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In order to expedite posting the worship services here on our website, we are reducing the transcript to just the scriptures used and the message. Holy Communion is offered every Sunday. If you are worshipping with us online whether during the live-cast or through on-demand viewing, you are encouraged to have bread and juice or wine available as you watch the service and to participate in communion just as if you are present with us.
SCRIPTURE READINGS
God, open us to hear and receive your scriptures today as you would have us hear them, understand them as you would have us understand them, and to act upon them as you would have us act upon them.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
*Scriptures this morning are from the NRSV.
Isaiah 1:16-18 – Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
Psalm 32:1-7 – Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.
Luke 19:1-10 – He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “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.”
Then Jesus said to him, “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.”
L: The scriptures of God for the people of God.
A: Thanks be to God.
Message – Going Out On a Limb
Rev. Val
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer, and may you see fit to use me as a vessel from which you pour out your Divine Word.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
I want to read to you what Derek Weber of Discipleship Ministries wrote about the passage from Luke:
Two kittens shut down the B and Q lines of the New York Subway system for about two hours one day a few years back. The B and Q are two of the main lines that run from Brooklyn into the heart of Manhattan. A two-hour disruption is going to cause a problem, no matter what time it is.
One morning, a Thursday at 11 a.m., two scared kittens were spotted running down the tracks right next to the third rail. That’s the one that carries the power, 600 volts – not transformer power, but enough to use up all nine lives. So, they decided to cut the power to the whole line. And for almost two hours, the commuters and subway officials waited while a few went on a subway safari to rescue the flustered felines. Alas, the kittens managed to stay out of reach long enough that the disruption was no longer tenable. So, since the kittens weren’t in visible danger, they returned power to the rail and then started the local trains and eventually the express trains but issued an alert inviting the drivers to keep a lookout for the strays.
Naturally, in a day of instant commentary on anything and everything, the opinions were many and various. From the animal lover who praised the compassion of the administrators – or questioned why they gave up so soon just to keep the trains running on time (with the inevitable Mussolini quote tossed in), to the commuters who were patient … or not, and the conspiracy theorists who speculated that terrorists in cat suits were behind it all, not to mention the anti-government voices who blamed the president at the time for letting the cat out of the bag. Bah-dum-bum.
The argument centered around one point, really. Were they worth it? And before you get all heated up, let’s make a shift here. We’re not really talking about kittens on a subway track. We are talking about a little guy out on a limb.
Everybody sing, “a wee little man . . .” . . . “Climbed up in a sycamore tree . . .” . . . “YOU COME DOWN” . . . “I’m coming to your house today.” Why did we shout that bit? Jesus doesn’t seem to be shouting here. Maybe it is simply enthusiasm, and we got carried away when we were kids.
Who knows? It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the point here. And the point here is that even Luke had to learn to bite his tongue when Jesus comes to town.
If you read through the Gospel of Luke, you discover that there is a certain attitude to people with means, with resources—ah heck, just say it—the rich. Luke didn’t like them. Or he thought Jesus didn’t like them. In story after story in the gospel of Luke, the rich come out badly. So, when Luke begins chapter nineteen with this introduction, you are forgiven if you expect it to end badly. “There was a man named Zacchaeus; he was chief tax collector and was rich. As if being chief tax collector isn’t bad enough. A chief tax collector isn’t like the guy sitting in the booth collecting your sales tax, or your business tax, or your inventory tax or whatever. This is the guy who shows up at your door and takes everything you’ve got left. And he usually shows up with muscle, Roman muscle. He’s the guy, some historians think, that recruited all the other guys who are also now as hated as he is. He’s the regional director of tax collectors. But, for Luke, as bad as all that is, here’s what’s worse: he’s rich.
So, you know this can’t end well. You just know it. Except that a strange thing happens. When Jesus comes to town, Zacchaeus decides he wants to see him. And here’s what’s weird: he doesn’t send a memo and ask Jesus to stop by his office. He doesn’t have his people call Jesus’ people. He runs (runs!) down the street and climbs a flipping tree! This pillar of society, okay, a despised pillar of society to be sure, but a man of status and standing and whatever else makes you the top of the heap, runs down a street and climbs a tree. He acts like a little kid! What is up with that?
Jesus seems to accept it all, and then invites himself to the house of a guy who would climb a tree just to see him. A curious thing is that we don’t know why. Jesus says he “must stay” at Zacchaeus’s house today. Must stay? But what is even more curious is that we don’t know Zacchaeus’s motivation. All Luke says is that he wanted to see Jesus. “Trying to see who Jesus was” (verse 3). Why? Was it a change of heart? Was he worried about competition? Was it hope or fear? Or a little of both? We don’t know. And apparently, that doesn’t matter.
That is what is really curious about this story. The transformation, the change in behavior, the giving away half of what he owns and paying back four times the amount if (notice the if there, Zac isn’t admitting anything) he has defrauded anyone, all happens after Jesus puts himself on the guest list. He came down from a tree and changed his life.
Or, at least, it appears so. Actually, where our translation has, “I will give” and “I will pay back,” the original text says, “I give” and “I pay back.” So, is he already generous? Is Jesus coming to dine with him because he is already a good guy? Well, the crowd doesn’t think so. They start to grumble when Jesus makes his announcement. “Why are you going to his house?” they wonder, “don’t you know he is a sinner?”
He’s not worth it. That’s what they are saying. Don’t waste your time on him, keep the trains running, Jesus. Stay on target. Keep out of the gutters, off the side streets, out of the trees. Stick to your own kind. His kind, the sinner kind, isn’t worth bothering with.
Jesus says his kind is your kind. He is one of you. A son of Abraham, like you. A child of God, like you. If I ignore him, I ignore you. But I didn’t come to ignore the ones who will go out on a limb just to see me. The ones who will risk reputation, such as it might have been. The ones who will put aside “proper behavior” and become like a little child just to see me.
We don’t know what was in Zacchaeus’s mind when he ran and climbed a tree. Which I guess means, in part, that since our motives are at best mixed, we’ve got a chance too. Jesus just might invite himself into our houses with a surprising urgency. No matter what anyone else seems to think, we are worth the effort, worth the disruption, worth the inconvenience of loving.
Now ask yourself this question of this passage: “Where are you in the story?” Are you standing with the crowd, shaking your head at those people who aren’t worth it? Or are you standing next to Jesus, inviting yourself into the homes of those others think are sinners? Or perhaps, are you too out on a limb, hoping for a glimpse of Jesus and a whole new way of living?
By the way, seven hours later, they found those kittens, named them Arthur and August, and decided they were worth it.”
Thank you, Rev. Weber, for that story.
So my question to you is a bit different than Rev. Weber’s. Rev. Weber asked where you are in the Zacchaeus story. My question is, “are you willing to go out on a limb to meet Jesus face-to-face?” Now, some of you might be thinking … if you’re like me … that your lack of tree climbing skills would be an assurance you’d probably meet Jesus by falling out of the tree and breaking your neck, but that’s not the kind of face-to-face with Jesus I’m referring to.
Zacchaeus took a risk. He had to know how society felt about him. He had to know that even those who worked under his supervision may have resented him. And yet he still went there, made his way through that very likely unfriendly crowd, and climbed up that tree and out onto that limb. Just to see … just to get a glimpse of this man called Jesus.
Y’all know what’s going on in this country, in this world. I don’t need to rehash it every Sunday. And you know as well as I do that there are people in the margins that forces in this country, in this world, are working overtime not just to oppress but completely eliminate.
The message from God Isaiah delivered said, “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Jesus said, “whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me … I was hungry and you fed me. I was cold and you took me in.”
In this world today, though, seeking justice, rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, and pleading for the widow can be risky … to your reputation among your peers, to your place in the community, even physically risky as people become more and more confrontational, especially those people who are doing the oppressing, creating the injustices, and harming the orphans and widows. And those same people are big into recruiting more and more to their way of thinking by demonizing those they seek to oppress as a threat, creating in those who fall for their rhetoric false fears.
And I say false fears because those they seek to oppress are all out there on the limbs of that same tree just like Zacchaeus. They just want to get a glimpse of the same good news, the same hope and grace and light and life that is the man called Jesus.
I’ll ask my question, again … are you willing to go out on a limb … to risk that the limb you climb out on will hold and not break … to stand up for the least among us?
I’m not talking just posting positive and encouraging this and that and the other things on whatever social media you have access to. I mean literally standing up for them in your neighborhoods, your communities, at local community and government meetings, at the offices of the state and federal elected officials?
Are you willing to carry water to the union workers picketing? Are you willing to literally create a human wall … a line … between the LGBTQ community and those that come to protest them? Not that we have much of it going on around here, but if we did … are you willing to stand between the vigilante poll watchers out there trying to subtly intimidate people, and the folks simply trying to cast their votes?
Or let’s talk about an even shakier limb to climb on. Are you willing to sit down with that guy down the street or mouthing off at the local coffee shop that holds political and/or religious views completely opposite to your own, that calls everyone but people who look just like him every horrible derogatory name ever uttered and hear him out? Listen to his side? Because that loud-mouthed opinionated guy is just another lost son of Abraham like Zacchaeus. That guy has been created in the image and likeness of God just like you and me and all those people he cusses and carries on about. Will you climb out on that limb to meet Jesus face-to-face in the face of someone you don’t agree with?
Zacchaeus climbed out on a limb just to get a glimpse of this man that he’d heard about … just to see Jesus. And by climbing out on that limb, Zacchaeus not only saw Jesus, Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus house for dinner.
Going out on a limb for someone these days isn’t normal. But, like Jacques Ellul said, “Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers. We’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.” We need to get brave. We need to start taking the non-violent actions of going out on a limb to stand up for, stand with, the least among us, and to sit with that neighbor who is our polar opposite as they tell us how things look from their perspective because what that neighbor is really telling us is what scares him and what is hurting him. In letting him tell you, his healing will begin, too.
One more time, I’ll ask you my question – will you go out on a limb for a chance to see Jesus and an invitation to the bread of life he offers? I ask this because ultimately Jesus hung on a limb for you.
Let’s pray:
God, your scriptures tell us your love will find us no matter how far away we are from the Word. Just as Jesus found Zacchaeus hiding in a tree, you will find us and bring us home. It does not matter what we have done wrong, we still belong to you. We have the assurance that you will rescue us. This is the good news of the Gospel!
Give us strength, God, to be willing to go out on a limb for those waiting and yearning to hear that good news, too. Let us see the face of Jesus in each of them, rich or poor, friend or enemy, regardless of who they are, where they come from, the color of their skin, the way they worship, and who they love. Let us not only climb out on that limb but be a lantern of your light shining in the darkness of this world.
In Jesus name, Amen.
Credits:
- Unless listed below, all works cited within the text above.
- *Adapted in full or part from Preaching Notes, Discipleship Ministries, October 30, 2022
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