Domes - Our Monthly Newsletter
Dunbar UCC
November 4, 2007
Luke 19:1-10
Uninvited Guest
- Last week in my sermon I confessed that even before I was eight years old, I was a full-blown bigot. I thought I was better than people who were different, and nobody could change my mind. When I was in Taiwan I caused a young boy to be taken away from his parents and village by the police -- and it didn’t bother me at all.
- It’s been a long time since then -- 45 years -- and I don’t think or feel the same way.I don’t feel that I’m better than poor people -- or people of other races or religions or cultures. God loves all of us -- I know that now -- and through all these years, I’ve been learning to do the same. But I can’t tell you what happened between 1961 and now to have changed me. It’s like the hymn “Amazing Grace” -- I was lost, now I’’m found -- I was blind -- but I see better now. As bad as I was, God is changing me.
- It’s one of the mysteries of this life: how we are converted -- how God washes the hatred and pride and anger from our hearts. The psalmist prayed: “Create a clean heart in me -- wash me from my iniquity -- cleanse me from my sin.” God will change our hearts.
- Zacchaeus was a Jew employed by the Romans to collect taxes from his people -- and he was allowed to collect more than the legal allotment. Tax collectors often used violence to extort this money, and so they were hated. They were so bad that the religious leaders told the people that they couldn’t accept alms from them. Jesus was criticized because he accepted these people into his circle of disciples and friends. Zacchaeus was a “chief tax collector”: rich, corrupt, and hated.
- V. So why was he seeking Jesus? Until this point in his life, money was his god and he earned and stole as much as he could. It didn’t bother him that the poor people went hungry because of him -- babies and children cried and adults suffered. But now he wanted to see Jesus. Why?
- I can’t tell you why. Why now? Why did Zacchaeus climb the tree now -- and not a year ago? Why did Jesus go to his house, and not to one of the other people’s homes were in the “crowd?” We won’t ever know why. But one day, mother Teresa had an idea to go to India and take dying and sick people off the street and care for them. One day, Francis of Assisi heard God tell him to rebuild the church. One day Dorothy Day dedicated her life to helping poor people in New York. After being President of the United States, Jimmy Carter was moved to help mediate conflicts around the world, and to help poor people have nice homes to live in. Why?
- Once I thought poor people were like animals, and I hated my enemies -- wanted them all dead, but I don’t now. I know we’re all the same -- and God loves every one of us. God’s grace is the most powerful force in this world and when it touches us, the anger melts, the hate dissolves, and differences between people don’t matter. And we could be touched by this grace today -- Jesus could visit our home today.