Zaccheus

Even You

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If you’re not a hipster, this is for you.

If you’re not a high I, type A, socially outgoing person who is always the life of the party who everyone wants to be around all the time, this is for you.

If you’re socially awkward at times and what’s in your head isn’t always what comes out of your mouth (including a long list of word you desperately wish you could take back), this is for you.

If you are an outsider, an outcast, a freak, a pariah, a loner, a loser, or just feeling unwanted and unknown and undesirable, this is for you.

When Jesus comes to your town looking for followers, He sees you hiding up in that tree like wee little Zaccheus. He sees you inching toward the back of the crowd, certain that Jesus will choose the popular and attractive people to be on His team.

He’s headed your way. You wonder if He’s about to tell you that you don’t belong here. That only the more successful more put-together, more upwardly-mobile people need apply.

But that’s not what He’s approaching you for.

He points to you. He calls you by name. Not one of the names given to you by all those who trample over you on their way to the top. Not one of the names by those who have deeply wounded your soul over the years. Not even on of the names you call yourself late at night when your defenses are down and your mind is unfiltered.

Jesus calls you by a name that you’ve never known before but know you could be. He calls out something better in you than you thought you could be. Jesus call you and tells you to follow.

“Even me?” you ask.

“Especially you,” Jesus replies. “Always you.”

Jesus Sees You

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Tonight at Kairos, Mike Glenn talked about wee little Zaccheus and how he climbed up a wee little sycamore tree to see Jesus. Or maybe for Jesus to see him.

How many of us long to be seen and noticed by others? How many yearn for someone to say, “I see you. I see your struggles and victories, scars and joys. You are not invisible.”

Jesus saw Zaccheus. Not as the tax-collector who cheated people for extra profits, but as a broken man needing to be noticed. As someone who was lost and needed finding.

Jesus sees you. He doesn’t see your job title (or lack of one). He doesn’t see your impressive resume of mistakes and fiascos. He sees you.

He sees a broken person who’s tried every kind of piece to fill in the gap. He sees someone who holds the weight of the world on his mind and on his shoulders. He sees someone who yearns for love but doesn’t quite know how to ask for it.

He sees you.

Best of all, He sees the best possible you, the you that not even you can see. It’s the you that God always meant for you to be, your absolute best self when you look most like Jesus and feel most alive.

Jesus asked Zaccheus to come down out of his tree. He didn’t demand it. He didn’t force Zaccheus down. He asked.

If Zaccheus had refused Jesus’ offer, Jesus probably would have moved on and Zaccheus would have missed out on what he was looking for.

Sometimes, it takes you climbing down out of your tree, your self-imposed barrier to everything that’s hurt you and made you feel like less. Sometimes, you have to walk away from everything that’s comfortable to follow Jesus.

But it’s always worth it. Because Jesus not only knows and sees the real you, He will tell you who you really are. He will show you. And He will transform you.

That’s great news for all the Zaccheuses out there. Including me.

 

To Every Zaccheus Out There

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Zacchaeus in the Scyamore Tree Luke 19:2-5

“ For the Son of Man came to seek and to liberate the lost” (Luke 19:10).

If you grew up going to Sunday School, you’ve heard the song that starts with “Zaccheus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he . . .”

Zaccheus was more than just a vertically challenged man. He was also a crook and (according to the majority of his own people) a traitor. His job was collecting taxes for the Romans and he made a very comfortable living by hiking up the taxes and lining his own pockets with the extra profits.

No one wanted to be friends with Zaccheus. No one wanted him around. Certainly, no one ever invited Zaccheus over for dinner. Until Jesus came along.

Zaccheus had heard about this Jesus and wanted more than anything to meet Him. His desperation won out over his dignity and he found himself climbing a tree and hanging out of it like a schoolboy. I’m sure everyone around him thought his cheese had slid off his cracker or there were a few bats in his belfry. In other words, he’d gone nutty.

But Jesus didn’t think so. Jesus said to him, “Zaccheus, today I’m having dinner at your place!”

The rest is history. Zaccheus walks away from that dinner a changed man.

I wonder if you’ve ever felt like Zaccheus. Like you’ve made a train-wreck of your life and alienated everyone around you. Maybe you think even God won’t have anything to do with you anymore.

The good news is that just as Jesus came looking for Zaccheus, He’s looking for you. And it’s not like He can’t find you. He’s waiting on you to admit that you’re the one who’s lost.

Jesus didn’t say to Zaccheus, “Get your life cleaned up” or “Get your act together” before He showed up at his house. He didn’t throw Zaccheus’ past in his face or  let him have it for all his bad choices. Instead, He loved him as he was.

Jesus calls us to love the people around us like that. Regardless of whether they choose to follow Jesus or not, we’re still called to love them, not because of anything other than that’s the way Jesus loved us first.

PS I wonder if Zaccheus was really a leprechaun. He was short and loved his gold. Whaddya think?