The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for November 26, 2006

Texts:  Luke 19:1-10   Psalm 119:137-44

Title:  “Gaining Perspective”

            Do you ever feel like you are just going through the motions?  Sometimes life becomes so routinized that that is exactly how we feel.  Just going through the motions.  We do what is expected of us in each of the various roles we occupy in the home, on the job, in the community, but the day in, day out familiarity with those roles has so absorbed us that we have ceased to invest much, if any, thought in what we are doing or why we are doing it.  Our satisfaction is derived from knowing that we have our bases covered, that we are meeting all of our obligations.  No, we are not oblivious to events in the world around us, to terrorists, the elections, the economy, and the approaching holiday season.  We are aware but are we really self-aware?  There is a difference.

             Self-awareness is the recognition that we may exercise our free will, that we can question and probe, that we may even, if we choose, do something out of the ordinary, something that runs against the grain of our typical patterns.  That last spontaneous act of yours may have taken any number of forms, but in whatever you might have done you were self-aware, you perceived yourself acting in an unfamiliar role.  You left work early, put on your most comfortable shoes, and took a nice long walk.  You picked up the phone and called a friend you had not spoken to in five years.  In those acts you, if only momentarily, glimpsed life in a broader frame.

              Many of us fear spontaneity.  I confess to you that I do.  Spontaneity has consequences.  By acting spontaneously we willingly, to use the jargon of the day, operate “outside the box.”  Spontaneity forces us to release our grip and let the event, the experience, dictate outcomes.  Outcomes may become less predictable, or may become entirely unpredictable.

              Was it a spontaneous act?  I think so, Zacchaeus valued trees for shade, not for climbing.  Zacchaeus was a businessman, a numbers guy.  He earned his keep reviewing tax records and making collections.  Let’s speculate further that what he did for a living was not entirely satisfying intellectually or spiritually.  I have him pegged as a man who followed a pretty tight protocol, yes, a man whose life seldom veered off line.

              Zacchaeus was arguably the most notorious personality in all of Jericho.  Chief tax collector was the title.  File an income tax return.  What is the last thing you want to hear?  You certainly don’t want to hear that the IRS audit department is reviewing your  return.

              Zacchaeus was the dreaded IRS personified.  But what made him even more odious in the eyes of the people was that he was an appointee of the hated Romans.  Zacchaeus was scorned by the Jews as a collaborator and a turncoat.  While fear of the man made people civil, civility was suspended in the conversations that occurred behind his back.  The arrival of a tax bill was deemed a curse levied on a household, and the origin of that curse was directly traceable to Zacchaeus.  He was a bad guy.  Though enjoying the protection of his Roman overlords, they could do nothing to protect him from the ridicule he daily suffered as he went about his work. 

                It is diffucult to believe that Zacchaeus derived any kind of positive benefit from his work, the money offering the barest compensation for his troubles.  Zacchaeus was a free man in chains.  He was a guy who pretty much was going through the motions, a man numbed to the ridicule he daily suffered, yet laboring under its oppressive weight nonetheless.

               Zacchaeus was a man who negotiated life with his head down, his shoulders drawn in, a posture, I would add, that suited his frame of mind equally well.  But one day that would change.  As spontaneous acts go this one certainly qualifies.  It is not at all difficult to recreate the scene in the mind’s eye.  Picture a large crowd jostling each other that they might inch a bit closer to the object of their attention.  In that crowd we spot a man, a man short in stature, who has done his best to elbow his way into the crowd only to be repelled time and time again.  Yet this man, our friend Zacchaeus, would not be repelled for good.  Spotting an opportunity he placed a tentative handhold on the side of the tree, and trusting muscles unaccustomed to physical exertion, hoisted himself up.  It was a fully spontaneous act, and appearances be damned act.  And what an appearance he must have presented.

                 Dignity and self-respect left on the ground, Zacchaeus did what was necessary to achieve his purpose.  And what was his purpose?  It was simply to see Jesus, that’s all.

              There are times in life when we do the bidding of some inner longing, a repressed desire that claims us.  That time had arrived for Zacchaeus.  As he climbed up that tree Zacchaeus became self-aware.  That he was making a spectacle of himself could not be ignored.  Yet how he was perceived, however ridiculous in appearance, really didn’t faze him.  You see from his perch there above the crowd Zacchaeus gained a new perspective, and that new perspective, friends, had everything to do with Jesus.

What precisely seeing Jesus did for Zacchaeus we are not given to know.  We do know, however, that when Jesus said to him, “Zacchaeus, I must stay at your house today,” Zacchaeus was  only too ready to comply.  He was self-aware.  The effort to see Jesus produced an entirely unexpected result in that man’s life.

               Now the bystanders who witnessed Zacchaeus and Jesus in conversation did not at all like what they saw.  Jesus was going to the home of public enemy number one, a sinner.  The crowd was indignant, offended.  Zacchaeus may or may not have heard their complaints, but in that moment what they said or did really didn’t matter.  It was all mere background noise to him.  What really mattered was his new perspective.  What others called him, what guilt, what inadequacy he felt, receded into the background before another reality. 

              We shall never know what possessed him.  Those are lines in his biography that we are not given to read.  Yet we know that is experience with Jesus changed Zacchaeus.  “Look, 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.”

              There is a moment in the parable of the prodigal son—most of us know that parable—when the prodigal, having frittered away his entire inheritance from his father, has an awakening.  The scripture says, “He came to his senses.”  Bottom line?  Zacchaeus experienced that moment of clarity.  Looking around him, and then within himself, he became self-aware, he came to his senses.  He became the recipient of a new perspective.

              There is a period in our week when self-awareness comes more naturally than any other.  The period of time to which I refer is a gift of God conferred through this church on Sunday morning.  Can other periods in the week offer such an opportunity?  Quiet time to pray, reflect? Most certainly.  Now self-awareness is not restricted to God’s house, it may even occur when you are up a tree, but his is a time when God specifically extends the invitation, “rest a while, spend some time with me.”

              Just going through the motions—that’s what we feel like sometimes.  Plug away.  Keep all the bases covered.  Got to move on.  Keep up the relentless pace.  It wasn’t until he climbed that tree that friend Zacchaeus gained a new perspective on life.  And that is precisely what God is offering us here, right now—a perspective on life.  Worship offers a perspective on life.

              Now knowledge, information and experience can shape a life perspective.  But I am not talking about perspective we pick up in day-to-day living.  What I am talking about here is Jesus, the Lord, who comes into our lives offering a new perspective we are not likely to find elsewhere.  The Jesus I am talking about is the one who covenants to be with us in the bread and cup of Holy Communion, he is the Jesus who calls persons into the leadership of the church.  He is the Jesus who confers upon us gifts and aptitudes to use in the up building of the church.  He is Jesus, the bearer of salvation, who seeks out and saves the lost.

               Some of us are struggling with perspective.  When at our self-aware best we are in touch with that reality, the reality that we are struggling, that something is missing from our lives.  Friend Zacchaeus reached that point.  He knew that his perspective had to change.  And when it did change everything else changed with it.  He became a new man.  Jesus saw the change: “Today salvation has come to this house.”  Going through the motions Zacchaeus would never have climbed the tree, but when he stopped going through the motions and climbed that tree, the world suddenly opened to him in a radically new way for salvation had come to his house.

                Salvation has come to us right here in this house.  Jesus Christ is here.  Now I know that perspectives across this congregation may vary as to what that mean.  We are not all at the same place in our spiritual journeys.  But this I do know.  If we arrange to be here regularly, and if we are open to God’s presence in prayer and study, God in Christ will take care of the rest.  It is a covenant he made with us when he went to the cross to redeem our sins.  Jesus came to seek out and save the lost.

               “Today salvation has come to this house.”  It is under that banner, friends, that we live our lives, not because we personally chose salvation, but because Christ at the sacrifice of his own life on the cross, chose it for us.  “Today salvation has come to this house.”  What that means may be hazy from where you are sitting.  But you are here.  You are here in the God’s house.  What a pity, what a waste, if you and I just got up and left here just as we came.

                Going through the motions is not movement, it yields nothing but the illusion of movement.  God, in Christ, is challenging us to become self-aware right now, to accept a life-changing alternative to going through the motions.  But are we willing to ask more the Christ than the tidbit Sunday worship offers?  Are we willing to risk that life-transforming decision that forever altered Zacchaeus life?  Is Christ welcome where your daily life is lived?  If not, try a new perspective.

                Prayer

                O Christ, under whose cross we gather, you came into the world bearing light and hope for the world.  Baptized as light bearers and hope proclaimers we have been commissioned to serve neighbor in your name.  Grant that we may faithfully fulfill that commission, our ministry firmly established in your holy word.  May your word shape our perspective, O God, and inspire our action onto the day when all may experience your grace.

                 Lord, we often forget the great price that you paid for our freedom.  We want to associate with you and bear your name, but only on agreeable terms.  We reject the inconvenience that comes with servant hood, and suffering for the sake of your gospel is out of the question.  Yet even as we reject your terms, you do not reject us.  You continue to extend your hand.  Lord, whose message is righteousness and servant hood; we know what you are asking of us.  Grant us the courage to respond.

                O God, you have created us for union with thee, our lives perfected in faithful service.  To that great aim we recommit ourselves to you today.  Use us, use all of us, in your service, and where uncertainty about your message exists bring your light and clarity.

                   Lord, we are grateful for the gifts of ministry you have conferred upon our church.  Although we live in challenging times, you have granted us all we need to meet those challenges.  Prone to doubt, prone to avoid the difficult work that our challenges place before us, we have not achieved what we are capable of achieving as your church.  Preferring the well-worn groove into which habit has taken us to the new territory we might explore, our senses and expectations have been dulled to the potentialities available to us.  Reform our minds, O God, to see new possibilities, and the wisdom to capitalize on those possibilities.

                  O God, we thank you for all of those who have committed their time, talent, and money to the ministry of this church.  We praise you for the response our stewardship appeal has received, and continue to pray that the aspirations we have established for our ministry may be matched with a zeal to attain them.  Be with those who have yet to decide what form their service may take that they may find in you the answers they are seeking.   

                 O God, even as fear and uncertainty grip this nation we turn to you as our source of strength and deliverance.  Evil has made its play.  Grant us the confidence to entrust our lives and our futures to you, knowing that you and you alone are sovereign, and that the future is in your hands.  We continue to pray for those upon whose leadership we rely, for our president, his cabinet, and the military personnel who bear the burden of this hour.  Grant them wisdom and courage.  Be with those who are at work to maintain public safety, those members of our domestic security forces are on the front lines in the war against terrorism.

               Lord of the ages, we trust in thee.  Deepen that trust that as we live these days our lives may conform to Christ’s life.  Bear with us when we falter.  Strengthen us when tempted.  Discipline us when we lose our way.  In all events be merciful and forbearing, that through that forgiveness we may be emboldened to forgive ourselves and others.

              O God, fount of all love, daily intercessor, hear our prayers, for we pray in your name…