Sermon for 4th Sunday before Advent

Sunday 31st October 2004

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

The Sinner’s Guest

In our reading from St Luke’s Gospel we hear the crowd grumbling. “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”

An Irishman was a judge at an ice-skating competition. After the first couple danced on the ice having fallen several times and totally lost it during their routine, the judges gave their inevitable low scores – 5.1, 4.5, and 3.8 except the Irish judge who scored them 9.9.

The other judges turned to him in amazement. “Why are you giving such a high score – they were terrible!”

“Ah sure”, he replied, “Don’t you know it’s wild slippery out there!”

In today’s society things can be ‘wild slippery’ generally. In education for example everything is changing. The curriculum is now ‘an enriched curriculum’ – you can put off the three ‘Rs’ until later and in the meantime learn how to play in a more structured way.

And in post-primary we are slipping into what is described as a more relevant curriculum – What’s the point it is argued of learning French irregular verbs if you want to be a plumber!

And did you see in the news last week how easy it is to slip into debt? How a £6000 house improvement loan became a £350,000 crippling debt? The judge called it extortion and wiped it out. The interest rates were massive and in a credit card culture there are thousands of families falling down this slippery slope into misery and worry.

And topping all that up is a vast expansion in gambling with Las Vegas style casinos on the way throughout the country. In addition the Internet and mobile phones are helping to feed gambling addiction and other addictions besides.

It seems we are now more than ever exposed to powerful commercial and social influences through various media not least the Internet.

It’s a slippery environment and finding your way through it and keeping your balance is not easy. Our values and strengths of character are being tested and exposed to subtle and not so subtle influences.

Zaachaeus was a man who had slipped off the social ladder.

In St Luke’s Gospel he is characterised as – a Jew, a toll collector and wealthy.

He was the “Chief Toll Collector” – a kind of district manager with other toll collectors working under him. He belonged to a circle of persons almost universally despised. Their entrepreneurial activities were dubious. They cheated people and added interest and demanded more than was just.

However when we are introduced to Zaachaeus we discover that he is a man on a quest. He wants to change. He is not interested in merely “seeing” Jesus but must know “who Jesus is”.

He goes to great lengths, even enduring the shame of having to climb a tree. The crowd block him off from Jesus. They become a barrier, a negative, vindictive barrier.

But Zaachaeus persists, runs ahead of the crowd and climbs the tree hoping to see Jesus.

The extraordinary thing is, Jesus sees him. He sees him in a way that reveals the nature of his mission. Jesus has come to save the lost and in doing so he responds to Zaachaeus’ openness and welcome. And more than this he forges a relationship with Zaachaeus and his household. They share a meal together.

It’s all so immediate and conclusive. Jesus says ‘Today salvation has come to this house’ and Zaachaeus and his family receive the Good News with ‘joy’.

There is a great sense of restoration and acceptance of the values of the Kingdom. It’s a powerful change for the better and for the well being of the family.

Zaachaeus says ‘I give’,’ I pay back’ – he responds to the message of Jesus with actions that put things right. In doing so he shows real insight and commitment to the values of Jesus’ mission.

He had been lost not in the sense that he was damned or doomed. ‘Lost’ in this context simply means ‘being in the wrong place’. He had slipped out of faith, out of the way of a life anchored in decent, honest values.

Jesus had given him the opportunity to get back to the right place, to get back on his feet and to put things right in his life.

The crowd grumbled. “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner”.

In St Luke’s Gospel Jesus is always doing that – crossing the social boundaries, challenging the norms – reaching out to the outcast, the blind beggar, the widow, the little children, the despised, the people whom society deem to be ‘out of place’.

It’s his mission as described by Isaiah – to seek justice, to encourage the oppressed, to defend the orphans, to plead the case of the widow.

Jesus might well have said to Zaachaeus ‘come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow. If you are willing and obedient I will help you get things right.”

Zaachaeus is encouraged to overcome the cynical prejudice around him – the prejudice that threatened to block his way to Jesus. He receives Jesus into his home. He does indeed want to know Jesus; he wants to respond to his message of repentance and forgiveness, to pay back and to take actions that are honest and immediate.

He becomes the man the psalmist understood. “Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no deceit”.

Zaachaeus came clean. Jesus sought him out and helped him to get back to the right place.

So in this slippery world with so many pressures and negative values coming at us, so many crowds creating ‘in lifestyles’, so many presumptions about what is ‘the norm’ – we should learn from Zaachaeus – to be determined in our search for true values, to be willing to act on them and to get things right in our relationships and in the manner of our lives.

A wallpaper religion that covers over the cracks may look good and even exciting but it has nothing to do with the Lord of Life and His Kingdom.

Isaiah urges us to cast away all hypocrisy. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness – in all honesty – with joyful hearts, open to the Lord.

“Come now let us reason together…look he has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”

So may the Lord, in the words of the litany, ‘give us true repentance; forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances and endue us with the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to His word.’

Amen.