Sermon: The Man in the Tree (2025)

Delivered at Few's Chapel United Methodist Church in Greer, South Carolina on November 2, 2025

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
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The Man in the Tree

Audio Version

[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it.  A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.  He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.  So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.  When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”  So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.  All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”  Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV)

Oh Jesus, friend of sinners
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers
Let our hearts be led by mercy
Help us reach with open hearts and open doors
Oh Jesus, friend of sinners
Break our hearts for what breaks Yours

From “Jesus, Friend of Sinners” by Casting Crowns

Jericho was, at one time, a cursed city.  When the Israelites entered the Promised Land after their long journey through the wilderness, Jericho was the first city they attacked.  Led by Joshua, the Israelite soldiers circled the fortified city once per day for six days.  On the seventh day, they circled the city seven times; the priests blew their horns; the soldiers shouted; and miraculously “the walls came tumblin' down.”¹  The Israelite soldiers then invaded the city and slaughtered all of the people and livestock, sparing only the family of the woman who harbored Joshua's reconnaissance team.  They took no spoils but instead burned the entire city to the ground.  Joshua then declared that anyone who dared to rebuild the city of Jericho would be cursed by God.  At the cost of his oldest child, he would lay the foundations, and, at the cost of his youngest child, he would build the city gates.²

Centuries later, a very wicked king named Ahab came to power, and, along with his wife Jezebel, he turned the people of Israel against their God.  At that time, a man named Hiel oversaw the reconstruction of Jericho, perhaps as an act of rebellion against Israel's God and heritage.  Just as Joshua had prophesied, Hiel lost his oldest son when the foundations were laid and later lost his youngest son when the gates were built.³  After the city was established, the people of Jericho found themselves with a serious problem.  Contaminated water made people deathly ill, caused miscarriages, and rendered the soil unfit for growing crops.  Perhaps, rattling around in the people's minds was Joshua's curse.⁴  When the people turned to the prophet Elisha for help, he dumped a bowl of salt into the city's spring and pronounced the water clean.  Miraculously, the water no longer made people sick or caused the land to be unfruitful.⁵

By Jesus' day, Jericho has become prosperous.  Dates and balsam trees from the city are exported throughout the Roman Empire, generating a lot of revenue, and the location of the city within the Jordan Valley makes it a gateway to Jerusalem and to the lands east of the Jordan River.⁶  This city also happens to be one of Jesus' last stops on His way to Jerusalem.⁷

In the once-cursed city of Jericho, there lives a man named Zacchaeus, whom most of the residents probably regard as a curse.  An old children's song tells us that “Zacchaeus was a wee little man... and a wee little man was he.”  This “wee little man” might have a below-average height, but he has an above-average bank account.  He has amassed a great deal of wealth, presumably by working as a tax collector, and a prosperous city like Jericho is a great place to work as a tax collector.⁸  In the days of the Roman Empire, tax collectors bid on a district, and the one who can promise the most money to the Empire will be assigned to the district.  Any money he collects in excess of the amount he has promised the Empire is his to keep.  This system, which obviously lends itself to abuse, allows tax collectors to line their pockets quite nicely.  Some speculate that this broken system has been retired by the time of Jesus, but it has still shaped people's opinions of tax collectors like Zacchaeus.⁹

The Jewish people resent their Roman oppressors, and, because Zacchaeus is an employee of the Roman Empire who has presumably profited greatly from the Roman occupation, he is naturally regarded as a traitor by his fellow Jews.  Zacchaeus is not just any tax collector but rather the chief tax collector of his region, meaning that, if he profits from his own collections, he surely also receives a cut of the profits of all the tax collectors who report to him.¹⁰  As chief tax collector, he is, in the eyes of the people, chief scumbag.  In the eloquent words of scholar N.T. Wright,

One can only imagine the reaction of neighbours, and even of friends and relatives, as Zacchaeus's house became more lavishly decorated, as more slaves ran about at his bidding, as his clothes became finer and his food richer.  Everyone knew that this was their money and that he had no right to it; everyone knew that there was nothing they could do about it. ¹¹

Zacchaeus has undoubtedly become the most hated man in Jericho.

As the town pariah, Zacchaeus longs for something that all the money in the world cannot buy.  It is this longing that draws the chief tax collector to the traveling teacher, healer, and prophet known as Jesus of Nazareth.¹²  Perhaps he has heard something about Jesus' strange stories of lost sheep and wayward sons.¹³  Perhaps he has heard that Jesus routinely risks uncleanness to heal people whose medical problems have made them untouchable.¹⁴  Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has a heart for people with bad reputations, like the “sinful woman” who crashed a Pharisee's dinner party and made an awkward scene at the dinner table.¹⁵  Perhaps he has heard that Jesus shares meals with undesirables like tax collectors as if they are some of His best friends.¹⁶  Perhaps he has even heard rumors that Jesus has chosen a tax collector like him to be one of His closest pupils.¹⁷

Whatever Zacchaeus has heard about Jesus, when he learns that Jesus is passing through Jericho, he knows that he has to catch a glimpse of Him.  When he goes out to see Jesus, he cannot see because of the crowd.¹⁸  Naturally, he cannot see because he is, as some people say, “vertically challenged,” but it is also quite likely that the crowd does not want him to see Jesus.  All things considered, Zacchaeus demonstrates a great deal of bravery by going out among the crowd.  The size of the crowd would offer any angry resident of Jericho the opportunity to give him an anonymous shove, kick, or punch.¹⁹  Determined to see Jesus, Zacchaeus employs a skill he might not have used since the days of his childhood: he runs ahead of the crowd and climbs a tree.²⁰  He probably just wants to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Jesus of Nazareth and maybe even glean some words of wisdom as He passes by.  He surely has not anticipated what will happen next.  As soon as Jesus arrives at Zacchaeus's location, He stops at the tree, looks up at Zacchaeus, and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”  As Zacchaeus gleefully climbs down the tree to welcome Jesus into his home, the people in the crowd begin to murmur with disgust that Jesus would associate with such a clearly despicable person.²¹

Zacchaeus is profoundly affected by his encounter with Jesus.  According to the New Revised Standard Version, he announces, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”²²  According to the Jewish Law, anyone who confesses to fraud or theft is only required to repay the amount of the damages plus one fifth.  Fourfold restitution is reserved for deliberately destructive actions.²³  Zacchaeus seems to be confronting the destructive nature of his actions, taking ownership of all the ways he has wronged the residents of Jericho, and committing to set things right.

So what does Jesus say to Zacchaeus that affects him so profoundly?  All we really know Jesus says to him is, “Hey, Zacchaeus!  We need somewhere to stay tonight.  Mind if we crash at your place?”

Jesus has a way of making the excluded feel included.

In the Gospel of John, we read that one day, while passing through a Samaritan town, Jesus sits down beside a well to rest while the Disciples go to the market to buy food.  When a woman comes to the well to draw some water, Jesus asks her for a drink.  Women normally draw water in the morning, but this woman has waited until noon so that she can avoid her peers, for a string of broken marriages in her past has given her a bad reputation.  It is remarkable that Jesus, a Jew, would even ask a Samaritan woman for a drink, since Jews and Samaritans generally hate each other, but Jesus is speaking with an outcast among outcasts.²⁴  Jesus takes the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her that leaves her a changed woman.  She forgets all about her shame and tells everyone in town about the man she has come to believe is their long-awaited messiah.²⁵

Never underestimate the power of a simple act of inclusion.  Simply sitting with someone, talking with someone, sharing a meal with someone, asking someone for help and gratefully accepting their help, or doing anything that says to someone, “I'm with you, and I'm for you,” has the potential to make an impact in a person's life.

During my first two years of college, I was, for the most part, a loner and a hermit, mostly because I was a commuter.  Though I occasionally hung out with some of my high school friends who also attended the same university, I typically drove to campus every day, attended my classes, and then went home.

At the beginning of my Junior year, I learned about the Wesley Fellowship, the Untied Methodist group on campus.  The young men and women in this group knew how to make a person feel welcomed, included, and loved.  During the fall, I joined the group for a retreat at Lake Junaluska, and, during the retreat, we had a healing service.  When my turn came to sit in the middle of the circle, everyone placed their hands on me, and I felt the love of everyone in the room.  On one Friday evening, I went to the campus chapel to attend a lecture.  I saw some of my friends from the group sitting together on one of the pews, but, because the pew was full, I took a seat on the pew behind them where I would still be able to talk with them.  Three of my friends – Kim, Ginger, and John – stood up and moved back to sit with me.  I doubt they even remember doing this, but this small act of inclusion meant a lot to me.  Another friend turned around and said, “We could have squeezed you in.”

Being involved with the Wesley Fellowship changed my life.  For years, I had known that I needed to be a Christian, but this group made realize that I actually wanted to be a Christian.  I began to see church less as an event I attended every Sunday morning and more as a community built on love.  I think that maybe the inclusive nature of the group is part of what gave me a desire to make sure that the people around me feel included.  Is there any wonder why I would remain involved with the group for a few years after I graduated?

Theologian Paul Tillich describes God's grace as that which reaches out to us in our darkest moments, when we are at our lowest, and says, “You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know...  Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”  According to Tillich, in the moment we are “struck by grace,” nothing might seem different, yet somehow everything is changed.²⁶  To receive God's grace is to accept that we are accepted by God, and to extend that grace to other people is to accept them just as they are.

Does it sound offensive to you that someone as criminally unacceptable as Zacchaeus should be accepted just as he is?  If you find such an idea repugnant, you would be in good company among the crowd in Jericho that day.  Grace can be offensive to us when we become a little too sure of our own presumed goodness or a little too fixated on someone else’s supposed badness.

What if the people of Jericho are dead wrong about Zacchaeus, and what if we have been misreading the story of his encounter with Jesus?

Ancient languages like biblical Hebrew and Greek have ambiguities that require translators to make judgments regarding how to best translate a piece of ancient writing.  For example, there is a particular Greek word used throughout the New Testament that may be translated into English as either faith or faithfulness.  Reading a passage of the Bible from two different translations can show us how different translators have made different judgments.²⁷  Because so few of us can read the Bible in its original languages, most of us are dependent on the work of translators.  The judgments translators have to make directly affect how we read the Bible and how we interpret what we read.  There is one such ambiguity in the story of Zacchaeus’s encounter with Jesus.

According to the Common English Bible, when the people of Jericho begin expressing their outrage that Jesus “has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”  Zacchaeus announces, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor.  And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”²⁸  Maybe Zacchaeus is telling Jesus what he has decided to do, or maybe he is telling Jesus what he already does.  Maybe Zacchaeus is turning over a new leaf.  Maybe he is leaving behind a life of greed and extortion and starting a new life of honesty and generosity.  Maybe Zacchaeus is already honest and generous.  Maybe he already makes it a habit to give to people who are in need, and maybe he already goes above and beyond what is necessary to make restitution to anyone he has accidentally overcharged.  Since names and their meanings are very important in the Bible, it is worth noting that the name Zacchaeus means “innocent” or “pure.”²⁹

One thing that is not at all ambiguous about the story of is the character of Jesus.  He sees Zacchaeus in the tree, knows who he is, and cares about him, regardless of what he may or may not have done.  Jesus says, regarding Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”³⁰  Maybe Zacchaeus is lost because he has strayed from his faith, or maybe he is lost because he has been forsaken by his community.  Maybe he needs to be saved from his own worst impulses, or maybe he needs to be saved from other people's mistreatment of him.  Maybe Jesus’ acceptance saves him because it inspires him to become a better person, or maybe it saves him because it gives the people of Jericho the opportunity to see that they are wrong about him.  In either case, Zacchaeus’s life is forever changed by the grace Jesus shows.

It is not our job to change people, for that job belongs to God, and to God alone.  Our job is to follow Christ’s example by loving our neighbors and even our enemies as Christ loves us.  Loving other people and accepting them as they are has the power to change them, because it gives them a safe space to take a good hard look at their lives and reevaluate their choices, and it inspires them to become more loving as well.  Loving and accepting other people has the power to change us as well, because it enables us to see them in a different light.

We cannot change people, and, if we attempt to change people, we will only do more harm than good.  We can only love people and accept them just as they are.  Ironically, knowing that we're loved and accepted just as we are can change us in profound ways, and loving other people and accepting them just as they are can change our perceptions of them.  We, who have received the love and grace of God, must extend this love and grace to others.  When we love other people as Christ loves us, allowing God to work through us, there is no telling what kind of miracles God might work in their hearts or in ours.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.


Notes:

1. From an African-American spiritual
2. Joshua 6
3. 1 Kings 16:29-34
4. Rob Bell.  “Salt in the Water.”  Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 05/02/2010.
5. 2 Kings 2:19-22
6. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke.  2001, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 276
7. Luke 19:1
8. Luke 19:2-3
9. Barclay, pp. 76-77
10. N.T. Wright.  Luke for Everyone.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 222
11. Wright, pp. 222-223
12. Barclay, p. 278
13. Luke 15
14. Luke 5:12-16; Luke 8:43-48; Luke 17:11-19
15. Luke 7:36-50
16. Luke 5:29-32
17. Luke 5:27-28
18. Luke 19:3
19. Barclay, p. 278
20. Luke 19:4
21. Luke 19:5-7 (NRSV)
22. Luke 19:8 (NRSV)
23. Barclay, p. 278  (See also Leviticus 6:2-5 and Exodus 22:1.)
24. Adam Hamilton.  The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus.  2012, Abingdon Press.  pp. 127-128
25. John 4:1-42
26. Paul Tillich.  The Shaking of the Foundations.  ch. 19
27. For example, see how Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 are translated in both the Common English Bible and the New International Version.
28. Luke 19:7-8 (CEB) (emphasis added)
29. Blue Letter Bible: “zakchaios”
30. Luke 19:9-10 (NRSV)

Zacchaeus was painted by Niels Larsen Stevns in 1913.

Christmas Perspective: A New and Glorious Morn

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

A New and Glorious Morn

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness -

on them light has shined.

Isaiah 9:2 (NRSV)

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

From "O Holy Night" by John Sullivan Dwight

One evening, in the middle of October, as I walked through the local shopping mall, I was surprised to hear Elton John's peppy invitation to "step into Christmas."  Afterward, I heard about "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" and "Jack Frost nipping at your nose."  Next, I heard Colbie Caillat declare that "it's Christmas time in the city."  I found it strange to hear these songs, while looking up and seeing visages of murderous clowns on advertisements for a local haunted attraction.  It occurred to me that, in a couple of weeks, children would walk past a sleigh and a giant Christmas tree in search of candy.  "Soon it will be Halloween," I sang in my mind.

It's been said by many people that "Christmas comes earlier each year."  It certainly seems that people start playing Christmas music earlier and earlier.  By now, some of us have been hearing Christmas songs for more than two months.

The songs we hear during the weeks leading up to Christmas are actually quite diverse.  Some are less about Christmas and more about winter weather.  Some are about Christmas celebrations and spending time with family.  Some appeal to a sense of nostalgia for Christmases past.  Some treat Christmas like yet another Valentine's Day.  Some Christmas songs actually tell of the birth of the One for whom the holy day is named.

The songs I've started to appreciate in recent years are those that not only retell the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but also explore the profound implications of Christ's birth.  One song I've come to love over the last few years is "O Holy Night."  This song began as a French poem written by Placide Cappeau in 1843 titled "Minuit, chrétiens."  The poem was set to music by Adolphe Adam in the same year.  The popular English version of the carol was written by minister John Sullivan Dwight twelve years later.¹

In the first verse of Dwight's version, we hear,

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth

If you've tuned into the news lately, then you know that we live in a world full of suffering.  In our sinfulness, we inflict pain upon each other and upon ourselves.  St. Paul wrote in one of his letters that it is as if all of creation groans for redemption.²  The Gospel tells us that God loved this messed-up world so much that God sent God's Son not to condemn us but to give us all eternal and abundant life.³  We are worth too much to God for God to give up on us.  Dwight describes the birth of our Savior as "a new and glorious morn."

In the second verse, we hear,

The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger

In all our trials born to be our friend

In the Gospel, we read that Jesus was born in a stable, of all places, and that His crib was a feeding trough, of all things, because nobody had the hospitality to open his or her home to Jesus' earthly parents.⁴  The Son of God, of all people, had a less than auspicious birth.  An early Christian hymn tells us that, when the Son of God took on flesh and blood to dwell among us and walk beside us, He divested Himself of the power and glory that comes with divinity.⁵  The Son of God is not distant from either the beauty or the hardship of being human.  One early Christian theologian described Jesus as a heavenly High Priest who is fully capable of empathizing with us.⁶

In the third verse, we hear,

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Jesus taught us that the most important things we can do is to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.⁷  He modeled self-giving love for us and said that people will know we belong to Him if we follow His example.⁸  Following His lead, we love other people as our own brothers and sisters, and we fight against all forms of oppression, injustice, and exploitation.  Christians hold on to the hope that someday Christ will return to set all things right.  At that time, in Dwight's words, "all oppression shall cease."  No longer will people mistreat each other, and no longer will there be any mourning, crying, death, or pain.⁹

Most retailers and radio stations will have ceased to play Christmas music by the day after Christmas Day.  Christians on the other hand get to enjoy Christmas music for eleven additional days, since Christmas is actually a twelve-day celebration that starts with December 25.  As you listen to Christmas music this season, may you remember what happened in a stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, and may you contemplate what it means for all of us.


Notes:

1. Wikipedia: "O Holy Night"
2. Romans 8:22-23
3. John 3:16-17; John 10:10b
4. Luke 2:6-7
5. Philippians 2:5-8
6. Hebrews 4:15
7. Mark 12:28-31
8. John 13:34-35
9. Revelation 21:3-4

The photograph featured in this perspective was provided by Pixabay.com.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Christmas Perspective: No Crying He Makes?

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

No Crying He Makes?

The Word became flesh and blood,

and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes,

the one-of-a-kind glory,

like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out,

true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (MSG)

---

Jesus wept.

John 11:35 (KJV)

Jesus is our childhood's pattern

Day by day like us he grew

He was little, weak, and helpless

Tears and smiles like us he knew

And he feels for all our sadness

And he shares in all our gladness

From "Once in Royal David's City" by Cecil Frances Alexander

Mary had not expected to have her baby in Bethlehem, but, when the empire-wide census was announced, she had no choice but to accompany her fiancé Joseph to his family's hometown to register.  It mattered not that she was more than eight months pregnant.  By the time the couple reached Bethlehem, Mary had gone into labor.  Because they could find no one who would give them shelter in a guest room, they ended taking refuge in a stable.  Mary gave birth to her baby, a Son, and, without a proper crib, she placed Him in a feeding trough.¹

It is this scene in the stable that an anonymous poet sought to capture in the beloved Christmas carol "Away in a Manger."²  This song describes the newborn infant Jesus sweetly sleeping on a bed of hay, with the stars of the nighttime sky looking down upon him.  This song, which many of us learned as children, paints an idyllic picture of the Christmas story, not unlike the typical nativity scene which features a radiant infant, two prayerful parents, some well-groomed shepherds, and some well-behaved animals.

In my opinion, the song "Away in a Manger" does not pay proper respect to the complexity and messiness of the Christmas story.  I suppose that, when we teach little children about the Christmas story through such songs, we don't want to overwhelm them.  That said, the first half of the second verse is, I think, problematic.  The animals in the stable make noise, as barnyard animals often do, waking the Christ child from His slumber.  "But little Lord Jesus," the lyricist contends, "no crying He makes."  Why did the writer make it a point to state that the newborn Christ child did not cry?  Don't all babies cry?

At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation.  One early Christian hymn, which is quoted by St. John in his Gospel, teaches us that Christ, the Word of God who is one with God and was present in the creation of the universe, "became flesh and lived among us."³  Another early Christian hymn, which is quoted by St. Paul in one of his letters, describes the Incarnation as a downward journey.

[Christ], though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.⁴

Christ left behind the glory and power of godhood to take on the frail flesh and blood of humanity.  Theologians sometimes refer to this self-emptying descent of Christ from the glory of heaven to the messiness of earth as Kenosis.⁵

It is important that, amid our Christmas celebration, we do not lose sight of what it means that Christ came to dwell among us as a human.  If Christ was truly born into this world as a human baby, then He must have done all of the adorable, annoying, and disgusting things that human babies do.  He talked in gibberish; He got more food on his clothes than He did in His mouth at feeding times; He cried when Mary and Joseph wanted to sleep; He became gassy and needed to be burped; He spat up; and He even needed to have His diapers changed multiple times a day.

Try to wrap your mind around the idea that the Son of God, almighty and eternal like His Father, at one time needed someone to feed Him and change His diapers.  That, dear reader, is what Kenosis looks like.

So why is it so important that the baby Jesus cried?

Regarding the song "Away in a Manger," professor of theology Cynthia L. Rigby writes,
No crying?  Why do we say he doesn't cry?  Perhaps because we know he is God, and God can't cry.  On some level, we tend to reason to ourselves that, if Jesus is God, the whole baby thing must be kind of a disguise.  He must have been not just an ordinary baby... he must have been a "superbaby."⁶

If Jesus didn't cry human tears, then He did not fully enter into the human experience, and, if He did not fully enter into the human experience, then He does not truly understand us.  Rigby continues,
We don't need a hero, we don't need a God who puts on a disguise and infiltrates our reality only to rescue us.  We need a God who is one of us, a God who understands us, a God who is with us, a God who has entered into relationship with us and who saves us because God is with us and for us.  And this is who God in Jesus Christ is.⁷

The sixteenth century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross tells the story of the Incarnation through a series of poems.  John imagines a conversation between Christ and God the Father.  The Father tells the Son that a groom and his bride must be alike, meaning that the Son must be born as a human.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, the relationship between God and God's people is sometimes compared to a marriage, and early Christians appropriated this metaphor, describing the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Christ agrees with His Father, and the Father sends the archangel Gabriel to ask the Virgin Mary to give birth to the Son of God, thereby allowing Him to become human.⁸

When the time comes for Christ to leave His chamber and embrace His Bride, He is placed in a manger by His mother.  There the Bride and the Groom exchange wedding gifts.  Humanity receives the joy of heaven, and Christ receives the tears of humanity.⁹  Unlike the author of "Away in a Manger," St. John of the Cross envisions a Christ child who actually cries in the manger, having truly become like the humans He came to embrace.

Man gave forth a song of gladness,

God Himself a plaintive moan;

Both possessing that which never

Had been hitherto their own.¹⁰

At Christmas, we remember the story of the Incarnation.  We remember that Christ came into the world to save humanity, becoming like the very humans He came to save and immersing Himself fully into the messiness of the human experience.  We want our Christmas celebrations to be free of tears, but we would do well not to edit the tears out of the Christmas story, lest we forget that Christ, our Savior, actually understands us and empathizes with us.


Notes:

1. Luke 2:1-7
2. Wikipedia: "Away in a Manger"
3. John 1:1-3, 14 (NRSV)
4. Philippians 2:6-7 (NRSV)
5. Wikipedia: "Kenosis"
6. Cynthia L. Rigby.  "More Than a Hero: The Practical Implications of the Incarnation in Ministry with Youth."  The 1999 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture.
7. ibid.
8. See the poem "The Incarnation" and the following poem "The Same Subject" by St. John of the Cross.
9. See the poem "The Nativity" by St. John of the Cross.
10. Stanza VI of "The Nativity"

Adoration of the Shepherds was painted by Gerard van Honthorst in the early 1600s.

Sermon: The Man in the Tree

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church and at Salem United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on November 13, 2016

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Man in the Tree

Audio Version

[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it.  A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.  He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.  So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.  When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."  So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.  All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."  Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."  Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV)

Oh Jesus, friend of sinners
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers
Let our hearts be led by mercy
Help us reach with open hearts and open doors
Oh Jesus, friend of sinners
Break our hearts for what breaks Yours

From "Jesus, Friend of Sinners" by Casting Crowns

Jericho was, at one time, a cursed city.  When the Israelites entered the Promised Land after their long trek through the desert, Jericho was the first city they attacked.  The Israelite soldiers circled the fortified city once per day for six days.  On the seventh day, they circled the city seven times; the priests blew their horns; the soldiers shouted; and the walls of the city miraculously "came tumbling down."  They then invaded the city and slaughtered all of the people and livestock, sparing only the family of the woman who harbored Joshua's reconnaissance team.  They took no spoils but instead burned the entire city to the ground.  Joshua then declared that anyone who dared to rebuild the city of Jericho would be cursed by God.  At the cost of his oldest child, he would lay the foundations, and, at the cost of his youngest child, he would build the city gates.¹

Centuries later, a very wicked king named Ahab came to power, and, along with his wife Jezebel, he turned the people of Israel against their God.  At that time, a man named Hiel oversaw the reconstruction of Jericho, perhaps as an act of rebellion against Israel's God and heritage.  Just as Joshua had prophesied, Hiel lost his oldest son when the foundations were laid and later lost his youngest son when the city gates were built.²  After the city was established, the people of Jericho found themselves with a serious problem.  Contaminated water made people deathly ill, caused miscarriages, and rendered the soil unfit for growing crops.  Perhaps, rattling around in the people's minds was Joshua's curse.³  When the people turned to the prophet Elisha for help, he dumped a bowl of salt into the city's spring and pronounced the water clean.  Miraculously, the water no longer made people sick or caused the land to be unfruitful.⁴

By Jesus' day, Jericho had become prosperous.  Dates and balsam trees from the city were exported throughout the Roman Empire, generating a lot of revenue, and the location of the city within the Jordan Valley made it a gateway to Jerusalem and to the lands east of the Jordan River.⁵  This city also happened to be, according to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus' last stop on His way to Jerusalem.

In the city of Jericho, we meet a man named Zacchaeus, who was probably considered to be a curse by most of the residents.  An old children's song tells us that "Zacchaeus was a wee little man... and a wee little man was he."  This "wee little man" might have had a below average height, but he had an above average income.  He had amassed a great deal of wealth by working as a tax collector, and a prosperous city like Jericho was a good place to work as a tax collector.  In the days of the Roman Empire, tax collectors would bid on a district, and the one who could promise the most money to the Empire would be assigned to the district.  Any money he collected in excess of the amount he promised the Empire was his to keep.  This system, which obviously lent itself to abuse, allowed tax collectors to line their pockets quite nicely.  Some speculate that this broken system might have been retired by the time of Jesus, but, even so, it still would have shaped the people's opinions of tax collectors like Zacchaeus.⁶

The Jewish people hated their Roman oppressors, and, because Zacchaeus was an employee of the Roman Empire who lived high on the hog thanks to the Roman occupation, he would have been regarded as a traitor by his fellow Jews.  Zacchaeus was not just any tax collector: he was the chief tax collector of his region.  Not only did he profit from his own collections, he also received a cut of the profits of all the tax collectors who reported to him.⁷  As chief tax collector – and chief scumbag – Zacchaeus had likely earned for himself the title of most hated man in Jericho.  In the eloquent words of N.T. Wright,
One can only imagine the reaction of neighbours, and even of friends and relatives, as Zacchaeus's house became more lavishly decorated, as more slaves ran about at his bidding, as his clothes became finer and his food richer.  Everyone knew that this was their money and that he had no right to it; everyone knew that there was nothing they could do about it.⁸

As the town pariah, this first-century Bernie Madoff⁹ longed for something that all the money in the world could not buy.  It was this longing that drew Zacchaeus to the traveling teacher, healer, and prophet known as Jesus of Nazareth.¹⁰  Perhaps he had heard something about Jesus' strange stories of lost sheep and wayward sons.¹¹  Perhaps he had heard that Jesus risked uncleanness to heal people whose medical problems had made them unclean and untouchable.¹²  Perhaps he had heard that Jesus once stuck up for a prostitute who crashed a Pharisee's dinner party and made an awkward scene at the dinner table.¹³  Perhaps he had heard that Jesus shared meals with undesirables like tax collectors as if they were some of His best friends.¹⁴  Perhaps he had even heard rumors that Jesus had chosen a tax collector like him to be one of His pupils.¹⁵

Whatever Zacchaeus had previously heard about Jesus, when he learned that Jesus was passing through Jericho, he knew that he had to catch a glimpse of Him.  When he went out to see Jesus, he could not see because of the crowd.  Naturally, he couldn't see because he was, as some people say, "vertically challenged," but it is quite likely that the crowd didn't want him to see Jesus.  All things considered, Zacchaeus was actually quite brave to go out among the crowd.  The size of the crowd would have afforded any angry resident of Jericho the opportunity to give him an anonymous shove, kick, or punch.¹⁶  Determined to see Jesus, Zacchaeus employed a skill he might not have used since the days of his childhood: he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a tree.  He probably just wanted to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Jesus of Nazareth and maybe even glean some words of wisdom as He passed by.  He had not anticipated what would happen next.  As soon as Jesus arrived at Zacchaeus's location, He stopped at the tree, looked up at Zacchaeus, and said, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."

Zacchaeus turned over a new leaf after meeting Jesus.  He pledged to give half of his possessions to those in need, and he promised to make fourfold restitution to anyone he had cheated.¹⁷  According to the Jewish Law, anyone who confessed to fraud or theft was only required to repay the amount of the damages plus one fifth.  Fourfold restitution was reserved for deliberately destructive actions.¹⁸  Basically, Zacchaeus confronted the destructive nature of his actions, took ownership of all the ways he had wronged the residents of Jericho, and committed to set things right.  He resolved to leave behind a life of dishonesty and greed to embrace a life of integrity and generosity.
   
So what could Jesus have possibly said to Zacchaeus that would have caused such a radical change?  All we really know Jesus said to Zacchaeus is, "Hey, Zacchaeus!  We need somewhere to stay tonight.  Mind if we crash at your place?"

Jesus had a way of making the excluded feel included.

In the Gospel of John, we read that one day, while passing through a Samaritan town, Jesus sat down beside a well to rest while the Disciples went to the market to buy food.  When a woman came to the well to draw some water, Jesus asked her for a drink.  Women normally drew water in the morning, but this woman waited until noon so that she could avoid her peers, for a string of broken marriages in her past had given her a bad reputation.  It is remarkable that Jesus, a Jew, would even ask a Samaritan woman for a drink, since Jews and Samaritans generally hated each other, but Jesus was speaking with an outcast among outcasts.¹⁹  Jesus took the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her that left her a changed woman.  She forgot all about her shame and told everyone in town about the man she had come to believe was their long-awaited messiah.²⁰

Never underestimate the power of a simple act of inclusion.  Simply sitting with someone, talking with someone, sharing a meal with someone, asking someone for help and gratefully accepting his or her help, or doing anything that says to someone, "I'm with you, and I'm for you," has the potential to make an impact in a person's life.

During my first two years of college, I was, for the most part, a loner and a hermit, mostly because I was a commuter.  Though I occasionally hung out with some of my high school friends who also attended the same university, I typically drove to campus every day, attended my classes, and then went home.

At the beginning of my Junior year, I learned about the Wesley Fellowship, the Untied Methodist group on campus.  The young men and women in this group knew how to make a person feel welcomed, included, and loved.  During the fall, I joined the group for a retreat at Lake Junaluska, and, during the retreat, we had a healing service.  When my turn came to sit in the middle of the circle, everyone placed their hands on me, and I felt the love of everyone in the room.  On one Friday evening not too long afterward, I went to the campus chapel to attend a lecture.  I saw some of my friends from the group sitting together on one of the pews, but, because the pew was full, I took a seat on the pew behind them where I would still be able to talk with them.  Three of my friends – Kim, Ginger, and John – stood up and moved back to sit with me.  I doubt they even remember doing this, but this small act of inclusion meant a lot to me.  Another friend turned around and said, "We could have squeezed you in."

It it any wonder that I would remain involved with such a group for three years after I graduated?

Being involved with the Wesley Fellowship changed my life.  For years, I had known that I needed to be a Christian, but this group made realize that I actually wanted to be a Christian.  I began to see church less as an event I attended every Sunday morning and more as a community built on love.  I think that maybe the inclusive nature of the group is part of what gave me the desire to make sure that the people around me feel included.

Theologian Paul Tillich describes God's grace as that which reaches out to us in our darkest moments, when we are at our lowest, and says, "You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know...  Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"  According to Tillich, in the moment we are "struck by grace," nothing might seem different, yet somehow everything is changed.²¹  To receive God's grace is to accept that we are accepted by God, and to extend that grace to other people is to accept them just as they are.

Does it sound offensive to you that someone as criminally unacceptable as Zacchaeus should be accepted just as he is?  If you find such an idea repugnant, you would have been in good company among the crowd in Jericho that day.  When Jesus made His request to stay at Zacchaeus's house, people began grumbling about the fact that He would be willing to associate with such a despicable sinner, but, to borrow a phrase from St. Paul, "where sin abounded, grace abounded much more."²²  Grace can be offensive to us when we become a little too sure of our own goodness and forget that we too are in need of grace.

It is not our place to change people: that job belongs to God, and to God alone.  Our job is to love our neighbors and even our enemies as Christ loves us, following His example.  In the words of John Pavlovitz, "It's a really bad idea to set out to change another person.  Instead, set out to love them, and they will become whatever they are supposed to become"  Jesus did not tell Zacchaeus that he needed to change; instead, Jesus simply reached out to him and accepted him just as he was.  Zacchaeus was changed by the grace Jesus showed him: he saw past the person he had been and began to see the person he could be.  He was saved from his former self and from the alienation his actions had brought him, and a new faith was born within him.

Jesus says of Zacchaeus, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham."  Abraham, who had the faith to leave everything familiar to him and go to the place where God had called him to go, is the revered ancestor of the Jewish people.  One question that comes up multiple times in the New Testament concerns what it means to be a child of Abraham, for it is not merely a matter of ancestry.  In one Gospel, Jesus suggests that a child of Abraham is one who does Abraham's works.²³  St. Paul argues that a child of Abraham is one who shares Abraham's faith.²⁴  I find it noteworthy that Zacchaeus did not express any desire to leave everything and follow Jesus like a number of others who encountered Him.  Following Jesus on His travels would have been an easy way for Zacchaeus to get out of dodge, away from all the people who hated him, press the reset button on his life, and start over.  Instead, he chose to stay in Jericho to repair his relationship with the people of the city and to make amends to the people he had wronged.  It requires great faith to venture out into worlds unknown, like Abraham, but sometimes we need great faith just to face the world we know.

We cannot change people, and, if we attempt to change people, we will only do more harm than good.  We can only love people and accept them just as they are.  Ironically, knowing that we're loved and accepted just as we are can change us in profound ways.  We, who have received the love and grace of God, must extend this love and grace to others.  When we love other people as Christ loves us, allowing God to work through us, there is no telling what kind of miracles God might work in their hearts.

Amen.


Notes:

1. Joshua 6
2. 1 Kings 16:29-34
3. Rob Bell.  "Salt in the Water."  Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 05/02/2010.
4. 2 Kings 2:19-22
5. William Barclay.  The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke.  2001, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 276
6. Barclay, pp. 76-77
7. N.T. Wright.  Luke for Everyone.  2004, Westminster John Knox Press.  p. 222
8. Wright, pp. 222-223
9. I think I originally heard Rob Bell make this comparison in one of his sermons.
10. Barclay, p. 278
11. Luke 15
12. Luke 5:12-16; Luke 8:43-48; Luke 17:11-19
13. Luke 7:36-50
14. Luke 5:29-32
15. Luke 5:27-28
16. Barclay, p. 278
17. Several years ago, I learned from my pastor that there is some ambiguity in the original Greek text in regards to the verb tense Zacchaeus uses.  Zacchaeus might be telling Jesus what he will do, but it is possible that he is telling Jesus what he already does.  The latter reading is reflected in the Common English Bible.  Zacchaeus is typically understood to have been a greedy and dishonest tax collector, but it is possible that he was actually an honest and generous tax collector who was misjudged by the people.  I have chosen the conventional reading for the purpose of this sermon.
18. Barclay, p. 278  (See also Leviticus 6:2-5 and Exodus 22:1.)
19. Adam Hamilton.  The Way: Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus.  2012, Abingdon Press.  pp. 127-128
20. John 4:1-42
21. Paul Tillich.  The Shaking of the Foundations.  ch. 19
22. Romans 5:20 (NKJV)
23. John 8:39
24. Romans 4:16

Zacchaeus was painted by Niels Larsen Stevns in 1913.

Perspective: Good Grief

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Good Grief

A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.

You won't despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.

Psalm 51:17 (CEB)

I've found a reason for me

To change who I used to be

A reason to start over new

And the reason is you

From "The Reason" by Hoobastank

St. Paul had a rather complicated relationship with the church in Corinth.  He originally planted this community with the help of his friends Priscilla and Aquila.¹  Later on, after another evangelist named Apollos began shepherding the community in Paul's absence, people began splintering into factions, some pledging allegiance to Paul and others to Apollos.  Paul wrote a rather lengthy letter to the Corinthians to remind them that, as the Church, their allegiance is to Christ and not to any of Christ's followers and to address a number of the other problems that had been plaguing the community.²

Later on, Paul paid the Corinthian church a visit that went rather badly, to say the least.  We don't know the details, but some speculate that someone publicly humiliated Paul.³  Afterward, he wrote the community an extremely harsh letter, sometimes called the "Letter of Tears," that, by his own admission, caused a great deal of pain for many people.⁴  In a later correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul admitted that he initially regretted sending the letter that caused them so much pain, but went on to write that he was glad that their pain ultimately caused them to rethink their lives and change their ways.  He remarked that their grief was not "worldly grief" that leads to death, but rather "godly grief" that leads to repentance.⁵

So what exactly is the difference between "worldly grief" and "godly grief"?

Judging from the results of each kind of grief, I would say that a worldly grief that leads to death is despair and that a godly grief that leads to positive change is contrition.  That said, I want to dig a little deeper into the question at hand and also examine the words worldly and godly.  Though Christians are exhorted to not "be conformed to the patterns of this world"⁶ and to not "love the world or the things in the world,"⁷ people cannot fully extricate themselves from the world.  Furthermore, even people who strive for godliness have been shaped by the world around them.

The way we look at the world matters.  The truth is that we all view reality through lenses, whether or not we realize or acknowledge the fact.  Many Christians have been handed a lens of judgment.  Basically, they understand that some people, whom some might call sheep, will ultimately go to Heaven and that others, whom some might label goats, will suffer for ever and ever in Hell as punishment for their sins.⁸  The Bible, when read through such a lens, becomes a handbook for becoming a sheep as opposed to a goat so that the one's eternal destiny is secure.  Some Christians might even understand themselves to be at war with a world of goats who threaten to drag them down to Hell with them.

I was handed such a lens when I was young, and it scared me out of my mind.  Even now, I try not to think too much about the afterlife.  In my journey of faith, I've sought to leave behind a lens of judgment and to adopt a lens of redemption.  I strive to read the Bible as a story of a loving God who has not given up on putting a broken world back together again.⁹  Though judgment will be involved in the process, God is not interested in simply taking out the trash.  According to biblical scholar N.T. Wright,
God's authority vested in scripture is designed, as all God's authority is designed, to liberate human beings, to judge and condemn evil and sin in the world in order to set people free to be fully human.  That's what God is in the business of doing.¹⁰
The question then is whether or not we want to get on board with what God is doing and take part in this redemptive story.

Some people use the word fallen to describe this broken world, while others might say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  However one might describe the fact, this messed-up world, left to itself, is on a downward trajectory.  On the other hand, God, who is in the business of redemption, is working to put the world back on an upward trajectory.¹¹  With that in mind, perhaps one could say that worldly grief is something that drags a person down and that godly grief is something that is redemptive, ultimately building a person up.  Perhaps, in this case, one could substitute the word unredeemed for worldly.

I wonder if maybe the difference between worldly grief and godly grief is not what ultimately results from the grief, but rather the way that the grief is channeled.  Perhaps worldly grief is used in a destructive way, while godly grief is used in a redemptive way.

Some people use their "darker" emotions constructively: they work through them, become stronger, and develop empathy.  Some might even create art in the process.  Others use such emotions like a blade to slash themselves apart, turning to destructive attitudes, actions, or habits that become their undoing.  These are the same emotions, but they are channeled in different ways.  The Christians in Corinth channeled the grief Paul caused them constructively, and, as a result, they became better people for it.

As for me, on my best days, I work through my worst emotions constructively, but, more often than I would like to admit, I handle such emotions in less than constructive ways.  So often I feel that, after a difficult season, there is less of me than there was beforehand.

If you are currently dealing with some difficult emotions, I would offer you three pieces of advice.  I offer this advice not as a licensed therapist, but as a rather emotional person.  First, let your emotions be an offering to God, the One who is in the business of redemption, and allow God to guide you as you work through them.  Second, open up about your emotions to people you can trust.  You might even need to seek professional counseling.  I wouldn't recommend that anyone attempt to go through life alone.  Third, find a creative outlet.  As you can probably tell, I like to write.  A lot of my writing is cathartic, and I find that when I put my feelings on paper - or rather a text document - I feel better afterward.

Grief is something we all experience as human beings, regardless of whether someone would classify us as worldly or godly.  Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once mused, "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."  Though we cannot always control our emotions, we are still the owners of our emotions, meaning that we can decide whether they kill us or strengthen us.  Choosing to live out a story of redemption makes a world of difference.


Notes:

1. Acts 18:1-11
2. 1 Corinthians.
3. See the notes on 2 Corinthians 2:1-11 in the Wesley Study Bible.  2009, Abingdon Press.
4. Wikipedia: Second Epistle to the Corinthians
5. 2 Corinthians 7:8-10 (NRSV)
6. Romans 12:2 (CEB)
7. 1 John 2:15 (CEB)
8. Matthew 25:31-46
9. John 3:16-17
10. From a lecture by N.T. Wright titled "How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?"
11. In the book Who Is This Man?, John Ortberg explores many ways in which the world has become a better place because of Jesus.  2012, Zondervan.

The photograph featured in this post was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Specialtoyoutoyou and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Sermon: All Things to All People

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on February 8, 2015.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

All Things to All People

Audio Version

For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.  To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.  To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.  To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.  I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (NRSV)

Give me Your eyes for just one second

Give me Your eyes so I can see

Everything that I keep missing

Give me Your love for humanity

Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted

The ones that are far beyond my reach

Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten

Give me Your eyes so I can see

From "Give Me Your Eyes" by Brandon Heath

At the beginning of the 2011 thriller The Adjustment Bureau, David Norris, an audacious young congressman portrayed by Matt Damon, loses an election in which he is the incumbent.  When the time comes to give the concession speech, Norris abandons the speech he prepared and comes clean about some of the utter nonsense involved in a political campaign.  He confesses that his campaign team paid $7300.00 to hire a consultant to tell him how much he should scuff up his shoes.  Their rationale was that, if his shoes weren't scuffed up enough, he would appear out of touch with blue-collar workers but that, if his shoes were scuffed up too much, he would not appeal to wealthy lawyers and bankers.  Norris admits that the blue and red striped tie he wore was chosen over fifty-six other ties by a team of specialists, because the color of one's tie coveys a message of its own.  He tells his audience that his previous speeches were crafted based on input from focus groups.¹

Norris and his team put forth all this effort so that the voting population would find him both relatable and worthy of a position of leadership.

---

The church in the port city of Corinth was in a bad way.  Paul, who originally planted this community of faith, has received reports that the people have divided themselves into factions, some pledging loyalty to him, others pledging loyalty to another who shepherded the congregation in his absence.  He has also received reports of promiscuity and litigation.  Paul writes a letter to the Corinthian believers to address some of the problems within the congregation.  He reminds his readers that, as followers of Christ, their allegiance is to God and not to any of God's servants.  He urges them to pursue loving, committed, monogamous relationships as opposed to hedonistic, promiscuous lifestyles.  He encourages them to work out their differences within the church instead of dragging each other before corrupt government officials.  He challenges them to put one another's needs ahead of their own so that they might not cause each other to stumble spiritually.²

Paul goes on to write that, even though he might have certain liberties as one set free by the grace of God and certain privileges as an apostle of Jesus Christ, he has set all of these things aside for the sake of the people he sought to serve.  He did not want anything to get in the way of their hearing and receiving the Gospel.³  He then makes a rather provocative statement: he says, "I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some."

In our day and time, when we use the phrase "all things to all people," we typically mean something very different from what Paul meant in his letter to the Corinthians.  As a person who is constantly weighed down by what he believes to be other people's expectations of him, I once lamented, in one of my more desperate moments, "I can't be all things to all people!"  Paul, in his letter, is not in any way claiming that he has somehow managed meet the wants, needs, and expectations of every person he met.  What Paul is saying is that he sought to become like the people he met.  When he ministered to Jewish people, he was a Jew who maintained a kosher diet and followed the Jewish Law.  When he ministered to non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, he was like a non-Jewish person, one who did not know the Law.  When he ministered to the weak and powerless, he was meek and humble.

So when Paul says that he became "all things to all people," is he saying that he was simply trying to be relatable to others?  At first it might sound as if Paul is trying to convince the people around him that they should listen to him and follow his lead because he is just like them, not unlike the politician trying to figure out how much to scuff up his shoes.  I would like to suggest that maybe Paul's becoming "all things to all people" is not mere advertising or politicking but rather something much more profound.

To truly understand what Paul is doing, perhaps it would be helpful to first take a moment to consider his background and his motivations.

In a past life, Paul was a staunch Pharisee who kept the Jewish Law to the letter, meaning that he kept himself pure from anything worldly or unclean.  He had the privilege of being mentored in the faith by a prominent rabbi named Gamaliel.  Like any good Jewish man, Paul was proud of his heritage.  He was a son of the tribe of Benjamin, the tribe of Israel's very first king, and he was originally named Saul after that same king.  Saul was a defender of the faith who sought to keep his religion pure.  He combated the growing contingent of heretics who proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth, a criminal executed for blasphemy and sedition, was the Messiah and that this Jesus had been resurrected from the dead.  Saul oversaw the execution of the apostate Stephen who had the gall to accuse the religious leaders of murdering their own Messiah.  He even got permission from the chief priests to track down the heretics who fled to the town of Damascus and to extradite them to Jerusalem.⁴

Considering such a background, it is no small matter for Paul to say, with honesty, that he became like a Gentile to reach Gentiles.

While Saul was on his way to Damascus, a blinding light forced him to his knees, and he heard a loud voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?"  He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" and the voice answered, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."  Saul arose unable to see, perhaps beginning to realize he had been blind long before that moment.  He was lead by his traveling companions into Damascus where he waited in the dark, praying, realizing that he had been persecuting the servants of God and that he had pitted himself against the God he believed he had been faithfully serving.⁵

After three days, Saul was visited by a man named Ananias, one of the people he went to Damascus to persecute.  Ananias called him "brother," placed his hands over his eyes, and told him to receive his sight.  The flakes fell from his eyes and he was able to see once again.⁶  One might say that, in some sense, he was able to see clearly for the first time in his life.  Everything changed for Saul: none of the things he once cherished mattered to him any longer.⁷  He had been saved from himself; he had been forgiven for the horrors he had committed; and he had found a new family among the people he once hated.  He discovered a new purpose in life: he wanted the whole world to experience the Salvation he had experienced.  With the same zeal with which he once defended his faith, he traveled throughout the Roman Empire sharing the saving love and grace of Jesus Christ with anyone who would listen.

Paul wanted to invite the people of the world into the experience of God's saving love and grace, but, at the same time, he knew that he could not invite another person into his experience unless he was willing to first step into the other person's experience.  To reach out to the Jews who did not yet know Christ, he drew from his own heritage, observing the rules of his religion, all the while remembering that, by the grace of God, he was no longer under the Law.  To reach out to the Gentiles, whom he did not want to burden with the notion that they had to become Jewish, he put his culture and the Law of his religion aside, never forgetting his duty to the law of Christ.  To reach out to the weak and powerless, he kept his pride in check and he strove to practice humility.

I think that, when Paul became "all things to all people," he was not merely putting on different personas to win people over but that he was actually expressing solidarity with the people he was trying to reach.  He was not trying to be relatable to people; he was trying to relate to people.  He was not trying to meet every want, need, and expectation; he was only trying to meet one need, the comfort of knowing that one is not alone.  I imagine that, in your darker moments, it wouldn't mean very much to you for someone to patronizingly say, "I was just like you once," as if he had just descended from his proverbial mountaintop to do you a favor.  I imagine it would mean much more to you for a person to demonstrate that he or she actually understands you.

Many Christians engage in what I like to call "guerrilla evangelism."  They offer the solution to all of life's problems in the form of a three step process accompanied by a handful of Bible verses, all neatly packaged in a pamphlet or in a well rehearsed spiel that could be delivered while in line at Wal-Mart.  This hit-and-run method is nothing like Paul's style of evangelism.  Paul actually left his comfort zone, got to know people who were different from him, and walked a mile in their shoes.  He wrote long letters to the congregations he planted, in the same way one might write a long letter to a loved one.  We don't really know how to help people unless we can relate to them, and we will never be able to relate to them unless we actually care enough about them to get to know them.  As the old saying goes, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

Of course, Paul wasn't doing anything particularly innovative: he was merely following the example of his Savior.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the same in essence as God, "light from light, true God of true God," but He held His divinity loosely.  He left Heaven, put on human flesh, became mortal, and came to earth to live among humanity.⁸  To borrow a phrase from Eugene Peterson, He "moved into the neighborhood" with us.⁹  Jesus danced at weddings, cried at funerals, and enjoyed dinner with the good and the bad.  He walked in our shoes for thirty-three years, experiencing the full range of human emotions, even the feeling of being forsaken by God.  The Incarnation, the life of Jesus Christ from the manger to the cross, was God's ultimate act of solidarity with the human beings God created.¹⁰  It was this Jesus whom Paul wanted the world to know, and it was the example of this Jesus that Paul sought to follow.

One of the most important things we're called to do as followers of Jesus Christ is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  St. James, the brother of Jesus, calls this command the "royal law."¹¹  St. Paul says that the entirety of the Jewish Law is summarized in this one command.¹²  Jesus himself paired this command with the command to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength as the two great commandments on which all other religious rules are derived.¹³  Perhaps it is this law, to love one's neighbor as oneself, Paul references when he writes that he is "under Christ's law."  Can we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves if we are not willing to put ourselves in their shoes?

Tony Kriz, known by many as "Tony the Beat Poet," confesses in his book Aloof that, when he was in college, there was one group of people he hated with a passion - fraternity boys.  He hated the way they pompously strutted around campus; he hated their wardrobe; he hated their stupid secret handshakes; he hated their hazing rituals; and he hated the way they supposedly mistreated women.  Over time, he found it in his heart to earnestly pray for the frat boys on his campus, but eventually he realized that there was only one thing he could do to overcome his prejudice against them.  After much resistance to the thought, he finally pledged a fraternity, donned khakis and a lettered sweatshirt, and became what he hated.  Over the remainder of his college career he came to view the other boys in his fraternity, not just as a bunch guys in need of prayer, but as brothers whom he loved.  Looking back on his experience in the fraternity, Kriz wonders if maybe Paul stepped into other people's shoes, not only for the sake of others, but for his own sake as well, that he might overcome his prejudices.¹⁴

In the late aughts, human "guinea pig" Morgan Spurlock hosted 30 Days, a television series that gave people the opportunity to walk for thirty days in the shoes of people very different from them.  On one episode, Spurlock spent a month in a penitentiary with convicted criminals.  On another episode, a volunteer border patrol guard spent thirty days with a family of undocumented immigrants and even lived as one himself.  On another, an atheist spent a month with a family of conservative Christians.  The people who participated in this television project, by spending time with people very different from them and living as they live, began to see people they once judged in a new light.¹⁵

We might not have such intense opportunities to walk in the shoes of other people, but we do have another, much simpler, option: we can offer other people a listening, nonjudgmental ear.  So often, when we think we're listening to someone else, our attention is actually split between what the other person is saying and what we're planning to say in response.  What if, when other people shared their stories with us, we actually gave them one hundred percent of our attention, with open minds and open hearts?  What if we put aside all of our preconceived notions about other people and immersed ourselves in their stories, imagining ourselves in their shoes?  We just might develop empathy, the ability to understand another person's emotions and perspectives.

Our tendency is not to put ourselves into other people's shoes but rather to put other people in our own shoes.  We judge their actions and their choices based on what we think we would do in their situations, even though we likely aren't in their situations and haven't been formed by the experiences that made them who they are.  According to the Greek Philosopher Epictetus, "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."  Similarly St. James writes, "Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,"¹⁶ and to this I would add, "slow to judge and slow to form opinions."  We must be quick to listen to people's stories, slow to tell them what we think they should do, and very slow to form opinions about them.

I think it only fair to warn you that stories can be dangerous.  If you want to cling to a worldview in which you are one of the good guys and in which someone different from you is one of the bad guys, then you had better insulate yourself from the experiences of others.  Otherwise, if you truly listen to other people's stories, with an open heart devoid of judgment, then you just might catch a glimpse of the world through other people's eyes.  Then you might have no choice but to change your worldview or at least to hold it a little more loosely.

Only once we have stepped into the experiences of others can we invite others into our own experiences, and we do so by sharing our own stories.  I would argue that witnessing has nothing to do with mechanically regurgitating Bible verses and Church doctrines and everything to do with sharing one's own story of faith and redemption.  The story of Paul's encounter with Christ is told in the Acts of the Apostles three times, twice by Paul himself.¹⁷  We testify to what we have seen with our own eyes in our own lives, and we do so honestly, with our defenses down.  To the poor, we speak from our own poverty, whatever form that takes; to the weak, we speak from our own weakness; and, to the broken, we speak from our own brokenness.

In the end, we're all the same: we're all in need of love and grace.  Those of us who have experienced God's love and grace are called to share that same love and grace with others.  In the words of evangelist D.T. Niles, "Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread."  Perhaps we cannot truly be "all things to all people," but we can reach out to people in ways that demonstrate that we are for them and not against them.  We step into the experiences of others and share our own experiences with them that we may invite them into an experience of God's love and grace.

Amen.


Notes:

1. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385826/
2. 1 Corinthians 1-8
3. 1 Corinthians 9:1-18
4. See Philippians 3:4-6, Acts 22:3-5, and Acts 7:58.
5. See Acts 9:1-9.  Barry Taylor refers to this event as Paul's "revelation of darkness."
6. See Acts 9:10-19 and Acts 22:12-16.
7. Philippians 3:7
8. See Phil 2:5-11, John 1:1-18, and the Nicene Creed.
9. John 1:14 (The Message)
10. Tony Jones.  Questions that Haunt Christianity: Volume 1.  2013, the JoPa Group.  ch. 9
11. James 2:8
12. Galatians 5:14
13. Matthew 22:34-40
14. Tony Kriz.  Aloof: Figuring Out Life with a God Who Hides.  2014, Thomas Nelson.  pp. 97-101
15. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437696/
16. James 1:19 (NRSV)
17. See Acts 9:1-19, Acts 22:3-16, and Acts 26:4-18.

The image of the shoes is public domain.