Sermon

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.”

Over and over, Jesus reveals God's heart and purposes as being surprisingly different than our own - the surprise is often the value God places on outsiders and people we often look down on.

Some examples from recent sermons from the Gospel of Luke:

• More rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repents than 99 people who do not need repentance - Luke 15
• The welcome the prodigal son receives from his father upon his return - Luke 15
• "What is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God" - Luke 16:14
• A Samaritan leper is the only one out of ten that Jesus healed that praises God and returns to thank Jesus - Luke 17:11-19

In Sunday's Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and tax collector who go up to the temple to pray. That Pharisee boasts in prayer that he is not like all the other sinners and that he is devout. The tax collector, distancing himself from others in shame, prays, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

One is a person who does and says all the "right" things and the other is a notorious sinner.

Unexpectedly, Jesus reveals that God forgave the brokenhearted tax collector who was guilty of innumerable sins and not the self-righteous Pharisee who does so many right things.

Dictionaries define glad as experiencing pleasure, joy, or delight, and grateful as being appreciative of benefits received. Glad is our experience but gratefulness looks beyond ourselves in appreciation for the source of the joy.

One day Jesus healed 10 lepers. You can bet that all 10 were very glad that they were healed. They had been excluded from family, friends, and public places due to their disfiguring disease. Jesus told them to go to the priests who could certify them as healed, and on the way they were made clean.

Interestingly, while all were assuredly very glad to be healed, only one appeared to be grateful. Upon noticing that they were healed, only one praised God with a loud voice, returned to Jesus, and thanked him. Jesus asked out loud where the other nine were and wondered why only this one, a Samaritan at that, returned to give glory to God.

They were all glad, but only one appreciated the source of his healing.

I've discovered that whenever I take the time to reflect on my circumstances, even amid difficulties, when I consider even the little blessings among troubles, it awakens gratefulness for those blessings, which in turn sheds a little light in dark times, helping me to find my way when I was otherwise lost. When I am grateful for what I have I am more generous with others. When I am grateful that God has forgiven me I find the ability to forgive others.

Being glad feeds us, but when we are grateful we feed others, only to discover that we, ourselves, are additionally blessed.

Jesus tells a parable about a manager who fraudulently deals with people who owe his boss, hoping that they will return the favor when he needs it. While the boss recognizes the short-sighted shrewdness in the manager's plan, Jesus points far beyond earthly wealth. True lasting value is not found in shrewd crooked choices but in God's eternal values and purposes.

As Bob Dillon sang, we gotta serve somebody. We need to choose. Will we serve earthly wealth or eternal treasure?

Heart & Mind Partnership https://www.heartmindpartner.org/

Caleb Ives preached this Sunday bringing this opportunity to life. He is the executive director for Emmaus Ministries which specializes in teaching and preparing people to understand and apply God's Word in their lives.

Emmaus Ministries emmausbibleministries.org

The fullness of Jesus' divinity co-existed with Jesus' humanity, neither overcoming the other.

Familiar Bible verses ought to boggle our minds rather than just glossing over them. For God so loving the world that he gave his only son, the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, and the angel's news of a Savior's birth ought to cause our brain to glitch.

Jesus is a divine dichotomy - fully human and fully God.

It is beyond human expectation and understanding, but there it is. Amazingly, God so loves the world that he gave his only son as an atoning sacrifice to do something every bit as amazing. Rather than condemning us, he saves us through the gift of his son.