Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 4, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I don’t know if I’m sort of odd this way, but I frankly don’t have very many clear, specific memories from before I was about eleven years old. I do however have one very faint memory that involves our reading from Luke this morning, the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus. I think, although I couldn’t swear to it, that one summer when I was around eight or nine—in grade school at any event, my brother and I attended the vacation bible school at First Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, in Eugene, to which our next door neighbors belonged. Their daughter was one year older than Pete and me and was a friend of ours, so I suppose we went because she invited us. I have this vague recollection that the program of the VBS included our acting out the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus. Recall that a key element in the story is that Zacchaeus is short, so to see Jesus over the crowd he had to climb a tree. I was short—probably the shortest kid in the VBS. So I got to play Zacchaeus, and I got to climb a tree on the grounds of the church. I guess people weren’t as afraid of lawsuits in those days as they are now. That’s all I remember. I sure don’t remember learning anything about what the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus might mean. I suspect that the VBS teachers were more interested in our learning the story than they were in teaching us what is means. Still, that memory, faint as it is, comes back to me every time I read this story and causes me to think of the story rather fondly.

Yet it is a rather odd story when you stop to think about it. It raises lots of questions. Why is Zacchaeus called a sinner just because of his job? That’s easy. As the chief tax collector he was a collaborator with the hated Roman occupiers, a traitor, probably corrupt and coercive, and of course a sinner. So if he was such a sinner, why would he be so eager to see Jesus? I have no idea. I think his eagerness just sets up the story. How did Jesus know who Zacchaeus was? Well, just because he’s Jesus, I guess. Why did Jesus say he had to stay specifically at Zacchaeus’ house that night? I think just so that Luke could deliver the moral of the story. There are even more questions that come out of this story, but there is one in particular that I want to focus on this morning.

When Zacchaeus repents of his collaborating, cheating, tax collecting ways, Jesus says to him: “Today salvation has come to this house….” Luke 19:9 NRSV As I read that line this last week this problem occurred to me: Jesus says salvation has “come to Zacchaeus’ house.” But when you look at the story you have to ask: Just what exactly is it that actually “came to Zacchaeus’ house”? And: What does it mean that “salvation” has come to his house? You might be tempted to think that salvation has come to Zacchaeus because of his repentance, because of his change of heart and his promise to forswear his sinful ways. Yet that isn’t what the story says. That’s something that Zacchaeus said and something he said he would do, but it isn’t something that actually “came to his house.” No, the only thing that has actually come to his house is—Jesus himself. What the story actually says is that Jesus coming to Zacchaeus’ house constitutes salvation coming to that house. I at least understand the story to be saying: Jesus is salvation. Salvation comes when Jesus comes. In other words, salvation is the presence of Jesus. So let me see if I can make some sense out of that for us.

How could the mere presence of Jesus be salvation? Well, to answer that question we need to know what we mean by salvation, or so it seems to me. Most people probably understand salvation to mean getting to go to heaven and avoiding hell when you die, but it will come as no surprise to those of you who have been around here for a while that that is not what I understand it to mean. Salvation can be many things. It can really be whatever a person needs in her life—forgiveness, meaning, strength, courage, comfort, hope, and a lot of other things besides. Yet all of the possible meanings of salvation, including I suppose the old chestnut of getting to go to heaven when you die, have one thing in common. They all involve, indeed they are all the result of, our being brought into closer connection with God. Salvation is, for me at least, being connected with God. Whatever we need in our lives, at least, any spiritual gift we need in our lives, can be ours when we find that connection, when we live into it, make it real in our lives, and open our hearts and minds to gifts of grace that the presence of God, and only the presence of God, offers.

And for us Christians that’s what Jesus is, the presence of God. In him and through him we see what God is like and experience God’s presence in our lives. When we take Jesus into our hearts, or to use the metaphor of Luke’s story when Jesus comes to stay in our homes, we enter into the very presence of God in the person of Jesus. And that’s salvation. It is the salvation that came to Zacchaeus in the story, and it is the salvation that can come to us too if we will just let it.

Today we celebrate Communion. All kinds of theological hairs have been split for a very long time over the precise meaning of Communion and the nature of Christ’s presence in it. But one thing most Christian theologians don’t much disagree about is that Communion is about the presence of Christ and that Christ is in fact present with God’s people when they gather together to break the bread and drink the wine of the holy sacrament. As we do that today, Jesus comes to this house as he came to Zacchaeus’ house in Luke’s story so long ago. He comes in a different way, of course. We won’t see a whole human person appear at the table. Nonetheless, through our prayers, through our ritual, through our opening our hearts to his presence among us, Jesus will come to this house.

And with him will come salvation. With him will come whatever you need in your life this morning, whatever I need in my life this morning. Bring whatever is troubling your spirit this morning to the table and offer it up to Jesus. He will heal your spirit. Bring whatever is heavy on your soul this morning to the table and offer it up to Jesus. He will relieve your burden. Bring your sorrows. He will ease them. Bring your joys. He will share them. As we always say this is not our table, it is the Lord’s table. He will meet us there. He will meet us in the bread and in the cup. And in him we will meet salvation. That’s how salvation comes for us Christians. In Jesus. Amen.