All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

For our evening devotional time lately, Nancy and I have been reading from the letters of the apostle Paul to his son in the faith, Timothy, as those ancient words are translated in The Message. As we approach our Missions and Ministry Offering next Sunday, I found this verse from the 6th chapter of 1 Timothy particularly engaging. See what you think. Paul writes to Timothy, “A devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God” (1 Timothy 6:6, The Message).

Now, for just a moment, let’s go back to the text for the morning, from the gospel of Luke, and watch the wonderful interplay of Luke’s words with the ones written by Paul to Timothy. For the third Sunday in a row, our texts have come from the gospel of Luke.

The other thing they all have in common is that they tell us the story of how God, in Christ, has chosen to measure out his mercy generously, even to those, especially to those, who have the least to offer him if by that we mean spiritual depth and richness of soul as we tend to measure it. We’ve seen the truth of scripture that Jesus is the friend of sinners lived out before our very eyes. This morning’s text is no exception.

There is, however, a potential roadblock we must work to overcome as we look at the story of Zacchaeus. It is that we are too familiar with it. Many of us have memories of this story as far back as our childhood memories in church will take us, when we sang, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.” Let’s work at overcoming the familiarity roadblock.

First, please remember the difference between descriptive scripture and prescriptive scripture. In some cases scripture simply describes something that happened and we are asked to observe it and learn from it what we can. For example, when Judas hanged himself because of the overwhelming guilt of betraying Jesus, scripture is describing an event, certainly not prescribing self-destruction as a means of dealing with guilt.

In other cases, the scripture prescribes a certain way to live, where ancient words still have the same meaning today they did when they were first written. “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:13-14, KJV). Those words are ancient words that prescribe a way to live that is as relevant today as when they were written.

We’ve all heard stories of people who live to be over 100 years old. When that happens, almost without exception, some reporter will ask the century-old person the secret of their longevity. “How do you live to be 100 years old or older?” they want to know. Nearly every one of these people has a different answer. Invariably, one of them will occasionally say that they lived that long because they drank whiskey every day and smoked cigars, or something like that. It’s important to remember that they are simply describing their experience. No physician would ever prescribe their way of life as the secret to a long life. It’s very important to learn to distinguish between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive.

The story of Zacchaeus is more a descriptive text than anything else. In other words, there is nothing in scripture that prescribes that we have to give half of our possessions to the poor in order to be faithful to God. That’s not a bad thing to do. In fact, when we read of a Jesus who asks that we die to ourselves in order that we might live eternally, only giving half of what we have seems to come up a little short. It’s just that there is nothing in scripture that prescribes liquidating half of your estate and giving it to poor people in order to be a faithful steward of your financial resources. Neither does the New Testament describe tithing as outer limit of faithful financial stewardship. It does prescribe tithing as something of a basement level of faithful financial stewardship.

Nonetheless, Zacchaeus’ generosity is not a bad description to ponder. What happened between Zacchaeus and Jesus that made Zacchaeus want to make amends to anyone he’d ever cheated and also give half of his estate to the poor? We don’t know. We do know that Jesus described what happened as some kind of “salvation” experience for Zacchaeus, but, not like a “salvation” experience most of us could describe as ours. We’re left to wonder specifically why Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus was so profound. Wouldn’t you like to know? Before you die, wouldn’t you like to know that depth of relationship with Jesus, to be so transformed by his presence in your life, that you’d want to give everything you have away if that’s what it means to show your gratitude?

There is so much more here, in terms of description. Though it doesn’t appear to be the main point of the story, we can learn a lot from Zacchaeus and even what salvation looks like when it actually happens. Here is a man who chose not to let his inadequacies get in the way of finding Jesus. Listen to these beautiful words again. Zacchaeus “was trying to see who Jesus was.”

Navy beat Notre Dame in football yesterday, for the first time since 1963! And, to add injury to what has been an insulting season for Notre Dame, Navy beat them on their home turf. I don’t know, but I can’t help but wonder if I were Navy, I might have given up after, say forty years of whippings. At some point, wouldn’t one just feel too inadequate to face that challenge again? We don’t know for sure what insults Zacchaeus had endured for either his stature or his occupation. But, scripture makes it sound pretty brutal. Nonetheless, he wanted to see who Jesus was and he wasn’t willing to allow his inadequacies get in the way. That wouldn’t be a bad epitaph on a tombstone, would it? “He lived his whole life or she lived her whole life trying to see who Jesus was.”

In Zacchaeus’ case, was it just simple curiosity? Was it a spiritual hunger that drove Zacchaeus up a tree? Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Zacchaeus was willing to step aside from the crowd if that’s it took to see Jesus. He wasn’t willing to let anyone block his view. Most of all, he wasn’t willing to allow his inadequacies to stand in the way. And, his life was changed. The lives of many poor people were changed and even our lives have been touched because something drove Zacchaeus up that sycamore tree that day. What almost certainly happened that day was that Zacchaeus discovered, in Jesus, the generosity of God, even to people like himself that others had written off as worthless. God is always looking for worthlessness to enrich, especially when that worthlessness is a lie of Satan we’ve believed about ourselves.

As an aside, if we decide that we want to discover who Jesus is, we need to know that we can’t always control how that’s going to come out. Even if it’s just simple curiosity that drives our interest in trying to see who Jesus is, once we get that close to generous mercy, we will be changed by it, one way or another.

We all have a sense of inadequacy about something. Too often, that’s the point at which we hold back with God. That’s the part we try to keep secret from God. Sometimes we don’t give financially, for example, because we’re measuring our gift in terms of our financial inadequacy instead of God’s rich mercy toward us in Christ. We too easily think that God only comes to us in our lives where we’re already strong or we’ve conquered some weakness or we’ve cleaned up enough to honor his presence. How many people have you heard say, “I can’t go to church. If those people knew how I lived they’d never let me in the door.” We’ve all felt that way, at one time or another, when we measured our lives by our inadequacy instead of God’s generosity.

We can’t imagine that God would want to come home with us this very evening, before we’ve even had a chance to straighten things up and put all the dishes in the dishwasher. We spend so much time and energy trying to make ourselves acceptable to God that we forget something. Something very important. Something Jesus said at the very end of this story. “The Son of Man has come to seek out and save the lost.”

What kind of God is it that Paul later described this way? “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5, NIV). What kind of God would do that? What kind of holiness would seek out sin in order to forgive it? What kind of light would want to break into the blackest darkness and drive it away? What kind of God would do that? Don’t you wonder about that this time of year every year? When the leaves are beginning to change to bright reds and purples and golds of all shades? What kind of God would give us the rainbow-beauty of the changing seasons, just for the sheer pleasure of it?

What kind of God would give us the opportunity to give back to him, like Zacchaeus did? What kind of God would let us participate with him in his re-creation of his creation and his plan to redeem this world, literally this very earth? What kind of God would do that? The same God who, in Christ, could look beyond the crowd and see the one who most wants to see who he is. That’s the kind of God. The same God who looks for the one person everyone else has written off and asks for the privilege of going to his house that night. The same God who takes unspeakable pleasure in being hospitable to those others can only despise. That’s the God Zacchaeus met in Christ. And, it changed his life. How could it not?

The scripture goes on to say that what salvation looks like is wanting to let go more than hold on, of your possessions, of your very self. Because salvation, whatever it is, is discovering this wonderful truth about the nature of generous mercy. “A devout life does bring wealth, but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God.” Have you ever seen, known or even heard of a God like that? A God who can actually change your heart and the way you live from this day on?

What kind of God would let us come to him, just as we are, and discover the rich simplicity of being ourselves before him, without exception? What kind of God would then want to come live with us, make his home with us, where we live every day? What kind of God would do that? Only a very generous God.

Wouldn’t you like to see who that God is?