WHO IS A GOD-SEEKER
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
July 14, 2002
TEXT: Luke 19:1-10
In the early 1970s, the German pastor and theologian, Helmut Thielicke,
wrote of his debates and struggles between himself and some of the
intellectuals of his day. Usually, conversation began with others asking
something like, "How can you, an obviously intelligent and gifted
scholar, place your faith in someone - God - who cannot be proved to
exist?" Based on his academic credentials, it was assumed by many that
that Dr. Thielicke should want nothing to do with all this talk of about
God.
Rather than rejecting such questions as outright heresy, Dr. Thielicke
writes that such questions often indicated a hidden longing on the part
of the skeptics and paved the way for discussion about the very God they
rejected. Thielicke likened his situation with that of the French
philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, who was confronted with
much the same issue. "Dear Pascal," the skeptics asked, "present us with
a proof of God and then we will give up our [disbelief]." Pascal's
response to his critics was both wise and bold: "You've miscalculated,"
he informed them. "It is just not possible to achieve some sort of
objective clarity about the existence of God in peace and quiet, and then
afterward to draw the practical consequences and change your way of life.
It is precisely the other way around. First change your life; then you
will discover God!" What Pascal said, with which Thielicke agreed, was
that God cannot be had cheaply by a mere spectator without involvement.
On the contrary, one must get into the game. It may not be the best
object to use as an illustration, but state lottery ads have said in the
past, You cant win if you dont play. Similarly, you cant discover
God if you dont attempt to seek Him. Once you do, the miracle you
discover is that He has been seeking you.
"Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through." Historians tell us that
Jericho was a place where the scenery was almost as beautiful as the
garden of Eden. It was noted for its palms; but it was also notorious for
its snakes. Just as in the original Paradise, the heavenly and the
demonic were closely interwoven.
Jericho has a familiar ring to Christians. We know it from Jesus' parable
about the man beaten by robbers. The priest and the Levite, who passed up
one in need, were on their way to Jericho. But the merciful Samaritan had
Jericho as his goal, too. Jericho was a world in miniature - it had cold
clerics and pious men of God, exploiters and exploited. In many respects
we could call it a miniature New York or Chicago, for Jericho also was a
"gateway to the world." It was a crossroads and a transfer point for
commerce.
So there were packs of tax officers, superintendents of taxes, and tax
collectors. We know that these officials made their living by collecting
revenue in excess of their payments to Rome. We need only take the
affection shown to our own IRS to use as a standard to imagine what
friendly thoughts the people of Jericho entertained whenever they met a
tax collector on the street. On top of this, they were also official
agents of the Roman occupation forces. The common phrase, "tax collectors
and sinners," reminds us even today of what untrustworthy rascals they
were.
Yet, in spite of its rather sordid history and reputation, Jericho became
the setting for one of Scripture's most well-known stories. It became a
setting for another of Jesus' miracles. The center and object of the
miracle is the superintendent of taxes and president of the Jericho board
of finance, Zaccheus. Actually he doesn't "stand" at the center of the
scene; he is crouching in the limbs of a sycamore tree. Mr. President was
small in stature and needed to add yards to his height, so he joined the
street urchins in the tree.
It is important to keep the comic side of this action in mind, so that
its real meaning can be grasped. No one - especially not a prominent
financial figure - relishes showing the world that he comes up a little
short where size is concerned. He doesn't voluntarily put himself into
situations that border on the ludicrous. People usually trembled before
this tax bureau chief; seeing him sitting up in a tree must have given
the crowd a fiendish delight. But Zacchaeus chanced it; his feverish
excitement over the man from Nazareth was so great that he forgets his
inhibitions.
This is precisely what the Gospel writer wants to convey. Zaccheus became
a seeker - a God-seeker. He seeks with such a passion that he forgets
himself. Thoughts about the consequences of his act - the possible curse
of ridicule, or the loss of reputation and authority - do not deter him.
Christianity certainly was not a means whereby he could improve his
position in society and wrap in the cloak of respectability. In Zaccheus'
case, Christianity meant a compromising situation. Since he overlooked
all this, we must assume that his inner soul was totally captivated in
his quest to "see who Jesus was."
No one has any idea what a battlefield of conflicting thoughts Zaccheus'
soul has become. No one sees the internal struggles in which he has
involved himself. He is so saddled with the unsolved questions of guilt
in his life that what other men say about him is of no concern to him.
Once we understand what is out of order in our lives, then we stand alone
before God - all alone. For guilt always isolates. Zaccheus knows that he
will not be able to get out of this dark corridor by himself - that
someone from outside must bring a light and come and get him. Therefore,
he looks with a burning gaze on the One who is passing by, asking himself
if he really holds the power that will release him from the captivity he
has made of his life.
Then comes Zaccheus' first surprise. "Zaccheus, come down immediately. I
must stay at your house today." Zaccheus wanted to observe this
phenomenon called Jesus of Nazareth from the perspective of a spectator.
He wanted to let him pass in review, so to speak, so that he could form
an opinion - make a decision about what to do next. But it didn't happen
the way he had expected. His role as a spectator suddenly ended, for
Jesus stopped and called upon him by name. That is the first great
miracle - that Jesus knows him. Zaccheus , the seeker, is on the way to
find Jesus, wondering if this man will have the liberating word he needs.
Yet, the one whom he sought is already on the way to him.
Can we make Zaccheus' revolutionary discovery in our own lives? It is the
same discovery, made in a new way, when we learn that our search
ultimately involves a person rather than "the" truth - that it is not a
doctrine of salvation that brings newness into our lives, but that it is
the Savior himself, a living being. If our seeking is simply a matter of
knowledge about God, and if the Gospel is just a teaching about this
knowledge, then none of it would help any of us at all. When Peter was
sinking in the waves, he didn't call out, "Lord, teach me how to get out
of this!" He cried, "Lord, help me!" And the centurion from Capernaum,
whose servant was writhing in torment, didn't say, "Jesus of Nazareth,
enlighten me medically about what should be done - tell me something
about the meaning of suffering in the world, so that I may be able to at
least cope with it spiritually." No, he said, "Lord, speak only a word
and my servant will be healed."
Each one who seeks looks for something other than a teaching about guilt
and sorrow and the problems of life. We seek the Savior who forgives the
guilt and takes away the sorrow. We search for him who does not merely
solve the problems intellectually, but who resolves the inner conflicts
that those problems create. Helmut Thielicke wrote: "Sometimes during the
last war my students wrote me from the battlefield, and one sentence came
up again and again: 'I am so exhausted from marching, my stomach is so
empty, I am so plagued with lice and scratching, I am so tormented by the
biting cold of Russia and so dead tired, that I am totally occupied,
without the least bit of inner space for any speculative thinking. I
haven't only forgotten Holderlin and the other authors I read in school,
I'm even too weak to leaf through the Bible. I am even lazy about the
Lord's Prayer. My whole spiritual life is disorganized and ruined. I just
vegetate.' How should I answer these young men? I wrote them, 'Be
thankful that the Gospel is more than a philosophy. If it were only a
philosophy, you would just have it as long as you could keep it in mind
and it could afford you intellectual comfort. But even when you can no
longer think about God, he still thinks about you.'" (Helmut Thielicke,
How to Believe Again, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972, p. 34)
This is the miracle of the Gospel. We are not out there seeking some
unknowable force. There is another coming to meet us who knows us.
Zaccheus found that out. He wanted to find out who Jesus really was. Now
he knows. Now his future has begun. The moment can be fixed precisely:
"Today salvation has come to this house." Wherever contact with Jesus
Christ occurs, there salvation is found.
The second miracle occurs because of who Zaccheus is, or was. He was that
beady little turncoat tax collector who squeezed his own people dry in
order to satisfy the hated Romans. The citizens knew this and reacted as
their human hearts dictated: "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.'"
How terrible. How awful that our perfect, prim, and proper Lord go to the
house of such scum. Surely Jesus, of all people, knows that this tax
collector and sinner is to be avoided. How terrible it is that Jesus
would go to Berties Tavern, or any other such place.
This, then, is the miracle: Jesus Christ never puts us in pigeon holes.
He never boxes us in concrete with first impressions. In his eyes - and
through his eyes - every man and woman is a child of his heavenly Father.
He seeks us and suffers for us. Those executioners who held their macabre
games of dice and their drinking bouts at the foot of the cross were not
crossed off his list just because they belonged to the class called
"enemies." Even in death, Jesus maintained an individual interest in each
of those rude, crude roughnecks. His last thoughts included, "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was that kind of
radical love which never identified a person with the class into which he
or she fell. Even in the most questionable rascal, he still saw his
Father's prodigal son, over whom the Father grieved.
And we cannot generate this kind of love by means of only morality. Maybe
my neighbor is an uncaring gossip, my boss a monster, or my fellow worker
a perfect example of stupidity who drives me up the wall every day. If I
tell myself, "Despite everything, I must 'love' these splendid specimens
(as the Bible tells me to)," the result would be nothing more than a
sham. It would be a put-on. My attempt to spread a smile of greeting
across my face would only end in a grimace. We have all encountered these
pseudo-Christian grimaces of artificial friendliness. Maybe we put them
on ourselves. Either way, we recognize pure sham.
So that doesn't work. What are we left with, then? We can reach a point
in Jesus' school where we can see a different side to our irritating
neighbors, bosses, co-workers, and others. Jesus recognizes them as
living souls for whom he suffers and who suffer themselves. It is a
dazzling revelation to discover all at once that there is good reason to
pity someone who has preciously been worthy of only contempt. We have a
passionate desire to help and to free another from that prison which we
ourselves have been in. We can be "for" someone else. Love in Jesus'
sense of the word is no sentimental feeling; it means nothing less than
to be there for the other person, to discover in someone else something
new and revolutionary.
Such a miracle extends even beyond that personal relationship with Jesus
we tend to hold so near and dear. Jesus does not say, "today salvation
has come to you," but "to this house." Since you, Zaccheus, have been
brought into the sunshine out of the dark house of your former life,
there is no way that you can avoid reflecting and reradiating the
light-rays of eternity that have struck you. When Jesus steps into a life
- into our life - he starts a chain reaction that goes on and on. Our
household notices something of it, and so do our surroundings. Everything
is completely different. Our eyes are renewed, and suddenly we have a
completely different picture of our neighbor from what we had before. The
same force that overturned our life and set us on a new course will not
let us rest until we have passed on the message of what brought us joy
and gave us peace. Anyone who stands in the light must, in turn, radiate
that light.
We do not ever leave our encounter with Jesus Christ the same as when we
came. Jesus is the great transformer. With Jesus Christ, we go from one
transformation to another. He gives us the brightness of morning as a new
day begins. He wraps us in his peace when the machines roar, the
telephones ring, the tractor vibrates its noise into our very bodies. And
in our exhaustion, we can let ourselves drop, because his hand is always
beneath us.
Jesus gives us joy in life and companionship in our final distress. And
when we must stand in the final judgment, he will intercede for us
because he had to endure the pain to draw us unto himself and make us his
own. The man from Nazareth stands between us and every shadow, for he has
called us out by name; he has brought us down from our lofty spectator's
seat in the tree and now there is nothing else in the world that can come
between us and the final fulfillment in our lives. "For the Son of Man
came to seek and to save what was lost."
Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN
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