Text: Luke 19:1-10
Theme:
"Reflections on The Lord's Day Service"
24th
Sunday after Pentecost
All
Saints Sunday
November
3, 2013
FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton,
Texas
Rev.
Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
Jesus entered Jericho and was
passing through.
2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he
was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He
wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the
crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a
sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus
reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come
down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So
he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people
saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus
stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my
possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will
pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to
him, “Today
salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For
the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Come
to think of it, every Sunday is All Saints Sunday. In the Apostles' Creed, nearly every Sunday we confess our belief in
the "communion of saints". In
celebrating the Lord's Supper every first Sunday of the month and even more, we
praise God, as the ancient liturgy states, "with angels, archangels, and
all the company of heaven."
You
have a listing in your service folder today.
The people named are those who are no longer with us in the life we lead
here. We miss them. We remember them. With their passing, there is a certain
disconnect with them now. But not in
Lord's Day worship, for we are given to believe in the "communion of
saints". We praise God "with angels, archangels, and all the company
of heaven." Heaven and earth aren't
so far away from each other at all. The
writer to the Hebrews says that we are "surrounded by a great cloud of
witnesses." Ponder that!
Pop
culture isn't pondering that; pop culture, these days, seems to be obsessed
with zombies. Our Lord doesn't have
zombies; the Lord has saints. Some, like you and I, are in what has
traditionally been called the "church militant". It is "militant" because, here on
terra firma, we still have our battles with forces of evil, the world, and our
own sinful flesh. Those we name today
are no longer in the "church militant"; our risen Lord has brought
them safely to the "church triumphant." Their strife , their
militancy, is over; their battles are done.
Their baptisms are complete in death.
Their lives have come full circle.
Is it any wonder that we sing:
O
blest communion, fellowship divine!
We
feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet
all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia!
There
is one activity that the "church militant" has in common with the
"church triumphant", and that is worship. We worship God with our hymns, our songs, our
exclamations of praise, and our prayers.
When you have a moment some day, page through the book of Revelation. It
won't bite. Better yet, search it like Sherlock
Holmes. Pinpoint the parts that have to
do with worship. Look at the words the
saints use and the praises that they bring!
You may be surprised. Soon you
will discover that in Lord's Day worship, we are rehearsing for heaven! Quite obviously, Lords Day worship is far
more than Sunday morning entertainment -- with Bible verses and moral
exhortation thrown in as cosmetic. It
is more than getting our "felt needs" met. It is more than having institutional grade
Presbyterian coffee and chit-chat about weather, sports, or politics. Lord's Day worship is truly a smidge of
heaven on earth. If saints in the "church militant" truly grasped
this, there wouldn't be an empty seat.
There would be no struggles to find communion servers--or worship
leaders, greeters, choir members,etc. No
one would see themselves as "having to" go to church. Instead, they
would look forward to it; they would see themselves as "getting to"
go to church.
In
today's Old Testament passage that Becky read, Habakkuk knows all about the
various battles of the church militant.
He cries out: "Destruction
and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds." Habakkuk could just as well have been
pondering the recent news from Los Angeles International Airport where a TSA
employee was shot and killed."
Habakkuk doesn't grovel; he doesn't crawl into a corner only to twiddle
his thumbs and say "Woe is me and woe is the world". Instead, he declares: "I will stand at my watch and station
myself on the ramparts. I will look to
see what the Lord will say to me."
My friends, Lord's Day worship IS your watch. When we gather here, we,
like Habakkuk, "station" ourselves "on the ramparts." We are here to see what the Lord will say
through the reading and the proclamation of the Word.
In
this morning's New Testament reading, we hear St. Paul marvel at the faith and
love of the Thessalonian Christian congregation. He singles out no one person. He addresses them as a church, as a
communion, as brothers and sisters. He
is grateful that their faith is growing and their love for one another is
increasing. That only happened because
they were fed; they were fed with lots of the Lord's words, with the precious
and life-giving Gospel, and the blessed holy communion. We can "exercise" our faith and
love all we want, but eventually we're going to have to eat; we need fuel. The
Word and Sacrament are our food, our fuel, our nourishment so that faith and
love might grow. "I am the bread of
life," says Jesus.
Speaking
of Jesus, in today's Gospel we catch up with Him heading into a town called
Jericho. Meanwhile, we are told of a man
who really wanted to see what all this fuss about Jesus was all about. We learn that he was one of those nasty tax
collectors. In addition, he was short of
stature. In other words, he was a little
guy. Not wanting to strain his neck
trying to look over the heads of others, he gets an idea. He climbs a tree to obtain the proverbial
"bird's eye" view. He could
hide up there, and he could see it all.
That's
a vantage point that many modern Zacchaeus's are looking for. They want a
viewpoint about the church which is the body of Christ, but that's about all.
They are curious -- they are what have been called "seekers"-- and
want to know what it's all about, but not much more than that. They want to see it all; they want to know
what's going on, but they wish to be hidden from view.
Zacchaeus
was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he;
He
climbed up into a Sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see!
That's
a lovely little song I learned in Vacation Bible School all those years
ago. But actually, it wasn't so much
that Zacchaeus wanted to see the Lord.
Rather, it was that the Lord wanted to see Zacchaeus.
Jesus
says: "Zacchaeus, come down
immediately. I must stay at your house
today." Little Zacchaeus shinnied
back down that tree and welcomed Jesus "gladly", says Luke.
At
that point, some folks in the crowd started trash-talking Jesus. "He has gone to be the guest of a
sinner," they mutter. But,
overwhelmed with gladness that Jesus is His guest, Zacchaeus announces the
changes he is about to make in his life.
Taking it all in, Jesus says some of His happiest words: "Today salvation has come to this house,
for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."
My
friends, this is what Lord's Day worship is:
the Spirit of our crucified and risen Lord -- through the Gospel and the
blessed sacraments -- comes to our house at First Presbyterian. Left to ourselves, we are only the sinners
that the self-righteous crowd mutters about.
They always have; they always will. But the good news of the Gospel is
that we have not been left to ourselves -- no matter what kind of Sycamore tree
we find ourselves in.
When
Jesus comes as guest to our house, he prepare us to live in His -- with angels,
archangels, and all the company of heaven (the saints). Time to climb down the tree!
I have shared these reflections on worship with
you in the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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