hear His perspective on the after-life. He assures us that if we put our faith and trust in Him, then something immeasurably worthwhile, indescribably wonderful, awesome, majestic, beyond anything earthly words, pictures or thoughts can adequately describe, is awaiting us on the other side.
Jesus uses an enigmatic phrase; ‘sons of the resurrection’ to describe those who seek to make their ultimate destination God’s Kingdom. I like that phrase. Let it sing through your mind a little. ‘Sons and daughters of the resurrection’ Imagine jumping out of bed in the morning with that attitude coloring your day.
“I am a resurrection person. The things I do today are not confined by the boundaries of death, decay and time. I am a resurrection person. The life which I will live today is part of a life that will never be diminished. The things I do today are making a mark, not only on the passing things of this life but in eternity.
I am a resurrection person. Though I may face defeats, God will turn them to victories, though I may face failures, God will use them to build my character, though I may face darkness, God will lead me with His light, though I may face suffering, God will heal all my infirmities in His good time. I am a resurrection person. Every moment in time that ticks by, bringing age and eventually death is but a glorious moment that is bringing me closer to my final destiny, my eternal home, my Fathers house; I am a resurrection person, I am an Easter person and Hallelujah is my song!
Belief in the resurrection makes a difference. A living difference to every moment you live on earth. Just occasionally the awareness of that glorious Kingdom does seep through to us. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Listen to Jesus. Keep learning what His Words teach us. Trust in God, that in His hands, saved by grace, through faith, you’re safe.
And to God be the glory. Amen.
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, 7th November 2010
A printable PDF file of this sermon can be found here.
Some Mormons believe that if you are a faithful Mormon then after you die you are resurrected to the third or celestial heaven, where you are given a kingdom for yourself and your family. There you will rule, as a god like being whilst you populate a separate planet of your own.
One form of Islamic belief is that heaven is filled with earthly pleasures, a paradise of sensual delights. Other belief systems suggest that when you die you are sent back again to this earth, maybe as a human or maybe as an animal. Still others see life as circle that only reaches it’s end once the soul has achieved a sense of oneness with Creation.
For sure these questions of eternity and after-life have vexed many minds over many centuries. In Jesus day there were Pharisees and teachers of the Law and Essennes and Herodians and Greeks and Romans, all of who had very different ideas about what happened after death. And amongst them there were also the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in Resurrection. As the joke goes… that’s why they were ‘Sad –You - See.’
They believed in the Scriptures, but only the books of Moses. They figured that once God had given the commandments, everything else was unnecessary. Just get back to the ‘true’ bible and things will change. One thing they were convinced that their bible didn’t teach was that there would be any kind of resurrection from the dead for those who believed.
The Sadducees saw Pharissees as over burdened with laws and far too sure that they alone knew the purpose of God. They saw the temple authorities as tied up with the politics and ceremony of the day. They saw the common people as… well…‘common’. And they didn’t like Jesus. His popularity was a threat to their respectful position and His teaching about God seemed dangerous.
So they come to Jesus with a trick question about marriage. According to the Levitical law in Deuteronomy 25:5 (one of the books they did believe in) if a man died childless, his brother must marry the widow and beget children to carry on the family line.
‘O.K Rabbi’, they say, ‘answer us this one’. This guy marries a girl, dies, so, as the law says, his brother marries her, then he dies and so and so on right through all the brothers.” “If there is a resurrection” they challenge, “Whose wife will she be in the after-life?”
Jesus, as He often did, turned the question around and left them with more questions than answers. In the first part of His answer Jesus cautions the Sadducees not to think of heavenly things from an earthly perspective. Constructing imaginary scenarios and trying to logically think of what heaven may be like, on the basis of the life they were experiencing on earth, was doomed to failure.
We too can construct heavens in our imaginations, heavens based on our likes and dislikes. Do we really want to sit on a fluffy white cloud, strumming a harp in the company of overfed cherubs and anaemic looking angels? There has to be more to it than that! So Jesus throws some powerful word pictures our way. He firstly, no doubt in response to their question, plays with the idea of marriage.
Marriage, He explains, is something that belongs to this life on this earth. Marriage, as Scripture elsewhere affirms, is a high and holy calling; relationships between husband and wife are a reflection of the relationship of Christ to the church. But only a reflection.
Relationships with people in heaven are to be more beautiful, more committed, with greater depth and intimacy than anything you may experience on earth. To make a comparison between that heavenly situation and the too-ings and fro-ings of earthly relationships was wrong.
Not only was marriage not going to be happening in heaven but neither was death. Verse 29 ‘for they cannot die anymore’. The same would apply to the bearing of children. Jesus scolds the Sadducees for their lack of appreciation that life on earth was not life in heaven and suggests that they were indeed foolish if they thought they could work the one out on the basis of the other. But He doesn’t leave it there. He also takes issue with them on their understanding of the Scripture.
He doesn’t take issue with the fact that they only thought the first five book of Moses were Scriptures worth taking note of, rather that they hadn’t grasped the significance of what was contained in those first five books. They claim that in those Scriptures there was no reference to any kind of resurrection.
Jesus takes them on a bible study in the Book of Exodus, the passage about Moses and the burning bush. In the passage, Jesus points out that Moses calls God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was impossible that God should be the God of the dead. Therefore Abraham and Isaac and Jacob must be the living. God was God of the living! So there was such a thing as the resurrection. Their own Scriptures said it was so. The Saduccess are silenced by this answer.
At the end of the day the Sadducees were left looking foolish because they thought they knew more about the Scriptures than Jesus did. They argued about the concept of resurrection with somebody who was about to exemplify for all time and all people the real thing.
For ourselves, who profess Jesus Christ as Savior, we do well to hear His perspective on the after-life. He assures us that if we put our faith and trust in Him, then something immeasurably worthwhile, indescribably wonderful, awesome, majestic, beyond anything earthly words, pictures or thoughts can adequately describe, is awaiting us on the other side.
Jesus uses an enigmatic phrase; ‘sons of the resurrection’ to describe those who seek to make their ultimate destination God’s Kingdom. I like that phrase. Let it sing through your mind a little. ‘Sons and daughters of the resurrection’ Imagine jumping out of bed in the morning with that attitude coloring your day.
“I am a resurrection person. The things I do today are not confined by the boundaries of death, decay and time. I am a resurrection person. The life which I will live today is part of a life that will never be diminished. The things I do today are making a mark, not only on the passing things of this life but in eternity.
I am a resurrection person. Though I may face defeats, God will turn them to victories, though I may face failures, God will use them to build my character, though I may face darkness, God will lead me with His light, though I may face suffering, God will heal all my infirmities in His good time. I am a resurrection person. Every moment in time that ticks by, bringing age and eventually death is but a glorious moment that is bringing me closer to my final destiny, my eternal home, my Fathers house; I am a resurrection person, I am an Easter person and Hallelujah is my song!
Belief in the resurrection makes a difference. A living difference to every moment you live on earth. Just occasionally the awareness of that glorious Kingdom does seep through to us. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Listen to Jesus. Keep learning what His Words teach us. Trust in God, that in His hands, saved by grace, through faith, you’re safe.
And to God be the glory. Amen.
Monday, November 1, 2010
GET OUT OF THAT TREE!
Reading: Psalm 119:137-144, Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, 2 Thess. 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, on October 31st 2010
For a printable PDF copy click here
Something about being a kid makes you view trees as things that need to be climbed. I know I did. Even had a little den – a tree-house – in the old tree at the back of my parent’s house. It was a good place to be – particularly if there were jobs needed doing and you weren’t inclined to do them right then. You couldn’t stay up there forever. The inevitable would catch up and some one would be hollering, “Get out of that tree!”
Our Bible reading gave us the story of another little tree climber - a man named Zacchaeus. He’s described as having made a healthy income for himself, being short of stature and engaged in the profession of tax-collector.
There were all sorts of reasons why he could have been up the tree. Tax collectors weren’t the most popular people in Israelite society. Maybe he was up there trying to stay out of people’s way. He also had a bit of money, so maybe being up a tree kept him out of the way from pick-pockets and other petty thieves that crowds tend to attract.
Or maybe it was just because he was short and couldn’t see what was going on. Luke tells us that he had run on ahead of the crowds when he had seen that Jesus was coming to town in order to get a good view of all that was taking place. Luke doesn’t tell us why he wanted to see Jesus or what had so stirred Zaccheaus that he felt the need to be mingling with the folk on the streets. For sure though there was something about Jesus that had gained his attention. The last thing he had expected was to gain Jesus attention.
That’s what happens. Jesus comes by and shouts, “Get out of that tree!” Or rather He says, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." And Zaccheaus climbs down and is overjoyed to offer Jesus hospitality. The mere fact that Jesus has taken the time to recognize him and calls out his name is enough to bring about a radical change in the little man’s life. He’s a little man with a big heart.
"Look”, he tells Jesus “Half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Having encountered the love of Christ, life could not just carry on as it had done before. He was making some changes – changes for the better.
It’s not just kids who hide up trees. Zaccheaus wasn’t a kid. But he was hiding up a tree. It makes me ask, “What sort of trees are we hiding in? What trees do we need to come down from if we are going to be disciples of Jesus? What’s our tree?”
I know that we all have our own systems for coping with life. We all have our own views about what’s important and why we’re on this planet and what’s right and what’s wrong. And most of the time, these ideas about life – these ‘trees’ that we hide in are comfortable places to be.
Now I can’t tell you exactly what your tree is. But I can make some generalizations. It’s the place you go to ignore the genuine challenges of the world around you. It’s a place where you can shut out the voices of the crowd and do what seems right in your own eyes. It’s a place where you feel comfortable about yourself – even when there are things about your life that should make you uncomfortable.
Some trees are more obvious than others. Some have a well-stocked bar whose alcoholic content is the main thing that gets them through the day. Some have other forms of escape. Some trees are built out of harsh words and criticism towards those who are not the same or don’t share their ideas of right and wrong. Some of us are very selective about who we allow in our tree-houses.
Zaccheaus was doing all right. He had his circle of friends. He knew his place in the scheme of things and hoped others knew theirs. He kept his distance when he had to. It wasn’t his fault that the poor were poor. Yes, he cut a few moral corners now and then, but didn’t everybody? There were worse people than him about – why should he feel bad about himself?
Then Jesus comes along. He already knew that there was something different about Jesus. When people allowed Him to get to them strange things would happen. Healings. Miracles. Changed lives. He really didn’t seem to care what anybody else thought of Him. He wasn’t afraid to speak in harsh judgment to those who gave the impression of being righteous. He seemed to have unlimited time to share with the most insignificant of people. Then… there was Jesus, calling his name, saying… Zacchaeus “Get down out of that tree’.
It must have taken more than a bit of courage to come down. Why was Jesus calling him? Was he going to make an example of him before the crowds? Was it to humiliate him? Was it because he had money? Was it because he’d cheated people? No…. the look on Jesus face was not one of condemnation, but of acceptance.
It was a look Zacchaeus hadn’t seen for a long time. An look of acceptance. The people, even as he climbs down, are singing their usual tune. "He’s a sinner!" Jesus was crossing a barrier of ritual purity. A tax collector was considered unclean because he entered houses and inspected goods in a way unacceptable to Jewish law.
By entering Zacchaeus’s house, Jesus was acknowledging the chief tax collector’s dignity and worth. Jesus, who was being followed by the crowds, would have brought honor to whatever house He entered. He conferred a special honor on Zacchaeus by offering to receive hospitality from him.
Zaccheaus is delighted to receive Jesus. For sure it would mean some changes. If Jesus was prepared to take him just as he was, then it was only right that he should start living like he was somebody important to God.
Through this story Jesus is calling “Get out of that Tree”. As I say, I don’t know what sort of tree you are hiding out in, or exactly what it means for you to get out of that place and move on towards a better place. But I do know that all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. That we all have defense mechanisms against whole hearted commitment to loving God - with all that we are - and loving others as much as we love ourselves. I know that doesn’t come easy – or without a price to pay.
But thank God – Jesus has paid the price. He calls us to come down, not in condemnation – but in acceptance. The Good News is not – “Clean up your life so that you may be acceptable to God” but, “Hey – God loves you and accepts you. Today God is calling your name. Today God is challenging you to move forward. Now is the hour of salvation!”
If you’re in one of those moods where you feel like “Well, nothing good ever comes my way”, or “Nothing amazing happens in my church” or “Why can’t this be this or that be that” – then get down out of that tree. That tree of self-pity – or that tree of disillusionment – or that tree of rebellion - or that tree of self-satisfaction – or that tree that’s covered in green leaves but is actually dieing on the inside – that tree of confusion or disbelief or self-condemnation or fear or anxiety.
Come down from that tree! Jesus wants to come to your house. He’s calling your name. He wants to share a feast with you. Today He wants to honor your life with His presence – today. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20).
Sure we can stay in our tree house. We can pretend not to hear. We can act like the name being called wasn’t ours but some other with the same name. But winter’s coming. Being stuck up in a tree when the rains start to fall can leave you pretty miserable. If the winds start to blow, your whole tree might come crashing down. There’s more to life than living in trees.
Our story concludes with Jesus saying, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." May salvation come to our lives and our homes today, because – today – we have heard Jesus calling our name and promising that as we open our lives to the influence of the Holy Spirit, it’s not going to be just more of the same, but new life in Jesus name.
As we are in our stewardship season, may our thankfulness overflow into generosity, and being generous not just with our treasures, but also with our time and talents in the service of God’s Kingdom. There is much we can do here in Baldwin through this churches ministry, but it takes our willingness and our commitment to ensure that it happens.
Let us move forward into the future aware of God’s desire to walk with us, to feast with us and share in all that it may bring. Let us allow God to work the changes in us that are a result of God’s acceptance of us. Let us seek to live as God’s people, simply because that’s who God calls us, by name, to be! “Get out of that tree” to the glory of God. AMEN!
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, on October 31st 2010
For a printable PDF copy click here
Something about being a kid makes you view trees as things that need to be climbed. I know I did. Even had a little den – a tree-house – in the old tree at the back of my parent’s house. It was a good place to be – particularly if there were jobs needed doing and you weren’t inclined to do them right then. You couldn’t stay up there forever. The inevitable would catch up and some one would be hollering, “Get out of that tree!”
Our Bible reading gave us the story of another little tree climber - a man named Zacchaeus. He’s described as having made a healthy income for himself, being short of stature and engaged in the profession of tax-collector.
There were all sorts of reasons why he could have been up the tree. Tax collectors weren’t the most popular people in Israelite society. Maybe he was up there trying to stay out of people’s way. He also had a bit of money, so maybe being up a tree kept him out of the way from pick-pockets and other petty thieves that crowds tend to attract.
Or maybe it was just because he was short and couldn’t see what was going on. Luke tells us that he had run on ahead of the crowds when he had seen that Jesus was coming to town in order to get a good view of all that was taking place. Luke doesn’t tell us why he wanted to see Jesus or what had so stirred Zaccheaus that he felt the need to be mingling with the folk on the streets. For sure though there was something about Jesus that had gained his attention. The last thing he had expected was to gain Jesus attention.
That’s what happens. Jesus comes by and shouts, “Get out of that tree!” Or rather He says, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." And Zaccheaus climbs down and is overjoyed to offer Jesus hospitality. The mere fact that Jesus has taken the time to recognize him and calls out his name is enough to bring about a radical change in the little man’s life. He’s a little man with a big heart.
"Look”, he tells Jesus “Half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Having encountered the love of Christ, life could not just carry on as it had done before. He was making some changes – changes for the better.
It’s not just kids who hide up trees. Zaccheaus wasn’t a kid. But he was hiding up a tree. It makes me ask, “What sort of trees are we hiding in? What trees do we need to come down from if we are going to be disciples of Jesus? What’s our tree?”
I know that we all have our own systems for coping with life. We all have our own views about what’s important and why we’re on this planet and what’s right and what’s wrong. And most of the time, these ideas about life – these ‘trees’ that we hide in are comfortable places to be.
Now I can’t tell you exactly what your tree is. But I can make some generalizations. It’s the place you go to ignore the genuine challenges of the world around you. It’s a place where you can shut out the voices of the crowd and do what seems right in your own eyes. It’s a place where you feel comfortable about yourself – even when there are things about your life that should make you uncomfortable.
Some trees are more obvious than others. Some have a well-stocked bar whose alcoholic content is the main thing that gets them through the day. Some have other forms of escape. Some trees are built out of harsh words and criticism towards those who are not the same or don’t share their ideas of right and wrong. Some of us are very selective about who we allow in our tree-houses.
Zaccheaus was doing all right. He had his circle of friends. He knew his place in the scheme of things and hoped others knew theirs. He kept his distance when he had to. It wasn’t his fault that the poor were poor. Yes, he cut a few moral corners now and then, but didn’t everybody? There were worse people than him about – why should he feel bad about himself?
Then Jesus comes along. He already knew that there was something different about Jesus. When people allowed Him to get to them strange things would happen. Healings. Miracles. Changed lives. He really didn’t seem to care what anybody else thought of Him. He wasn’t afraid to speak in harsh judgment to those who gave the impression of being righteous. He seemed to have unlimited time to share with the most insignificant of people. Then… there was Jesus, calling his name, saying… Zacchaeus “Get down out of that tree’.
It must have taken more than a bit of courage to come down. Why was Jesus calling him? Was he going to make an example of him before the crowds? Was it to humiliate him? Was it because he had money? Was it because he’d cheated people? No…. the look on Jesus face was not one of condemnation, but of acceptance.
It was a look Zacchaeus hadn’t seen for a long time. An look of acceptance. The people, even as he climbs down, are singing their usual tune. "He’s a sinner!" Jesus was crossing a barrier of ritual purity. A tax collector was considered unclean because he entered houses and inspected goods in a way unacceptable to Jewish law.
By entering Zacchaeus’s house, Jesus was acknowledging the chief tax collector’s dignity and worth. Jesus, who was being followed by the crowds, would have brought honor to whatever house He entered. He conferred a special honor on Zacchaeus by offering to receive hospitality from him.
Zaccheaus is delighted to receive Jesus. For sure it would mean some changes. If Jesus was prepared to take him just as he was, then it was only right that he should start living like he was somebody important to God.
Through this story Jesus is calling “Get out of that Tree”. As I say, I don’t know what sort of tree you are hiding out in, or exactly what it means for you to get out of that place and move on towards a better place. But I do know that all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. That we all have defense mechanisms against whole hearted commitment to loving God - with all that we are - and loving others as much as we love ourselves. I know that doesn’t come easy – or without a price to pay.
But thank God – Jesus has paid the price. He calls us to come down, not in condemnation – but in acceptance. The Good News is not – “Clean up your life so that you may be acceptable to God” but, “Hey – God loves you and accepts you. Today God is calling your name. Today God is challenging you to move forward. Now is the hour of salvation!”
If you’re in one of those moods where you feel like “Well, nothing good ever comes my way”, or “Nothing amazing happens in my church” or “Why can’t this be this or that be that” – then get down out of that tree. That tree of self-pity – or that tree of disillusionment – or that tree of rebellion - or that tree of self-satisfaction – or that tree that’s covered in green leaves but is actually dieing on the inside – that tree of confusion or disbelief or self-condemnation or fear or anxiety.
Come down from that tree! Jesus wants to come to your house. He’s calling your name. He wants to share a feast with you. Today He wants to honor your life with His presence – today. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20).
Sure we can stay in our tree house. We can pretend not to hear. We can act like the name being called wasn’t ours but some other with the same name. But winter’s coming. Being stuck up in a tree when the rains start to fall can leave you pretty miserable. If the winds start to blow, your whole tree might come crashing down. There’s more to life than living in trees.
Our story concludes with Jesus saying, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." May salvation come to our lives and our homes today, because – today – we have heard Jesus calling our name and promising that as we open our lives to the influence of the Holy Spirit, it’s not going to be just more of the same, but new life in Jesus name.
As we are in our stewardship season, may our thankfulness overflow into generosity, and being generous not just with our treasures, but also with our time and talents in the service of God’s Kingdom. There is much we can do here in Baldwin through this churches ministry, but it takes our willingness and our commitment to ensure that it happens.
Let us move forward into the future aware of God’s desire to walk with us, to feast with us and share in all that it may bring. Let us allow God to work the changes in us that are a result of God’s acceptance of us. Let us seek to live as God’s people, simply because that’s who God calls us, by name, to be! “Get out of that tree” to the glory of God. AMEN!
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