A View from the Branch
Luke 19:1-10
October 31, 2010
Well it is nice to be here today. I’ve kind of shied away from doing this for the past ten years but someone suggested it and I thought –well why not. I’ve never worked with Bob and as a result we have managed to stay together for the past 39 years.
There is lots to celebrate today on the church and community calendar. First of all it is Halloween: there will be many little ghost and goblins out there tonight. I am predicting an invasion of spooks. The weather is co operating.
Halloween is always the day before All Saints Day – November 1st. According to tradition people dress up in scary costumes to frighten away earth’s evil spirits and make it safe for the saints to return on All Saints Day.
And finally it is Reformation Day. The day we remember Martin Luther attaching his 95 thesis or complaints to the door of Wittenberg Castle, thus setting off the Protestant Reformation. If Protestants had saints Luther would be number one on our saint list.
Catholics formalize sainthood – a saint being someone who has been dead for a few years and has been investigated and found to have lead an exemplary and holy life. Protestant saints are much more ordinary. They don’t necessarily have to be dead but it certainly helps.
Some people, however, think that they are saints or that others are saints even when it is obvious that they aren’t. There is an old story about two brothers who lived in a small city where they were involved in corruption, deceit and every manner of vice. It was even rumored that the brothers were affiliated with the mob organized crime. Whatever the case – both brothers had accumulated much wealth through dishonesty.
So there was little grief in the town when the older brother died. But the younger brother wanting to honour his elder sibling, went all out in planning the funeral. The problem was finding a minister willing to do the service given that neither of them had ever graced the steps of any church.
Knowing that one of the local churches was in the midst of a capital campaign for some much needed repairs the younger brother called upon the minister.
“Reverend,” he said, “I know my brother and I never attended your church, as a matter of fact, we never attended any church. I also know that you’ve probably heard a lot of things about my brother and myself this being a small town and all, but I’d like you to do my brother’s funeral. And if you’ll say he was a saint, I’ll write you a check for $50,000 dollars. That will go a long way to fixing up the church.”
After some thought the pastor agreed to have the service. The pastor, however, also had a condition. The $50,000 had to be paid in advance and so it was.
On the day of the funeral the church was crowded. Curiosity brought dozens of people in who were certainly not there to honour the rich man, but to see what the minister would actually say. The remainder of the crowd was made up of mobsters and worse
that the brothers associated with.
The service began with the usual scriptures, hymns and prayers – and then the sermon began. The minister began slowly but then step by step he launched into a litany of the horrible things the elder brother had done. How he had been selfish, greedy, corrupt, caring about no one but himself, carousing with women, drinking excessively and on and on. The younger brother sitting in the front pew was getting hot under the collar about how the minister
was not fulfilling his promise but during the service
there was not much he could do about it. He could only wait and hope that the minister would keep his end of the bargain.
Finally after about ten minutes of outlining the rich man’s flaws, the minister concluded his sermon in a booming crescendo proclaiming: “Yes, my friends, this man was a no-good, dirty rotten scoundrel, but compared to his brother he was a saint!”
Saints are those who have gone on ahead of us in faith, whose journey on this earth has ended but whose influence and legacies keep on giving to us. Knox Met, I know, has had many saints in its history and a few current ones still running around.
Zacchaeus on the other hand was no saint. He was short, wealthy and hated but he made up for it in the financial muscle that he could flex. He was the chief tax collector in Jericho but he made his money on the surtaxes that he added to the money collected for the Roman government and for this reason he was despised by his neighbours. It would appear from the scripture that it wasn’t merely because he was a collaborator with the Romans that he was universally hated but his physical stature made him an object of derision.
Zacchaeus wasn’t just a crook and short but he was curious as well. The day Jesus came into town he climbed a tree and went out on a limb to get a look at him. Zacchaeus climbed a tree to get perspective on Jesus and it changed Zacchaeus’ life.
Some people will never change, we often tell ourselves. Perhaps that is how the local populace felt about Zacchaeus. They were disdainful of tax collectors who would cooperate with the hated Roman oppressors. They could dismiss Zacchaeus as one who would never change.
“Once a thief, always a thief.”
“Once a traitor, always a traitor.”
But at the heart of the Christian faith stands the profound conviction that lives and perspectives, minds and hearts, relationships and patterns of behavior – all this can change!
Indeed, this is what Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus
is all about. Zacchaeus had been not just a man of small stature but he had also been a man of small vision. Formerly he had seen only himself but climbing out on that branch to see Jesus had give him a different perspective. It opened him to a whole new way of living; to a way of life based not upon greed, hoarding and self-centeredness, but upon giving. Grace had come to Zacchaeus.
“Hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house” said Jesus. And despite the dirty looks, Zacchaeus crawls down from the tree and sees only Jesus. Once lost in his wealth, now Zacchaus is saved and found in his newly acquired generosity the gift of a new perspective on life.
And, so Zacchaeus, though he didn’t gain a centimeter of height, suddenly becomes a man of stature. “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.’”
People can change – we make changes every day of our lives. We grow and adjust to new responsibilities. We experience and adjust to the emotional changes of marriage, children, divorce and death, retirement, becoming incapacitated. Our bodies change – growing first vertically and they horizontally. Technology changes and we adapt. The world changes – and we change with it.
But institutional change that is more difficult. And the church is an institution. An institution whose main commitment is to preserve the past – all 2000 or so years of it. No wonder the church is so intransigent.
As many of you know I work in the area of interim ministry. There are all kinds of challenges out there for churches. Here in Saskatchewan one of the big ones is rural depopulation. In many of small towns the United Church has been the center of community life for a couple of generations.
But times have changed and that change affects the church. Farms get bigger, families move to urban centers, schools are closed for lack of enough students, medical services are withdrawn, stores close and are boarded up as people leave or shop in larger centers. The only things remaining are the United Church and the Post Office.
“The church” says a woman much younger than myself, “it is the only constant that remains in our town. Everything else is disappearing. We need to keep our church.” The church I know is not viable either economically, spiritually or socially – five people at an 11 am Sunday service in a community that no longer exist except in name. It has become the church of the living dead.
But a church doesn’t have to be in a rural area to become the church of the living dead. I’ve preached in one and so have most clergy. A congregation so dried up it’s impossible to get a response out of them. Certainly in at least 25% of all churches there will be: not a laugh nor a twitter - not a clap of celebration with choir or children - Congregants will be afraid to extend their hand in the fellowship and the peace of Christ to their pew mates -who knows what you might catch? - who knows where that hand has been?
I loved it last year – remember the flu scare? All my churches put in those bottles of hand sanitizers. I had a couple of ladies in one church who refused to pass the peace with their fellow congregants. Guess what? They always shook my hand at the end of the service and I shook everyone’s hand.
There is a difference between a living and the dead church or congregation. Perhaps you already know that. I can’t remember where I came across this list but here it is –
Living churches’ expenses are always more than their income; dead churches don’t need much money!
Living churches have parking problems; dead churches have empty spaces!
Living churches may have some noisy children; dead churches are quiet as a cemetery.
Living churches keep changing their ways of doing things; dead churches see no need for change!
Living churches strongly support missions; dead churches keep the money at home!
Living churches are full of regular, cheerful givers;
dead churches are full of grudging tippers
Living churches welcome all classes of people; dead churches stick to their own kind!
Living churches’ members look for someone they can help; dead churches’ members look for something to complain about!
Living churches’ members reach out to share their faith in Christ; dead churches’ members don’t have enough to share!
Churches’ that are alive will always have problems;
dead churches’ are no problem – you can’t do anything for them.
Churches – this church, the United Church, the Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, all my little churches filled with warm loving people have to change or risk becoming dead and irrelevant to the present day.
When Zacchaeus crawled out on that limb to take a peek a Jesus he was taking a risk, inviting ridicule, appearing foolish but when he did it – he found the grace of Jesus Christ and salvation. Zacchaeus became a changed man – a better man not just for himself but also for his community.
When Martin Luther in 1517 walked over to the door of Wittenberg Castle and nailed his concerns about the current state of the church to its door, he started in motion the Reformation which changed the direction of the Christian Church. Martin Luther went out on a limb too; he risked everything he had known to live in the grace of Jesus Christ.
In this decade will we the church be willing to go out on a limb and allow the grace of Jesus Christ to lead us in change and the opportunity to make God’s message come alive to new generations. Will we accept that grace and allow it to change the church – to reform the church? If not we will all be joining up with the church of the living dead – after all it is Halloween.
Concluding words today come from Robert Frost’s poetry as relevant to the institutional church as they are to the individual.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. (Robert Frost)
Preached by Molly Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan