If you grew up feeling left out, or even still feel that way, then Zacchaeus’ story might be yours.  This is a story for all the people who got chosen last when the two most popular kids were picking teams to play ball.  “Oh, we’ll take him if no one else will!”  The last one the coach sent in or the one who stayed home on prom night because you didn’t have a date, like you’d really rather watch reruns of The Munsters than be with friends.  If you’re the kind of person who never felt like you quite fit in then Zacchaeus’ story just might be yours.

Now, the truth is, Zacchaeus was up a tree because he was something of a scoundrel, a tax collector.  In his day, tax collecting for the Roman government was shady work for shady people.  He made a living by ripping people off.  What he did was perfectly legal, it just wasn’t moral.  But, you do what you have to, right?  So, Zacchaeus made good money.  He just didn’t have any friends and you can believe that he knew what lonely Friday nights felt like, too. 

To make matters worse, he was short.  Nothing wrong with being short, unless everyone else is tall.  It can really be frustrating, even heartbreaking, to be a non-standard size in an off-the-rack world.  A square peg in a round hole community.  Making your way from one store to the next only to hear it again, “Sorry, we don’t carry that in your size.”  Your  size.  In so very many ways, all your life, people had a way of reminding you that you just didn’t quite fit their world.  In more ways than one, Zacchaeus didn’t.  So, it shouldn’t surprise us at all to find him up a tree, out on a limb, when Jesus came to town.

We don’t know from scripture what it was that raised Zacchaeus’ curiosity about Jesus.  It doesn’t say.  What makes anyone curious about Jesus?  Curious enough to drag the kids out of bed, get all gussied up and drive miles across town.  Maybe Zacchaeus had heard stories about how Jesus had a way of making people who felt left out feel loved, of choosing people for his team no one else wanted on theirs or spending Friday nights in someone’s home when all their other friends were out on the town.  Whatever it was, that’s where we first meet Zacchaeus, out where only squirrels dare to tread, hanging out on a sycamore limb, just hoping to see Jesus.  And, that’s when it happens.

Zacchaeus went out on that limb hoping he’d see Jesus and, to his surprise, Jesus saw him.  Of all the people in the crowd, Jesus saw Zacchaeus and called him by name.  And, it changed his life.  Just one man in the crowd, and Jesus noticed him.  And, that ought to make us notice something about Jesus, too.  Jesus, said that he “‘came to seek and to save what was lost.’”  One of Jesus’ disciples later said of him, God “sent his Son to be the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14).”  Savior of the whole world.  How do you do that?  How do you save a lost world?  Zacchaeus’ story is part of the answer. 

Jesus saves the world, one person at a time.  Jesus was just “passing through.”  But, he wasn’t in such a rush he didn’t have time to spend one night with one person who needed to find his way back into the human community.  “‘Zacchaeus, come down immediately.  I must stay at your house today.’”  “Your house,” Zacchaeus heard Jesus say.  Your house, it’s just the right size for you and me, tonight.”  I wonder what it felt like to hear Jesus say that?  To know Jesus wanted to be with him.  Just him. 

When we were first born, we felt that special.  Every time we cried, if we had loving parents, someone rushed to our crib to cuddle us, hold and feed us.  Even before we had the capacity to consciously remember, we were having experiences that led us to believe that we were the center of the world.  That the world was there for us, our parents a crisis-response team on 24/7 call.  Then, one day, our world changed and we found ourselves in a crowd.  At school.  At church.  Lots of other people crying around us, our cry just one of many.  From that day forward we learned that we had to exert special effort to get attention.  People didn’t just come running every time we cried. 

So, we learned to do whatever got us the attention we wanted.  And, many of us grow up still doing as adults what we did as children, just to get attention.  The way we dress, or don’t.  The games we play, or don’t, and the teams we try out for, or don’t.  What we eat and the way we eat, or don’t.  Getting elected.  Getting sick.  Getting angry or getting rich or staying poor when we could be rich.  Whatever it takes.  It might not even be moral, even if it is legal.  But, hey, whatever it takes not to wake up one day and find ourselves to be what we truly are, absolutely and totally alone in this great big world Jesus came to save.  And, for the most part, out on a limb, morally, spiritually, even physically.  Just hoping someone might notice.  Neal Diamond sang it, “I am, I cried.  I am said I.  And no one heard at all, not even a sound.”  This world can be a very scary place to find yourself alone, out on a limb. 

Mary Karr writes about a time like that when she was in ninth grade.  Her mother, trying to get attention, faked a suicide attempt.  So, Mary did the same.  The next morning she’s lying in bed very ill from having swallowed too many aspirin, her way of faking suicide to get attention.  Her dad, feeling sorry for her, is standing over her having brought her some plums, one of her favorites.  And, this is what Mary wrote about the experience of eating the plums her dad drove all night to find and bring her.  “It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.  And you snap out of it.  Or are snapped out of it.  Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody, anybody, who (cares) enough to haul them to you.  So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy.  There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance.  That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand.  You don’t earn it.  It’s given.”  (Mary Karr, Cherry, Viking, 2000, p. 117)  There it is, in Karr’s words.  You don’t earn it.  It’s given. 

Mary Karr was not writing from the perspective of a Christian.  But, she touched a raw nerve of the gospel in me.  She said that she didn’t believe herself to be worth saving until someone else did.  Isn’t that the way it works with the gospel?  We keep living in never-ending cycles of self-destruction until the hand of grace stays the hand we’ve lifted against ourselves.  You can’t earn that.  It’s given.  That’s part of what Jesus meant about saving the world.  He came to give us the bless us by, one at a time, letting us know we were worth saving.

Kent Skipper was telling me about the reasoning behind the enormous investment the Salesmanship Club has made in the school across the street.  Over eighty percent of the students in that school come from families who live at or below poverty level.  Those facilities are the finest you’ll find anywhere in Dallas, literally state of the art.  When he was asked if people in this community found that kind of expense wasteful he responded to the contrary.  He said these people are so used to being served in second-class facilities that, when they walk into their facilities and see that they have spared no expense to serve them, they know how important the Salesmanship Club believes they are.  The very presence of those facilities blesses the people of this community with the feeling that they are worth that kind of investment.  And, lives are being transformed because of it.

We don’t know exactly what transpired between Jesus and Zacchaeus.  What we do know is that it so transformed Zacchaeus that he said, “‘Look, Lord!  Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”  That’s not the kind of math you do when you want to be sure you gave exactly the right amount.  That’s the kind of math you do when something has touched you and blessed you so deeply, so personally, you absolutely have to celebrate. 

A week ago Saturday our church sponsored a Florida Scramble men’s golf tournament at Stevens Park.  You’re aware, I’m sure, that your pastor’s team won the tournament.  It was pretty cool, if I say so myself.  But, what made it especially cool for me was the 18^th hole.  In Florida Scramble, the team uses the best shot off the tee, no matter whose it is or how bad it is.  On our team of four, there were actually two who knew something about golf, which is why we won the tournament.  But, on the 18^th hole, my shot was the best off the tee, a beautiful straight 150-yard drive with a 3-iron into the leading edge of a hard dogleg to the left.  It wasn’t the best drive of the day.  But, it was mine.  It was the best I had to give.  Since the team uses the best shot off the tee, that meant that they used my shot.  I’ve been telling people all week long, “they used my shot on the 18^th hole!”  Those guys couldn’t have known what a tremendous gift they gave me.  They used my shot! 

Zacchaeus’ house wasn’t the best house in town, if you had been measuring on the scale of who you’d want to be seen hanging out with.  But, it was good enough for Jesus.  Do you know what happened to Zacchaeus?  He had a personal encounter with Jesus that changed his life.  Jesus wanted to stay at his house that night.  Jesus blessed him by letting him know that he, just one man in this great big world, was worth saving.  Can’t you hear Zacchaeus?  “Jesus stayed at my house!  Jesus stayed at my house!” 

In Mary Karr’s life, it wasn’t the plums that moved her from thoughts of suicide to a desire to live no matter how hard it got.  It was the fact that her daddy stopped and paid her the kind of attention we all want.  The attention that says, “You’re worth saving to me.”  That’s what Zacchaeus experienced, too, with Jesus.  Jesus has come to save the whole world, one person at a time, with his personal presence that makes us know we’re worth saving. 

This next Sunday, our church will receive its annual Fall Thank Offering.  We didn’t set a goal this fall.  But, what if we all gave in a Zacchaeus kind of way?  In a way that spontaneously expresses what our own personal encounter with Jesus has meant to us.  What if we used Zacchaeus’ math?  Not the numbers, the spirit of it.  Before we do the math and write the check for next week, what if we sat down and asked ourselves what our personal encounters with Jesus have meant to us? 

By the way, what if some of us discovered we’ve never had that encounter?  You know, we can only do church so long without it becoming something personal between Jesus and us.  That’s because that’s the way God works with people.  He’s a one-person-at-time-is-worth-it kind of God.  You’re worth it.  I’m worth it.  Not because we’ve earned.  Just because he’s given it.

What if this next week something personal happened between you and me and Jesus?  How would that change your life?  My life?