"SEEKING AND SAVING THE SAINTS"

November 4, 2001

Luke 19:1-10

            Last week we heard a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector. The bottom-line of that story, we said, was that we are all both saints and sinners.

            Well, in a way, that theme continues today. Only now we move from the general to the specific: a particular person named Zacchaeus – a person whom others had labeled “sinner” but whom Jesus proclaimed to be “saint.”

            This past Thursday, November 1st, was “All Saints Day.”  Not “Some Saints Day

 or even “Most Saints Day.” Rather it marked a day set aside to honor even the saints who barely made it to sainthood by the skin of their teeth.

            Those of you who grew up Catholic or, perhaps, Episcopalian, know that there are a lot of people who have been officially designated as “saints” and they all get their own feast days and are usually designated as the “patron saint” of some cause or condition.

             Now, frankly, some of these saints are pretty obscure. Like St. Cosmas, the patron saint of bladder problems. Or St. Viviana, the patron saint of hangovers. Or St. Fiacre, the patron saint of hemorrhoids.

            But today we are focusing on St. Zacchaeus – designated as “saint” not by the church but by Jesus himself. St. Zack could be the patron saint of short people, sycamore trees and the IRS.  Zacchaeus was a saint waiting to be discovered; when Jesus first ran into him, he was simply a tax collector who was up a tree and out on a limb.

            In all Jericho, Jesus is the only one who would call Zacchaeus by name. Everything in this text we heard today indicates that Zacchaeus was considered to be a non-person. He was short, in a culture that valued height as a sign of God’s blessings. He would have been considered of no account even to God. Of course, his job didn’t help him much. He was a tax collector. Nobody likes a tax collector, especially in a day when he was collecting money for a foreign occupying government. He made a profit by working for “the enemy” and gouging his fellow Jews.

            Zacchaeus was a traitor and a cheat, so the crowd excluded him, pushing him so far to the sidelines that he couldn’t even get a glimpse of Jesus. He really wanted to see Jesus, though – partly, perhaps, because he was curious, but I think there was also a part of Zacchaeus that wondered if this Jesus could help him find what was missing from his life.

            The name “Zacchaeus” is the Greek form of the word for “pure” or “innocent.” Since we know he was a tax collector and rich – which meant he had probably cut a lot of corners and done a lot of rationalizing about his wrongdoing – his being called “Zacchaeus,” “innocent” or “pure,” is a bit ironic...like when the most grumpy, gloomy person who works in your office is named “Joy.”

            Ole Zack wasn’t just short in height...his life was “short” a few things – missing some things that might have brought more happiness, greater peace, deeper meaning, satisfaction. Perhaps he wondered if this Jesus might help him find what he had lost.

            Whatever his motivation, the desire to get a closer look at Jesus was enough to send this well-to-do government official scrambling up a tree. Or, given the animosity of those around him, perhaps Zacchaeus went up into the tree where he would be, sort of, “out of sight, out of mind” from the crowd. But when Jesus got to that spot, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry up and come on down. I’m going to stay at your house today.”

            The crowd grumbled about this. Here was this sinner...and, by going to his house, eating with him, calling him “a son of Abraham,” Jesus proclaims him a saint!  But Jesus explained all this by saying that he had come “to seek and save what was lost.”

            A lot of folks here this morning grew up in churches that spent a lot of time talking about “the lost.” When preachers used that term, they usually referred to those who were sinners, those outside the faith, those who hadn’t been “saved.”

            It’s funny, though – you never find Jesus talking about people in those terms. In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus told three stories about things that were lost. There was a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.  But notice something:


I. Though the sheep was lost, it still belonged to the shepherd.

II. Though the coin became misplaced, it never ceased to be a treasured possession of the woman who sought it.

III. The son never ceased to be his father’s child.

There is none of that insider/outsider or us/them language we find so much of in many corners of Christianity. That type of thinking can easily translate into: “We’ve got God and you don’t.” That kind of thinking has allowed the church to sit in judgement and discount others as “lost.”

            The King James translation of the Bible says that Jesus came “to seek and to save those who were lost.” But a better, more accurate understanding of these words comes through the exact translation of the original Greek: that Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost.”  This may seem like a minor issue, but it makes a huge difference in how we see God and in how we see what God longs to do inside of us.

            Zacchaeus was never lost from God. God didn’t misplace him or forget which tree he was hiding in. We can’t hide from God. There is no tree high enough, there is no cave deep enough, there is no desert wide enough to keep us hidden away from God.  Know this for sure: if you think you’re somehow in a place where God can’t get to you, you’re wrong. Whatever hiding place you’ve chosen, it’s not nearly as clever or inaccessible as you think. There is no hiding from God in a bottle of white pills...or in a bottle of amber-colored alcohol. There’s no hiding from God in a time-consuming job...or in a torrid love affair...or in an impressive bank account.  God always finds us...just like Jesus found Zacchaeus. Only Jesus didn’t come just to find Zacchaeus; he came to save what it was that had been lost from Zack’s life!

            And it’s the same for us. God never misplaced you. You have never been lost to God. Regardless of how far you may have strayed, you have never wandered out of the range of God’s grace.  But through the course of our lives, all of us have lost things we need God’s help to save. Perhaps it’s our faith. Or maybe it’s peace of mind. Maybe we’ve misplaced our hope...our optimism...our joy. Or could it be that we’ve lost our purpose or direction? Even so...sainthood is not out of our grasp. A Saint is simply someone who, with God’s help, has found something which others seem to have lost.

            Early Christians referred to one another as saints. In fact, the New Testament uses the word over 60 times in this sense, and in every instance, it’s applied to the church as a whole. Only with the passage of time has the word saint come to be used exclusively for those Christians who were either martyred for their faith or those who were “spiritual over-achievers.” That’s a shame...because to use the term saint only for people who have extraordinary spiritual lives may make us forget our call to be counted among the saints today.

            In the last couple of months in our country, there has been a new emphasis given and a new kind of meaning attached to the word, “Hero.”  People are now called “heroes” who, on Sept. 11th, were simply doing their jobs or responding to a desperate situation with the same generous spirit and good intentions that most of us possess. Sometimes a “hero” is simply someone who did the right thing in a place they never intended to be.

            It’s the same with saints. Sometimes, a saint is someone who finds themselves thrown into a situation they didn’t choose, but they did the right thing. They found strength and grace and compassion they perhaps didn’t know they had. They didn’t do it because they were braver or stronger or smarter but because they belong to God and have somehow found a part of themselves that the rest of the world seems to have lost.

            The late Anthony de Mello, a Christian mystic from India, told the story of a family of five who were enjoying a day at the beach in their new multimillion dollar beach house. The children swam and made castles in the sand. Then, in the distance, a little old lady appeared. Her grey hair was blowing in the wind and her clothes were dirty and ragged. She was muttering something to herself as she picked up things from the beach and put them into a bag.

            The father called the children over telling them to stay away from the strange looking old lady. As she passed by bending down every now and then and picking up things, she smiled at the family. Her greeting was not returned.

            Weeks later, at a party, the man complained about the weirdos wandering the beaches. It was then that someone told him about the little old lady who had made it her lifelong crusade to pick up bits of glass from the beach so children wouldn’t cut their feet. She then used the glass to make art which she sold, giving the money to the poor. Picking up other people’s garbage, caring for children she didn’t know, and making art out of what the world calls trash, she had found what that man with all his money had lost.

            That’s what saints do. Saints pick up the glass that others toss down; they believe in people no one else believes in; they help others that no one else cares for; they share in the Spirit of the One who came to seek and save the life we’ve lost.

            We are all a little like Zacchaeus. We’re all a little short of something in our lives. And, perhaps, like him, people have tried to make us feel small. Or maybe, like him, there have been times when we’ve made a mess of things and lost our dreams, our hope, our innocence...our purity.

            We are saints who have lost something of our saintliness along the way. We are beloved children of God who simply need our lost sainthood to be restored. Jesus said, I have “come to seek and save what was lost.”  We need only respond the way Zacchaeus did: “welcoming Jesus with delight”. To Jesus we are not “lost sinners” but saints simply needing to be restored and brought into the wholeness that God intended for us all along.

            Wow! No wonder it’s called the “Good News” of Jesus Christ!       Amen!

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