“Keeping Grace in Bounds” / Luke 19:1-10
Proper 25, Year C, Downsville Baptist Church (4 November 2001)
As Mr. Zachary Allens walked into Main Street Baptist Church a couple of minutes late last Sunday evening, he was greeted by scowls and low whispers. Nobody liked Zach Allens, and everybody has a good reason for their dislike. Zach Allens is one of those small town politicians that tried to make too many friends by double-crossing friends on both sides of the fence. He started out well enough, got voted on to city council when he was just 28 years old. Zach Allen’s problem was the problem so many of us have magnified ten times over—Zachary’s # 1 priority was Zachary. In climbing the ladder of success Zach squashed enough friends to the extent that the ladder’s rungs eventually broke one by one. The poor people in the community could not stand the sight of him because two years ago he had told them that he was going to increase their taxes to sponsor a project that would make access to public transportation more feasible. They had not minded the increase in taxes because they needed more city busses, but they all felt betrayed when it was discovered that Zach Allen had actually funneled their money into some projects at the local country club. Even the wealthy people in the community had a certain disdain for Zach Allen. When he felt the heat of the scandal concerning his embezzlement of funds, he had dropped one or two of their names as scapegoats just to save himself from any jailtime. With all this said, Zach still had one other problem. He had little man’s complex. At a whopping 5’2", 125 lbs, Zach Allen always had a smarter mouth and worse attitude than he should have just to prove to people that he was a tough guy. This caused everybody to laugh behind his back until his financial trickery of a two years ago. Now it was simply another reason nobody could stand former city council member Zach Allen.
The preacher got up at the beginning of the service to make a few announcements. When he saw Zach Allen in the congregation, even he his upper lip curled a bit in disgust. Zachary had convinced the church at a business meeting that they should make donations to his “pet project” to help better to and from work transportation for the poor in the community. The church saw this as a good missions project but was very upset when they learned the money had gone to buy more golf carts instead of busses. Nevertheless, the preacher began to read the announcements. “Now, as many of you know, Jesus of Nazareth will be coming to our community today. Several of our ladies have organized a welcoming committee, and nearly all of you have told me that you’ll be coming to hear him speak during our evening service tonight. What you may not know is that Jesus is joining us for a potluck in the fellowship hall at 5:00. Please bring yourselves and a dish.” Everybody forgot about Zach Allen for the moment. The whole state had been in a buzz for several months about Jesus’ visit. The church felt so honored to have the privilege of hosting the prophet for the evening meal and having the chance to hear him speak from their pulpit.
Zach Allen also took interest in the news. Although he hardly came to church anymore, he thought he might just have to return for the evening meal and service that night. He kind of wanted to meet this man named Jesus and see why their was so much excitement. Zachary came back to the fellowship hall that night. Again he was a little late, and a huge crowd had already gathered. There was a line coming out of the fellowship hall doors of people holding dishes. Zachary didn’t feel much like waiting. “Excuse me folks, excuse me,” Zach muttered as he attempted to push his way into the building. A few members of the congregation noticed that Zach Allen had not even bothered to bring a dish. “Enough of this,” they thought. People stood firm in the line. They had somehow made a silent pact not to let the crooked nuisance past them. “Get lost, shrimp!” one shouted. “Go crawl back under the rug, you jerk!” another howled. Zachary realized he wasn’t making any progress so he walked to the back of the building and began to peer through a dusty old window. After wiping away some of the cobwebs, Zachary was able to see a small area in the fellowship hall—it really was crowded in there! Suddenly one man who seemed to be the center of attention wheeled around and looked right at the window. Everyone had puzzled expressions on their faces as the man, Jesus, walked right over to the window and opened up exposing Zach Allen propped up on an overturned wastebasket. A groan spread through the fellowship hall like a wave of ocean water. But Jesus smiled and extended a hand toward the wobbly window watcher, securing Zachary balance with a firm embrace on his shoulder. “Zach Allen,” Jesus laughed with a grin on his face. “Get down from this window. It’s good to see you. I’m going to be staying at your house tonight.” Zach Allen couldn’t believe it. He had never met Jesus before, but Jesus seemed to know him. And Zachary’s shock hardly matched that of the rest of the congregation as Jesus walked out of the fellowship house and home with Zach Allen that night. “Why is he staying with Zach Allen? Doesn’t he know what a crook he is? Somebody should warn Jesus about the company he’s keeping!”
We rejoice and give thanks in this place that God has been gracious to us, that God has forgiven us of our sins and bathed us in love and mercy. We are thankful for grace until we see someone receiving grace who doesn’t deserve it. How dare Jesus allow a crook and snake like Zacchaeus into the kingdom of God! How dare grace be given to someone like that! Doesn’t God know that grace has to be kept in bounds? Grace should be for nice people. Grace should be for people like us. Grace should be for friendly people. Grace should be people who are sorry for their sins, not people who celebrate their sin. More than a few people had complaints against Jesus on this day. Truthfully, the crowd was pretty disappointed, “Uh . . Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner!” What business does Jesus have hanging out with the mean people, with drug addicts, with a cheating husband, or with the dishonest business owner when Jesus could be keeping company with nice, religious, God-fearing people like us? How dare Jesus go to a sinner’s house when we’ve vacuumed and dusted, broken out the best china on the dinner table and plopped down the family Bible on the coffee table? If Jesus keeps hanging out with people like Zacchaeus, we might just have to change our minds about who Jesus is. The novelist, A. J. Cronin, tells a story from his own experience as a doctor that catches the wonder of the gift of grace. The Adams family at the close of the Second World War decided to open their home to a little refugee boy with the outlandish name of Paul Piotrostanalzi. The Adams had two daughters and a son named Sammy. Sammy and Paul became inseparable friends, but little Paul was a difficult child, and often disobeyed Mr. and Mrs. Adams. One day, little Paul went swimming in some contaminated water. He became very ill with a high fever, and Dr. Cronin suggested he sleep in an attic bedroom. But little Sammy missed his friend Paul so much that one night he crept up the attic stairs and into bed with Paul. Paul’s hot breath fell on Sammy’s neck all night. In the morning, Sammy, never a strong child, became deathly ill. Paul recovered his health, but Sammy died within three days. It was a terrible tragedy for the Adams family. A year later Dr. Cronin decided to pay a call on the Adams family. But as he pulled into their driveway, he was amazed and then angry as he saw Paul, the refugee boy, working in the garden with Mr. Adams. He got out of his car and angrily approached Mr. Adams. "What’s this Paul Pio........ whatever his name is, doing here after what he did to your family?" Mr. Adams looked at the doctor and then said quietly, "Dr. Cronin, you won’t have any more trouble with Paul’s name. You see, he’s Paul Adams now. We’ve adopted him."
Some of us have trouble believing that we are accepted even in the light of God’s grace. We have trouble accepting that we are accepted; and if we have trouble with receiving grace given to us, we really can’t imagine that God would be so loving as to extend grace to people like Zacchaeus. Doesn’t God know that grace should have boundaries or people will abuse it and cheapen it? If God wants to forgive us for a few white lies and a bad temper God can certainly do that, but God begins to make us a bit uncomfortable with the thought that grace might even extend to murderers, molesters, and other outright awful human beings. Grace tends to make more sense to those people we call outright awful human beings. Grace makes more sense to the Zacchaeus’ of our world than to the St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s. We churchgoers can often carry the notion deep within us that God’s grace is a helping hand back up to the mountaintop from which we’ve fallen. Grace can often carry the connotation that it is God’s way of helping us out. However, Zacchaeus and sinners who have reached bottom know that God’s grace isn’t helping us out—Grace is saving us. Zacchaeus didn’t even know he needed saving. He made a good living cheating his fellow Jews through being a corrupt tax collector. When Jesus comes over to his house, we are not even told that Jesus has to say anything. Zacchaeus repents. Everything that he has ever cheated anyone out of he is going to pay back with extras. Zacchaeus isn’t going to stop there. In his experience of redemption, he declares that he will not only stop doing bad but begin doing good. “Half of my possessions,” Zacchaeus declares, “I will give to the poor.” Although we are impressed with Zacchaeus’ turn around, we are still a bit upset that God is gracious to Zacchaeus. He just didn’t deserve it! Like the prophet Jonah who refused to go to the Ninevites because he didn’t want them to receive God’s grace, we stubbornly turn our backs on the supposed Ninevites of our day. When we say God love everybody, we rarely mean it. We don’t really think God would be so merciful as to forgive the worst of human beings. After all, God is just, and it does not seem very just for grace to be given to the jerks and scumbags of our day. They just don’t deserve it. And with that declaration we reach the root of the problem Zacchaeus puts before us. Zacchaeus received God’s grace with utter joy because he knew he didn’t deserve it. The nature of grace is such that we must either completely embrace grace or utterly reject grace. Zacchaeus embraces God’s grace wholly because he knows there is nothing he can add to grace. Zacchaeus knows he’s damned. Zacchaeus knows he’s hopeless. Then suddenly in the midst of that realization and in the coming of Jesus Christ into his life. Zacchaeus is saved. Zacchaeus has hope because he knows Christ has done for him what he could never do on his own—transform a vile human being into a child of grace.
The reason so many of us want to keep God’s grace within certain boundaries and for certain people is because we don’t really know what grace is. We’ve forgotten that we like Zacchaeus don’t deserve grace, that we like Zacchaeus cannot possibly earn grace. Our only hope can be that God’s grace will shatter our poorly established boundaries so that we too can be amazed by God’s grace. And that hope of shattered boundaries is a secure hope . . . for before the final curtain closes God’s grace will have conquered all our failings through loving the failures. The only remaining questions is whether we consider ourselves redeemed failures or if we are still living in deceptive shadow of thinking we are the self-righteous success stories. C.S. Lewis has this really helpful illustration. He says that in the incarnation, Jesus was like a diver. He is God in heaven looking down into this dark, slimy, murky water. That’s our sinful, polluted world. God dives in, He gets himself wet. And then God came up again, dripping, but holding the precious thing he went down to recover. That precious thing was Zacchaeus, and you and me. All those sinners who have trusted in Christ. That’s how we get out of the slime of tax collecting, or cheating, or lusting, or hating, or whatever other self-destructive sin we are buried in. God in Christ descended down into the slime and rescued us. Resolutions and vows to be better won’t help by themselves. We don’t have the power to keep them. We are stuck on the sea bottom. We have no power of our own to get up or out. All we can do is cry out for God’s grace to lift us up, to rescue us. Look at what God has done . . . saved the unsavable, graced the ungracious, and loved the unlovable . . . are you there yet? Are you still wondering what Zachary Allen, the crooked politician, is doing in church? Or do you know that you too are nothing but a child of grace? Do you know that you have been given everything as a child of grace?
