Sermon

The challenge to our faith isn't that we expect too much, but that we expect too little.

Our shortsighted expectations are obstacles to fully knowing and experiencing God's grace. We prefer for God to do things our way, rather than our doing things God's way. Many would prefer to win the lottery than the joy God offers that wealth can never buy. We prefer lives of leisure when the deepest and most satisfying joy comes from serving others. Our ultimate fear is death when, in Jesus, the death of our bodies is birth into new life.

Upon reaching their destination, instead of saying goodbye to the person they were walking with, they invited Jesus to their home, demonstrating hospitality towards a stranger, despite their personal disappointment and disillusionment. It was then that their eyes were opened and their world changed as they recognized the risen Jesus. What they previously believed to be defeat was revealed as a victory.

Jesus was that for the Apostle Paul. In light of Jesus' resurrection, he left behind many of the things he was once proud of. He forgets what is behind him in his quest for God's call in Christ Jesus.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

The great news of Easter is not that their expectations were met but rather that Jesus was not dead like they expected but had risen from the dead.

The good news of the Gospel isn't found in God meeting our expectations but shattering them, revealing far more than anything we could ask or imagine - then using us to reveal the news of the risen Christ to others.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

For obvious reasons, we spend more time celebrating Jesus' birth and resurrection than we do his death. Joyful Christmas carols and triumphant Easter hymns fill our worship for weeks before Christmas and after Easter. And yet, scripture repeatedly points to the cross as evidence of God's great love.

It would be hard to stand at the foot of the cross and watch someone suffer, let alone God's only son. But it is here that we see how much God so loved the world, as well as you and me.

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem without much time left before his crucifixion. In the last sermon, we considered Jesus cleansing the Temple of those who turned it into a "den of robbers" as well as healing the people who were lame or blind who followed him in. What he does says something about Jesus' priorities.

One of the other things he did was to watch people giving their offerings. He noticed that a widow, who had extremely little to live on, offered everything to the Lord.

He recognized her as the one who gave the largest offering to God. Some gave from their abundance but she offered everything.

Giving all that she had, out of the little she had, revealed the strength and priority of her faith.

Rather than taking charge of what is going on in the Temple, Jesus turns it upside down. He chases out those who operated for financial gain rather than commending them for the services they offered worshippers, he calls them robbers. The Chief priests and teachers of the law are indignant, Jesus is disrupting the systems they created and maintain, the way things had always been.

The blind and the lame who spent their time outside the temple, those who begged from others on their way to the temple,  follow Jesus into the temple and Jesus cures them. The children are singing of the Messiah "Hosanna to the Son of David" but the religious elite are aghast. 

The insiders have the tables turned on them and the outsiders are blessed.

It's strange, the things we can remember and the things we can't remember. God deeply desires for us to remember His faithfulness, great love for us, wonderous deeds, and his intimacy with us.

The heart of our Heavenly Father is for us to be one with him, for us to know that wherever we are, no matter what we are doing, he is present.

A special note of thanks to Pastor Bill Westlund for filling in as Paul recovers from COVID. He is feeling pretty good but is absent from worship to avoid possibly infecting others.

Zacchaeus wanted to know more about Jesus. Being a short little guy, he had to climb up a tree to catch sight of Jesus passing through because he couldn't see past all the people in front of him.

Jesus, seeing him, calls Zacchaeus by name and offers to spend time with him. Zacchaeus was then faced with a choice. Would he get out of the tree to be with Jesus, even if it would change his life? Would he be a spectator or a follower? Would he just talk about Jesus or would he live like Jesus?

Zacchaeus climbs down from the tree and immediately pledges half his possessions as well as to make restitution with anyone he defrauded.

Jesus reaches out to Zacchaeus, the despised chief tax collector, much to everybody's surprise. But the real surprise is that Jesus explains that type of thing is exactly his purpose, that he came to seek out and to save the lost."

Jesus asks people to make choices: follow me and I will make you fishers of men, sin no more, do you want to be healed, and in today's passage he asks a rich young person to leave behind the one thing that his heart clings to more than God - his wealth. When people accept the choice Jesus offers their lives are fundamentally changed. They leave the path of their previous life behind to follow Jesus - not as a one-time choice, but as a life of choosing Jesus.

Jesus' disciples tried to talk him out of going to Jerusalem to be crucified, he used despised Samaritans and tax collectors as examples of how we are to live, the Prodigal Son's father welcomed the wayward son back, washed his disciples' feet, teaches that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 people who do not need repentance, and in this passage he prioritizes children above the adults.

Do any of those things make sense according to the world's values? To yours?

Truthfully, I probably would have been right alongside Jesus' disciples shooing the children away from Jesus. Jesus would have been surrounded by people who needed what only he could do, as well as those who came to hear him teach. The children would only get in the way, I would think.

Instead, shocking human values and ideas, Jesus calls for the children and tells his disciples to let them come. In fact, he tells them, that it is for people like these children that the kingdom of God belongs.

But, what should shock us to our core, if we truly consider what it means, Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”