This weeks sermon

 

Luke is my favorite Gospel.

       It is the gospel full of compassion.

       Mark is a New York Times article.

       Matthew has an agenda.

       John’s Jesus is too good to be accurate.

       But Luke reaches out to the lost.

       Like in today’s gospel about Zacchaeus in Jericho.

       Zacchaeus is a tax collector—like the man in last week’s gospel—he was considered a sinner by Jews because he took their money for the Roman Empire.

       I like Zacchaeus, not because of his job, but because, like him, I’m not very tall.

       I reached my full height in 9^th grade and was a very good Junior High basketball player.

       But by the next September, everyone else had grown and I couldn’t make the high school team.

       I know what it’s like to not be able to see over a crowd of people.

       I never climbed a tree to see, but I have stood on boxes and rocks to look over other people’s heads.

       Jesus had never met Zacchaeus, but he called him by name down from his sycamore tree and told him he would stay at his house that day.

       This is what I mean about Luke’s compassionate Jesus. The crowd was horrified that he was going to visit a ‘sinner’, one who had betrayed his own people.

       But Zacchaeus told him the would give half his wealth to the poor and repay four times what he had taken from others. That was a great ‘pay back’ to those beneath him and Jesus was pleased.

       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 save the lost.”

       THE SON OF MAN CAME TO SEEK OUT AND SAVE THE LOST.

       Talk about compassion!

       Let’s spend a few moments in silence thinking and pondering the compassion we have ‘shown’ and the compassion that has been ‘shown’ to us.