Stewardship

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

September 27, 2008

Text: Ephesians 2: 1-10 and Luke 19: 1-10

“You did what? Have you lost your mind?”

This may have been the response of his wife when Zacchaeus (“Z” for short!) told her that he had decided to give half of his goods to the poor and restore to those he had defrauded an amount equal to four times as much. Or maybe she said to him, “It is about time you were generous you old money-grubber!”

But what caused Z to be so generous?

Z was the chief tax collector and rich, we are told.  He was not like people now working for the IRS, or the local taxing authorities. In the eyes of the Jewish people, he ranked with thieves, robbers, money-changers, gentiles, harlots, extortionists, imposters and adulterers. The priests were forbidden to receive offerings for the poor from him. He could not be a witness in a trial.

Taxes were collected at the markets. Collectors would often establish themselves as bankers, mortgaging the property of needy peasants who owed back taxes. If you happened to be a Roman citizen, you could not be taxed; only the people of conquered territories, like Jerusalem and Judea, were. The Roman Senate contracted with Roman businessmen, who were free to use any means to collect taxes, and to add to the amount due a profit for themselves. In Judea, they would put one of the Jews in charge of collected from their own people.

 Property was taxed: land, homes, ships, even slaves. And there was a flat tax on each person between the ages of 12 and 65--- one day’s wages a year. And there were customs taxes.

Taxes were heaviest on the poorest Jews: they were forced to pay taxes not only to Rome but also to support King Herod’s lavish buildings in Judea, and in various Greek cities as far away as Antioch. Plus, they paid a tithe to the priests who presided at the Temple!

Does this give us some idea why tax collectors were hated?

Z was a tax collector in charge of other Jewish tax collectors and he must have been really good at his job. He not welcome in the synagogue or in the homes of faithful Jews. (It is interesting to remember that he would not have been welcome in the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the days of Jesus’ childhood.) He was a partner with the Romans in the domination and oppression of his own neighbors and relatives.  Picture a Mafia boss, surrounded by body guards.

You have to know these things about Z in order to grasp the scandal of Jesus’ actions and Z’s turnabout.

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. We are told that Z “sought to see who Jesus was” (or “what Jesus looked like,” REB).” Why would he want to see Jesus? What is he looking for?

Curiosity is underrated as a spiritual virtue. God may start working on us by making us curious.

Jesus had attracted a crowd, as usual. And because Z was short, he “ran on ahead and climbed up into a tree to see him” as he passed by. Grown, rich men did not normally run! (Do you remember how scandalous it was for the father of the prodigal son to run to meet his son?!) They do not usually climb trees either.

Z looks at Jesus from his perch in the tree, and Jesus looks at Z. “Z, come down now; for I must stay at your house today.”

Of all of the people in the crowd around him, Jesus stops and speaks to Z. All Z wanted was to see what Jesus looked like. But Jesus sees who Z is, and can be.

And Z hurries down from the tree of observation and takes Jesus into his home joyfully. Jesus does not rent a room and invite Z to visit with him there; he goes to where Z lived.

Curiosity may bring us to study Jesus, to examine him from afar. But so often Jesus, even now, through Word and Spirit, invites himself into our lives and into our homes, and abides there with us. And we are so captured by him that our lives can never be the same.

The faithful Jewish people were shocked by Jesus’ actions. “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” This was not the behavior of a good Jew, especially of a rabbi who was proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was coming through his work! For the faithful Jews, Z was completely outside the pale. No invitation were issued to him for their parties. Avoid him at all costs. “Birds of a feather flock together.” “You can judge a man by the company he keeps.”

Was it a mistake? Did Jesus confuse Z with someone else? Did he not know who this man was and what he did for a living? Surely he would want to have fellowship with those who would appreciate the message that Jesus was bringing, someone who was steeped in the law and the prophets?

It is one of the most secure of the facts about Jesus: that he ate with tax collectors and sinners. “Sinners” was a word especially reserved for women of the evening, and others who were down and out. Tax collectors were men who were up and out. They had power because they were under the protection of the Roman authorities. But they were sealed off from their own, and, as was assumed, from God’s mercy.

There are different ways of being lost. One can be lost with much or with little. Being lost means that you have lost your way, that you are in a wilderness and whether you have money or not you cannot find the way home.

Jesus knew what he was doing. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” We look for home and home finds us.

There is a wonderful old story which says this. A little girl wanders off in the woods. Her parents search for her. When they find her, asleep on a park bench, she says to them, “I am so glad I finally found you.” God comes to where we are, where we live. We seek him and we are found by him.

We do not know what transpired in the time Z was with Jesus, if anything. Perhaps Jesus did not have to say much. Coming with Z into his home was a sign of friendship, of acceptance. As is so often the case, when you need a friend, 90% of the help comes just from showing up.

Z stood, it says. The short man stood up (no longer in a tree) and spoke to Jesus: “Behold” (as in  “look, watch, can I have your attention, please, I want you to hear this”) “Lord” (he calls him Lord, Master, God; more than curious about Jesus now) “the half of all my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will restore it to them four-fold.”

Then Jesus says, presumably to the crowds this time, (did he shout it or just say it to a few close by?) “Salvation has come today to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For I came to seek and save the lost.”

What has happened here? Was Jesus accepting of Z because he gave away money to the poor? No, Jesus’ acceptance preceded Z’s decision and action.

Was Z the only lost person in the crowd? No. The problem with the religious leaders of the day was that they did not know that they too were far off the mark---- they too were sinners. In seeking to preserve their uniqueness, they had fooled themselves into believing that they were not in need of this new intervention of God’s power and mercy.

Karl Barth, the great German preacher and scholar of the last century, wrote:

“God, who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves, saw the misery in which we engulf ourselves by thinking we know how to love and understand ourselves. God saw our false securities. He could stand it no longer….” God came to us in Jesus of Nazareth. And so “we shall nevermore be strangers, orphans, refugees….. So we can repent, leave our old securities behind and enter a joyful venture. This [Z’s change of heart] is a bright moment. This is a passage from the ugly bygone hour into God’s bright new hour. Enter God’s house, sit down and eat at table, breathe freely, live at long last.” (K. Barth, Deliverance to the Captives, page 69)

Why did Z do what he did? Why did this lonely, rich despised man, who had done such terrible things, change and become generous?
He met God in the person of Jesus, the one who came to him where he was, as he was, and saved him from himself. A thrown-aside man comes in from the cold.

He did not get himself right and then Jesus came to his home. Jesus came to his home and then his heart of stone was changed into a heart of flesh. “By grace you are saved, through faith, not of your own doing, lest anyone should boast.” God who is rich in mercy has broken down the walls which separate us.

Love in action changes everything. When Jesus comes into our lives, our hearts overflow with generosity. We say to ourselves, “If God has done this for me, then I am his--- heart, mind, soul and strength.”

“We love God because God first loved us.”(First John) And we want to make amends; we want our lives to count for something eternal.

Eugene Peterson says it pithily in his translation of the Ephesians text: “It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.” (The Message)

Two stories which open the window on generosity:

In his book, Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity, Pastor Adam Hamilton writes of a time when he and his family were vacationing in the Grand Tetons. They happened to arrive on his birthday. When they arrived, he gave each of his daughters $20 to spend while they were there for four days. He told them that this was all he would give them and they could spend it on anything they wanted---but not to be asking for more.

They had only been there a few hours when they were in a gift shop and his daughter Rebecca came up to him with a hat she had picked out. She said that she wanted to spend her money on the hat. He tried to talk her out of it and reminded her that he would not be giving her any more money for the next three days. But she was insistent. She bought the hat. (This sounds like a familiar story, doesn’t it!?)

Later that day, as he was taking in the beautiful scenery, Rebecca came up and sat beside him, pulled the hat out of the sack and handed it to him, saying, “Daddy, I bought this for you. I love you. Happy Birthday.” Adam continues, “I took her in my arms and started to cry. That hat is among my most treasured possessions, my most often worn hat to this day because every time I wear it, I think of Becca’s sacrifice for me. All these years later it still touches me to think about how my little girl gave up all her spending money because she wanted to tell her daddy that she loved him.” (Abingdon Press, 2009; page 87)

Renowned Pastor Zan Holmes told this story some years back and I wrote it down. (I don’t know where he got it)

A man and his wife and his mother and younger brother lived in the same house. There was a fire. The man fought into the flames and saved his mother and his wife, but his younger brother perished in the fire. The man, disfigured by the fire rescue attempt, shut himself up and refused to see anyone because of the ugliness of his face and his guilt at being unable to save his younger brother.

His wife sent for a great plastic surgeon. When he came to their home, she told him the story. But her husband would not come out of their bedroom. After hearing the story, the physician replied, “Oh yes, I can help your husband.” But the wife said, No, you don’t understand. I want you to disfigure my face so he will not be self-conscious around me----so we can be together again.”

Profoundly moved, the surgeon went to the door to the bedroom and shouted through it. “Do you know what your wife wants me to do? She wants me to scar her face so that she and you can be together again! Do you know how much she loves you?”

Slowly, the door knob turns and begins to open. Love unlocked the door. In Jesus Christ, God identified with us in our situation. He gave himself for us, each of us, so that we could be reconciled to God our Maker.  “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

When Jesus walked into Z’s house together, love unlocked Z’s heart. And with Jesus in his life now, he began a new adventure in living. He saw everything differently. 

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” Second Corinthians 5)