Month: November 2019

Colossians 1: 11-20;  The Image of the Invisible God; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; 11.24.19; ICCM

On Friday night, over dinner at Angelina’s, someone asked me if I had always wanted to be a pastor.  Yes, I answered, even before I can remember apparently.  When I was a little girl our family sat in the front row where we could see what was going on, a tactic my mother employed to help my sister and me behave.  When I was ordained, Pastor Dennis Hanson told me his memories of me as a toddler.  He said he wasn’t surprised I had become a pastor and that I was the only person who ever blessed him back.  I guess it was my pattern to mirror the sign of the cross at the end of the service from my perch on my father’s lap. 

The mystical has always drawn me in.  I love the music and poetry of faith, the songs and verses and prayers that ring in my mind.  I’ve memorized many passages over time, without trying really, just by reading and studying.  The practices of prayer and meditation quiet and comfort my racing brain.  Visions of the unity of all things ground my being.  To be honest, I find it hard to imagine how others can live even one day without seeing holiness everywhere.  Oh, I’ve learned through my ministry that many people, even many church people haven’t developed a practice of prayer and study nor are they oriented to look for God’s expansive presence as I am.  I have to remind myself what a luxury I have had—what a privilege it has been to spend my working life digging deep into God’s word.

I was about 15 or so when I sought help from Pastor Dave Solberg, asking him to teach me how to pray.  He was an energetic teacher.  I learned many styles of prayer from him—simple daily practices reading the gospels contemplatively, lectio divina, centering prayer, meditation techniques including breathing prayers, mantras, praying the name of Jesus, and prayer journals.

This past week I remembered Pastor Solberg’s lessons when someone here shared with me their personal faith goal for this Mexican season:  to grow in hungering for the word.  That person quoted a part of the Book of Common Prayer written in 1662:  Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear the Scriptures, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of eternal life which Thou has given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.  What a great joy it is for a pastor to hear that kind of intention!  Prayer matures into the practice of memory.  What an adventure it is to rest in God’s word.  I’m excited to watch the growth happen.

Some texts lend themselves to contemplation and recitation better than others.  Those passages lose something when we over analyze or dissect them too much. Like music, art and poetry, pieces like our lesson from Colossians today are meant to evoke, envelop, and express deep truth.

This past summer Steve and I were able to attend a Gordon Lightfoot concert.  We wound up sitting in the front row of the general seating with some of our best friends.  The highlight of the event was when the 81-year-old songwriter sang our song—Beautiful. My heart swelled. I was transported back in time to the day Steve first played the song for me, and also to our wedding day when a friend sang it for us.

That’s how love songs work—it’s not so much about the melody or the words—it’s about the meaning infused in the memories. We instinctively respond.  Their hyperbole and surplus of feeling create big sensations and speak the language of the heart.  Their words roll around in our minds on the notes of music.  They make their way into our souls.

Our reading from Colossians works that way too—it’s a love song to Christ from the early church.  It’s loaded with Christological poetry that lends itself to art and music.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  Those words live in me, they roll in my head like a melody.

When I was about 10 years old my parents acquired a wall-sized triptych, painted by the head of the art department at the Lutheran college my father worked at.  Its three panels stretch at least 8 feet wide and 6 feet high on a wall in the dining room.  Across the top are the words:  All things hold together in him.  The background is composed of the Christ, in the Byzantine format known as pantocrator, which means ruler of all creation.  He stands, crowned, robed in white, full-length and full-faced, holding the book of the gospels in his left hand and blessing with his right hand. The painting is filled with carpenters, doctors, children playing, students studying, artists painting, people of all races and ages and genders. 

We had customary places at the dinner table.  I ate all my meals looking at that depiction of our text for today.  Our text lives in me, I can see it when I close my eyes.  Listen to the words of our reading as paraphrased by the wonderful pastor poet Eugene Peterson in the translation known as the Message.

^15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

^18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

That’s poetry. 

I heard an interview with Eugene Peterson this summer on the National Public Radio show called On Being.  The radio host, Krista Tippet, had recorded the interview shortly before Pastor Peterson’s death.  He told about how the scriptures open up when we read them as poetry going so far as to say that we cannot understand most of the scriptures without a poetic and imaginative approach.  He said,

Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with too much gawking and our ears, dulled with too much chatter miss around and within us.  Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself.  Poetry grabs us by the jugular.  Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. 

Eugene Peterson related a memory in that interview.  One time he went to visit a lonely woman. She was doing embroidery and explained to him that her life was limp.  She said it needed something like an embroidery hoop—you know, those two part round things that you stretch fabric between and snap them together.  As you stretch and then hold the material in place it all fits together.  He provided her with a copy of the psalms and invited her to let her mind stretch like fabric around the structure of the psalms, to see what happened to the pieces of her life when she zeroed in on one or two of them.

Pastor Peterson went on in the interview to explain his own practice of praying the psalms.  First thing in the morning he centered in for an hour or so of quiet and coffee.  He had selected 7 psalms that as he said, “covered the whole waterfront.” And he memorized them.  Sundays he worked with Psalm 92, a sabbath psalm.  One weekday was focused on Psalm 68, a collection of bits and pieces that fit together moving from fury and praise to isolation.  The parts are not logically connected but with imagination they do blend and flow. Psalm 18 is rich with metaphor and served as another day’s concentration point.  After reciting and resting in the psalm for the day he said he, “shut up.”  He breathed for 15-25 minutes, emptying himself as much as he could, ridding himself of the clutter.  The psalms offer us the full range of experience.  He said, “It’s easy to be honest before God with the hallelujahs, more difficult with the hurts, and nearly impossible to be honest with God in the dark emotions of our hates.”

The poets, mystics, psalmists, and song writers invite us into the wonder, the love, and the deep relationship with the Holy.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. 

Today I want to leave you with another passage that rings with the majesty and mystery of God’s immeasurable presence.  It is a poetic prayer for believers written in Ephesians chapter 3:

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,^[a] 15 from whom every family^[b] in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶ I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

New Heavens and a New Earth; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM; November 17, 2019; Isaiah 65: 17-25 & Luke 21: 5-19

In both of our Scripture readings today, we see the people longing for the good old days—the times before destruction.  Both the prophet Isaiah’s words and Luke’s recalling of Jesus’ words were written in the context of destruction.  Both are messages of hope and promise in troubled times.  Both messages acknowledge the difficult nature of this world, it’s structures and governments even as they proclaim God’s enduring provision. 

Carly Simon’s song, Anticipation, has been running through my mind this week as I thought about our scripture readings.

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now. Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation, Is makin’ me late, Is keepin’ me waitin’

And tomorrow we might not be together, I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways
So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now, And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

The prophet Isaiah preached a word of hope to people living in anticipation, for them to stay right there, being glad and rejoicing in what God is creating. 

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth… be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight

Isaiah spoke to what was left of the former kingdom of Israel. Generations before, Babylon had conquered Israel and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  The people of Israel were marched off in captivity, having seen their land torn by war, their homes and place of worship demolished.  For over 70 year they lived as exiles, longing to return. They built up expectations.  Finally, Persian defeated Babylon.  Cyrus was the new emperor of all the known world and he allowed the people who had been born in captivity, the ones who had only heard stories of the good old days, to go “home.” 

Imagine the challenges they faced.  Where to begin!?  These people had never seen the place before. They had to start all over.  Current residents had filled up what had once been their land.  Where were those good old days?  Maybe, if we get a picture in our minds of Syria right now, it’s broken walls and ruined land, 13 million of its 22 million people displaced from their devastated land; maybe if we consider what it would be like for them two or three generations from now to return and try to rebuild; maybe if we do that, we can begin to hear Isaiah’s words with some degree of understanding. What would it be like to hear those hopeful words in that kind of a situation?  Words like this:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain! The prophet was speaking their language—he described an end to all they had ever known. He painted a word picture of peace, health, stability.  I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. 

Over the years they did rebuild, a bit.  But, their new temple wasn’t anything like the one built in the 10^th century BC by King Solomon and destroyed in 587 by the Babylonians.  The second temple was much smaller. And they didn’t have their own king again.  No, the Persian Empire gave way to the Greeks and then to the Romans.  It wasn’t until 500 years later, in 20 BC, that the Jews were finally able to update and expand the temple.  Through all that time their longing remained strong for a Messiah to restore the good old days.

Isaiah’s message pointed the people not backward, but to their own time. He wanted them to see the present and continuing activity of God’s creative work.  They longed for another time.  It’s only human to do so.  We spend so much of our lives wishing for another time. 

I used to listen to a radio show called Car Talk.  It was hosted by car mechanic brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi.  They called themselves Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers.  They answered car questions in their own funny style.  One day they talked about how we always want to live in another time.  They joked:

If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. “How old are you?” “I’m four and a half!” You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five!

That’s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

“How old are you?” “I’m gonna be 16!” You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life… you become 21.

Even the words sound like a ceremony… YOU BECOME 21… YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re just a sour dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40.

Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50… and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; “I was JUST 92.”

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. “I’m 100 and a half!”

Even though we can never know about the days to come, we think about them anyway.  We keep chasin’ after some finer day.  It’s hard to stay right here and see that these are the good old days, and these days are the only ones we really have.

Luke wrote our gospel reading today sometime after the temple that we were talking about in the Old Testament reading was destroyed yet again.  In 66 AD the Jews revolted under the Roman rule.  The Roman response was to level the temple.  Now, all that remains of that glorious structure is the Western Wall.  And the world is still fighting over the stones referenced in our gospel.

Worrying about the future is just as useless as longing for the past.  Many people see a dire prediction of awful things to come in texts like toady’s gospel reading.  But Luke’s portrayal of Jesus points us away from fretting about the things to come.  As Jesus said in another place, today has enough worries of its own. Like every other generation, we have our hands full.  Government corruption is universal, wars, natural disasters, fires and floods, disease, loss—these are constants in every time and place.  The human reaction is to long for the past or worry about the future, to throw up our hands in despair and bury our heads in the sand and hope against hope that it all turns out alright.

Both of these texts are really about good news. Isaiah acknowledges the current reality of his time and God is about to create new heavens and a new earth.  The people should be glad and rejoice forever in what God IS creating. Jesus isn’t preaching gloom and doom; Jesus is preaching reality. Jesus was not predicting some far-off day of ultimate battle; he was talking about the reality of life in Israel, which was an occupied country and had been buffeted about by war during its entire existence.

We are called to a life of endurance, patience and faith in the midst of a world that is often difficult and confusing. We are called to a faith that looks above and beyond our personal circumstances to the promise of God to hold us and keep us safe forever.

Robert Fulghum tells the story of a medieval stonecutter who was working on a Cathedral. An interested bystander saw the man working day after day carefully cutting and shaping and polishing one modest sized piece.  Finally the watcher said to the cutter “This stone must be very important.  Is it a part of the baptismal font?  Is it the base of the pulpit?  Is it the front of the altar?’

The cutter got up from his knees and wiped his hands and lead the man around the scaffolding and pointed out a very obscure corner of the building, “It goes there,” he said.  The onlooker was astounded, “Really, you’re working so hard on something nobody will see?” The stonecutter smiled and said, “God will see it.  We’re not building this cathedral for nobody; we’re building it for God.”

Both of our readings today are calls to faithful living, to endurance, to hanging in through tough times, to having faith in the God who has faith in us. It’s not about building a temple or a cathedral, but about building our life into a house for God, where Christ’s love motivates all actions, where we remember it’s about God and not about us.

And we then move into the world, carrying this ministry of building with us, building networks of connection in the world, networks that share God’s love with those who need it most, those stepped on by war, those persecuted by oppression, those rejected by society, those left wounded and bleeding outside, on the doorstep of life. 

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway, Are we just chasin’ after some finer day, living in anticipation, waitin’.  Or can we listen to God’s message and stay right here ’cause these are the good old days. 

We have a purpose—to live into the resurrection faith, and to work for the new heaven and new earth, where:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain!  Amen.

11/10/19 Resurrection Questions Luke 20: 27-38  Job 19: 23-27a; 2 Thes 2: 1-5,13-17

Once a famous Baptist preacher was speaking to some students at a Christian college. A student asked, “Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?” He replied, “I don’t discuss such things with anyone under 30. Look at you all: in the prime of life. Never have you known honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls or mortality. You’re extremely apt and handsome—white kids who have never in all of your lives been 30 miles from home, or 20 minutes into the New Testament, or more than a mile and a half from a Baptist or Methodist church, or within a thousand miles of any issue that mattered to a kingdom that matters. So, what can you know of a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised?”

When I was ordained, I was 28 years old.  I look back on that now and wonder how the wise older saints in my first congregation put up with me.  What did I know then?  I was 28 and filled with confidence. Oh, I knew how to preach a sermon on resurrection for a funeral or for Easter. I had learned so much in seminary. But I’m afraid my questions about the resurrection were something like those of the Sadducees in our gospel, theoretical.  But it’s life that really teaches us. It is as we live and love and lose that we learn. With open hearts and listening ears we can experience the holy and the mystical.  Like Job it is through the suffering that the truth emerges.  His words ring true because they are grounded in life not theory. “I know that my redeemer lives and stands with me, on my side.”

Christian faith is drawing near to God, holding fast to our Redeemer and living in that hope.  It is not about getting our doctrine perfect. It’s not about having all the answers, saying the right prayers or having correct ideas. Doctrines tend to divide.  Controversies repeatedly split the church. In 1054 the East and West split over ideas of the trinity and remain divided to this day. In the 1600’s the Reformed tradition almost split over something as arcane as supralapsarianism vs. infralapsarianism.  Infant baptism vs. a believer’s baptism has divided us in more recent times. 

During the time of Jesus, it was no different.  There were groups of Jews with different beliefs. The Sadducees were rivals to the Pharisees.  Both groups were opposed to Jesus and his followers.  The Pharisees believed in a resurrection from the dead.  The Sadducees did not. It was the Sadducees who challenged Jesus in our gospel today.  They relied only on the first 5 books of the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy.  They were sticklers who were certain their way was the only correct way. Those Sadducees who didn’t believe in the resurrection had a question for Jesus about resurrection. What a trap! And their question revealed just how limited they were to the views of their own time—whose property will the woman be if there is a resurrection, they asked.

Jesus deftly points to what is beyond their limits.  Women won’t be property in the life to come.  Your sights are too small.  God is the God of the living!  It’s the same message Paul preached in Romans:  We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s! 

The Christian community in Corinth asked similar questions—what kind of body will we have?  Paul contrasts a physical body and a spiritual body.  He uses and image that speaks of both continuity and discontinuity.  This body the physical one, is like a seed and the spiritual body is like the full-grown plant.  The seed becomes the plant.  But how different the two are. 

Martin Luther was asked about the afterlife—he answered in two ways saying that the afterlife is God’s business, so he didn’t have to worry about it.  He also said that we can know as little about life after death as a baby traveling down the birth canal can know about the world the baby is about to enter. 

This summer I had a powerful experience. We had been staying for a few days in St. Louis, Mo. with Jack and Peggy Sieber.  As we were leaving, I felt lightheaded.  When we got in the car, I measured my heart rate with an app on my phone—it was 189 bpm.  Steve drove me to an urgent care facility just a mile or so away. But the facility had just opened for business. The level of training was inadequate. The nurses didn’t know how to operate the EKG machine, so they called an ambulance.  Finally, after about a half an hour, when my heart rate had been high as 210 the ambulance personnel gave me a drug that stopped my heart momentarily in order to re-set the rhythm.  It didn’t work the first time. They had the patches ready on the crash cart—it was all quite scary.

I looked over the heads of all these medical personnel and met eyes with Steve. It was the day before Mother’s Day. Our kids were expecting us. I was worried about my family. I thought, well, if I die here on the table, Jack and Peggy will help Steve cope with things—and my kids and my parents and my sister will be there for each other. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want that to be the end—but at some point, my thoughts shifted to the realization that I’d finally have all my resurrection questions answered.  I’d soon be in the presence of God.  I felt no fear, just excitement.

The next time they gave me a double dose of the drug, I felt weightless, suspended like at the top of a rollercoaster, then felt the blood swooshing through my body. Finally, my heart rate dropped to 145 and I got my first ambulance ride where Jack’s golfing buddy, who is the head of cardiac medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital, met me, conducted a bunch of tests to determine I had not had a heart attack.  He put me on medication to get me safely home.  Two weeks later I had a cardiac ablation procedure and voila—I’m fine.  I know it was much easier for me to be the one on the table than the one standing by watching and worrying.  It was only later that I considered what would have happened if we had been on the highway in the mountainous desert between Durango and the US border.  Life is such a precious gift. God’s marvelous grace holds us through this life and beyond to something we can’t yet know or see.

Ten years ago, our daughter had her fourth open heart surgery. The other 3 operations were when she was an infant, before I was her stepmother.  I went into a real tail-spin in the months of anticipation before her valve replacement. I was afraid all the time. Not about her—my belief in the resurrection was strong. I knew all the way to my core, that God would hold her through death and beyond if she were to die. No, I was afraid for myself and for Steve. How would we possibly cope?

Even when we believe in resurrection we can be overcome by our questions, or by the power of loss, or even by anticipated loss. It was the communion of saints that comforted me in the end. I had seen the church surround those who grieve so many times, I knew that whatever happened, we would be held together by people of faith, uplifted and carried when we couldn’t step forward by ourselves. Theoretical questions about God don’t really matter. Our second lesson points us in the right direction. The church in Thessalonica was apparently worried about ideas about the second coming of Christ. Paul’s letter admonished them to draw eternal comfort and good hope instead of getting distracted with wild ideas.  Comfort for our hearts and strength comes through living in faith, through as Paul says– every good work and word. 

The Sadducees came with a manipulative challenge, seeking to debate an intellectual issue with Jesus. He gave them a long answer that set them back on their heels. Compare that to Martha who came to Jesus full of grief over her brother Lazarus’ death.  To her he said, “I am the resurrection

and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…Do you believe this? 

Martha was ready to receive the blessing that Jesus was proclaiming.  For her it wasn’t just a hypothetical question.  Resurrection is a whole new world. Injustice—where women have no hope, no standing, no safety net unless they are married will pass away.  The age to come will be so much more than that—more than we can even ask for or comprehend.

A major league baseball pitcher was once asked what he thought about his future prospects.  He answered, “The future is like the present, only longer.”  That may be true for baseball, but God’s way in Christ is not just a continuation of the present.  It is a whole new way, beyond our present experience, only known through hope and faith in the living God. We can fiddle around with ideas and theories, we can ask theological questions and read all kinds of books. But in the end resurrection is not an abstract issue.  It is part of a life of discipleship, suffering and hope. 

Job spoke from his heart about his lived experience.  The “friends” who appear to counsel him give him answers—they simplify and explain away his circumstances, unconvincingly.  They couldn’t tolerate the complexity and mystery of his life.  But Job rejected their cut and dried answers.  His confession of faith has to do with connection with God, his trust in the Redeemer who stands with him through it all.

We all have friends like Job’s who seem to have all the answers, and if we’re honest sometimes we fall into that same trap ourselves, the trap of believing we know it all, that there is one absolute answer to life’s dilemmas.  When we are in the valley of the shadow of death, when grief overwhelms us, when we are lying on the table with the crash cart at our side what we need is not an answer, we need God’s own self—the resurrection and the life. Like Job we can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that I shall see God who is for me.”  

Nov 3, 2019; All are Welcome; Luke 19: 1-10; ICCM; Rebecca Ellenson

It’s crazy how we remember things we learn in song, isn’t it?  For example, I learned today’s gospel story when I was just a wee little girl, to a catchy tune complete with actions.

 “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he.  He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.”  But Jesus said, ‘Zacchaeus, you come down from there.  For I’m going to your house today, for I’m going to your house today’.”

 I think we saw a filmstrip in Sunday School that day.  If I close my eyes, I can see the primary colored pictures of the little man with his robe hiked up over his knees, awkwardly perched in a tree.  Perhaps it made a big impression on me because I was a wee little girl, and little for my age.

One of the things I love about the stories of Jesus is that they are accessible enough for a wee little girl to grasp, yet deep enough for that same person to keep studying for decades and still find new layers of meaning. On the surface level, this story is about Jesus who clearly sees yet another person who was labeled and scorned by others.  We get to see the wee little man’s joy at being drawn close to Jesus. And we are given an example of what wealth can do when given for the needs of others. 

There’s so much detail in this story:  Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector. He isn’t well liked by the other Jews because he works for the occupying Roman government.  The people assume Zacchaeus is corrupt.  It was common practice for tax collectors to take a surplus amount for themselves, over and above what the government required.  The scene as described is comical — wealth and power don’t stop the important man in the big and important city of Jericho from scrambling up a tree in order to see Jesus as he passes by.  The people have yet another reason to roll their eyes or dismiss Zacchaeus.  What an undignified picture he must have been, perched in a sycamore, or a black mulberry tree!  My good friend Peter has a mulberry tree in his backyard—it’s a messy tree with squishy berries that stain your clothes and fingers. 

Jesus zeroes right in on this wee little man, calling him by name (ironically, Zacchaeus means righteous or clean, even though his association with the Romans and money would have meant people would consider him unclean and suspect, not to mention covered in mulberry stains!)  Jesus tells him to get down from the tree and declares that he must stay at Zacchaeus’ house that day.  The crowd grumbles and identifies the tax collector as a sinner.  Then we learn that, to everyone’s surprise, except Jesus, this man is not what he seems to be.  No, he gives half of his income to the poor and repays 4-fold any overcollection.  Jesus addresses Zacchaeus when he says, “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.” 

If we stop at the face value of this story, as we did when we learned that song as children, it is a good and memorable lesson with value.  But as I said before, there’s so much rich depth in the scriptures.  With just a little analysis and digging we discover even more truth.  Don’t you just love that!? We can study the Word all our lives.  We keep learning new things.  We can find salvation anew.  We can encounter the Christ and be led to live lives of joyful and expanding generosity.

Let me explain what I mean by that.  We often just focus on one story of the gospels at a time.  Rarely do we look at how that story fits into the whole of the writer’s narrative.  When we do, though, we see how masterful these scriptures are.  There are layers of meaning when we look for the patterns the writers used to tell the stories of Jesus.  You see, this story about Zacchaeus does not appear in any of the other gospels.  It comes at the end of a section in Luke’s gospel called the travel narrative and it fits into a progression of 10 meals that frame a key message or theme of this gospel about the Lord’s Supper.  Luke composed the gospel and the Acts of the Apostles after Mark wrote his gospel.  He chooses what stories to include and arranges them with cares. 

When Luke wrote the stories of Zacchaeus and the other meals in the gospel, it was more than 50 years since Jesus gathered with his disciples in that upper room the night before he died. Many things had changed, Pilate, Herod, the apostles and even Peter were long gone.  Jerusalem and the temple had been ruined.  But throughout the world of Paul in what is now Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus Christians gathered each Sunday to do what Jesus did on the night of his last supper.  They took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to each other saying, This is my body which is given for you.  They ate supper together and then afterwards they took the cup and drank proclaiming, This is the cup of the new covenant, for the forgiveness of sins.  The blood symbolized life, connection to Christ who rose.  The bread symbolized their union in one body, offered like Jesus, for the life of the world. 

Luke’s gospel includes 10 meals, seven are part of the travel narrative.  The first is at the house of Levi, an ordinary tax collector.  And today’s meal is the 7^th meal, this time at the home of a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus.  These two stories at the homes of the tax collectors frame the other five meals in Luke’s travel narrative.  Levi, the first tax collector is called to follow Jesus right after the call of the first disciples, Peter James and John.  Jesus saw him sitting at the customs post, something like a toll booth today. He said to him, “follow me.” And just like Peter James and John, Levi left everything behind he got up and followed.  Levi then gave a great banquet for Jesus.  A large crowd of tax collectors and others were there at table with them.  The pharisees and scribes complained, just like the crowds did in our lesson for today.  There in the first meal Luke records, Jesus sets out the theme.  “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.  I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.” 

The second meal takes place at the house of Simon the Pharisee. Do you suppose that the pharisees who didn’t like it that Jesus dined at Levi’s house decided to plan their own dinner for Jesus, to do it right?  Well into that grand symposium style banquet comes a sinful woman who places herself at Jesus’ feet, in the position of a disciple, and wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair and bathes them with a costly ointment.  Simon the pharisee is indignant. Jesus turns to the Pharisee and tells a story about two people whose debts were forgiven, one small one large.  He then contrasts the welcome Simon and the woman offered Jesus.  Like Simon, we and all those who hear these words are drawn in.  All are welcome, especially those whose sins are great. True worship, as Isaiah foretold, comes from repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and finally an outpouring of love.  Jesus concludes his teaching with these words: “So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”

Luke’s next meal is the feeding of the multitude in Bethsaida with the meager loaves and fishes.  In this meal Jesus himself is the host.  He blesses the bread, breaks them, and gives them to his disciples who set them before the crowd.  And all eat and are satisfied and 12 baskets of leftovers are gathered up. 

The next meal is at the home of Mary and Martha where another woman sits at Jesus’ feet as a disciple.  Then Jesus reclines at the table at another Pharisee’s house where the teachers scold him for not observing all the expected rituals.  The sequence escalates at the home of a leading Pharisee where Jesus tells the story of the beggar Lazarus at the gate of the rich man. 

I’m afraid this service would be as long as a Mexican service if I fully explain how all these meals relate to this central practice of the Christian faith—holy communion.  You’ll have to read the whole gospel, for yourself, paying attention to these meals. For now, you can take my word for it that each meal turns the people’s expectations upside down.  Jesus welcomes everyone, includes everyone, and challenges each of us to do the same.  When people eat with Jesus, they are either transformed by his generosity with acts of discipleship themselves, or they resist Jesus’ extravagant grace, and by doing so exclude themselves from his welcome table. 

It’s not just in the meal stories, though, that Luke pounds this theme home.  Jesus welcomes sinners and he tells stories about the sick and the lost and the overlooked.  The stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost prodigal son end with the very same words as our gospel for today:  “The son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.”

There is a red thread that runs through the whole fabric of the scriptures.  There is a movement through the centuries toward wholeness, a spiral of truth through each generation, each family, each life, each person, each community of faith from exclusion to inclusion, from uptight legalism to extravagant grace and joyful response, from rigid ceremony and sacrifice to justice and peace. 

I recently came across a poster created by Bixby Knolls United Church of Christ.  I think it fits in very well with the message of our gospel.

The poster reads like this. 

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: Moabites are bad.  They were not to be allowed to dwell among God’s people (Dt. 23).  BUT THEN comes the story of “Ruth the Moabite,” which challenges the prejudice against Moabites.

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  People from Uz are evil (Jer.25).  BUT THEN comes the story of Job, a man from Uz who was the “most blameless man on earth.” 

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  No foreigners or eunuchs allowed. (Dt. 23) BUT THEN come the story of an African eunuch welcomed into the church (Acts 8).

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  God’s people hated Samaritans.  BUT THEN Jesus tells a story that shows not all Samaritans were bad. 

THE STORY MAY BEGIN with prejudice, discrimination, & animosity but the Spirit moves God’s people toward openness, welcome, inclusion, acceptance, & affirmation.

We started out today with a wee little song about a wee little man, and we’ve dug deep into the structure of Luke’s gospel and even a bit into the long historic arc of scripture that bends toward repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.  As we come to the table of our Lord, we, like all those he encountered on his journeys to Jerusalem, are invited to take and eat, to be transformed, to be found. And we are sent out from here to reach with open arms, to welcome and invite others into this grace we know.