PROPER 26-C, October 31, 2004

If you’ve ever been to Vacation Bible School or Church Camp or Sunday School, you’ll remember the children’s song about Zacchaeus by Elsie Leslie. I’ll spare you the pain by not singing it. It goes like this. "Zacchaeus was a wee little man; and a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see. And as the Savior passed him by, he looked up in the tree. And he said, ‘Zacchaeus, come down. ‘Cause I’m going to your house today. ‘Cause I’m going to your house today.’" And Zacchaeus did and the Lord did.

Zacchaeus was a wee little man. He was very small in stature. It seemed that everyone was taller than Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus and heard that Jesus was coming to town and he wanted to at least catch a glimpse of Jesus. But he knew that would be difficult. He was too small and the crowd would be very large. When the parade came through, he would not be able to see. So Zacchaeus did what lots of kids do when parades pass through town: he climbed a tree to get a better look at Jesus.

That had to embarrass Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus may have been small in stature, but he was a Big Man on Campus in his community. He was the tax collector and so he was wealthy. He may not have been loved, but he was rich. He may have been small, but he was very big when it came to being able to throw his weight around. Yet even though Zacchaeus may have been able to buy and sell everyone in town, he could not buy a good seat when Jesus came to town. He may have been able to buy almost anything he wanted, but he could not buy what he may have wanted most, a few inches to his frame.

I understand. People think I am fat. They are wrong. I am just too short for my weight. If I were just four or five inches taller, I would be perfect. Zacchaeus, I suspect, wished all his life that he had a few more inches on his frame. If he had been alive today, all his money might have made that possible. Our oldest daughter works in a hospital in Baltimore whose specialty is doing surgical procedures that lengthen the bones of people whose genetic makeup has caused them to be born very short.

And so there is Zacchaeus. He is up a tree in more ways than one. He is up in that tree to see Jesus, but he is really up a tree as far as his own life is concerned, and he doesn’t even know it. By the time Jesus is finished with Zacchaeus, he has come down from all those trees he had been up all his life. Zacchaeus thought he could see Jesus better by climbing up that tree. What he discovered was that he had to climb down out of that tree to really see who Jesus was.

Zacchaeus thought he needed bone surgery to make himself taller. His height was not his problem. He was a wee little man who had a wee little heart. He thought only of himself. He never thought about the poor. To his credit, unlike most tax collectors, he never defrauded anyone. But he became extremely rich at the expense of others and never seemed to bat an eye at the injustice of it all. Here he was, very blessed while so many others could hardly scrape together a decent meal.

There is nothing wrong with being a wee little person. Having a wee little heart is deadly. Zacchaeus’s wee little heart did not permit him to see beyond himself: his wants, his needs, his desires. Zacchaeus was an expert in looking out for Number One, so much so that Number Two was never on his radar screen. He could not see that screen, not because he was small in stature but because he was small in heart.

What Zacchaeus really needed was not bone surgery to make him taller but heart surgery to make himself more open. Jesus performed that surgery right on the spot, in Zacchaeus’s home, open-heart surgery without any anesthesia because Jesus wanted Zacchaeus to be completely aware of what was happening. Jesus helped change Zacchaeus’s heart. After that surgery Zacchaeus may have remained a wee little man in stature, but he was no longer a wee little man where it counted the most: in his heart.

But Zacchaeus first had to climb that tree to be able to see what he could not see before, to see what a too small heart had prevented him from seeing. What he saw probably surprised him. He finally was able to see that there was more to life than accumulating vast sums of money and possessions. There was more to life than simply looking out for Number One. It was always tempting to do and Zacchaeus gave into those temptations regularly. But it was not until Jesus did heart surgery on Zacchaeus that he was able to see that he already had more than enough, so much so that he was now willing to give away over half his possessions.

So what about you and me? I don’t know about you, but there us a little bit of Zacchaeus in me, perhaps too much of Zacchaeus, certainly more than I would like to admit. My heart is not as open as I would like it to be, certainly as it needs to be. It may be easy to climb that sycamore tree and take a good look at Jesus and see and hear what Jesus is saying to us. In fact, I do it all the time. We all do even if we do not do it as often as we should.

As Christians, even as a church, we are quite good at and quite capable of climbing trees and staying above the fray. We can survey what is going on and tell others what they need to do. But we are often reluctant to do our part because it may cost us something. It may demand a change of heart. It is not enough to simply climb the tree and observe what is going on and what needs to be done even to know what Jesus would have be done. We eventually have to climb down and do our part. Of course all this assumes we are willing to climb the tree in the first place.

All of which brings me to this day, and the next two weeks in the life Christ Church. Today we begin our Every Member Canvas. It is a time for each of us to climb that sycamore tree to take a good look at who Jesus is and what Jesus is calling us to do with our lives and the material possessions with which God has blessed us. That is not always easy to do and it certainly not something we like to do. But it is something we must do if we are truly going to be serious about our faith and the demands of that faith.

Some of us might discover that what we have is a heart too small, a heart wrapped up in ourselves, our wants and our needs. Some of us may discover we need a little heart-opening surgery so that we can both see how blessed we are and how much we need to share those blessings with others. Some of us perhaps may even need a heart transplant. Perhaps. Each of us, I suspect, does need a good heart exam.

Unfortunately, we do not have Jesus to be our personal attending physician. But we do know of his promised presence in our lives. The materials for that heart exam are being provided this morning. A personal packet has been prepared for every one. Please pick up yours on the way out of church this morning. In that packet there will be a letter from me, a pledge card for the offering of your financial gift for the work and ministry of Christ Church for 2005 and a Time and Talent Card for each person in the household in grade school or above.

Take the packet home with you. Climb a sycamore tree somewhere, real or proverbial. Take the time to do a thorough heart exam. Where are your priorities? How truly blessed are you? How small or how big is your heart? How much of your time and your talent and your treasure are you willing to share with others? Our theme for this year has been "Matthew 25…and all that jazz." It is a reminder just how blessed we are and how we are called to always be ready to use those blessings of time, talent an treasure to be faithful Christians.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, there is the issue of trust. Just as we must trust our medical doctor before physical heart surgery, so we must trust our spiritual doctor, Jesus, before spiritual heart surgery. The letter in the packet asks you to offer to give of your time and talent, especially to those Jesus insists in the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel are the most important: the poor, the sick, the lonely. The letter also asks that you trust God from whom all our blessings flow by pledging to give a proportion of those financial blessings to the life and ministry of Christ Church.

Zacchaeus came down from that tree and opened his heart to Jesus. He trusted Jesus. Jesus in turn opened Zacchaeus’s heart. We heard the results. May we trust God and so open our hearts to Jesus this week. If we do, the results will speak for themselves.