Habakkuk 1: 2-4; 2:4; Luke 19: 9,10

Moving the goal posts

Routine can be a good thing. Routine can be good when it works for people, when it can make them feel life is reliable, when they feel they can manage their lives, when they feel they have a way to live together.   But sometimes the same way of doing things doesn’t work.  In my life and work I have seen it time and time again.  People stuck in ruts, in ways of doing things that don’t make them happy or make them miserable.  In the Old Testament we have the people of Israel.  Except for a relatively short prosperous period of time, under the United Kingdom of Kings Saul, David and Solomon, the people have been divided and they have been oppressed, by the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Greek and the Romans.  Prophets have stood up time and time again and echoed the pain of the people, but also blasted them for doing the same stupid things over and over again, the things that kept the weak and backward and ashamed.  So in the Old Testament, which is really a series of books about how things should not be done, we see these cycles of oppression, natural disasters and stupidity that have quite a bit to do with each other.

The New Testament is really a series of documents about how things ought to be done.  Much of the Four Gospels is about Jesus challenging the order of things, taking on the leaders who are stuck in a rut, who hang on to rules that makes no sense any longer and exclude people from participating in a ah healthy celebration of faith.   We have talked about sports and about changing the rules of sports, about moving the goal posts as it were.  Jesus is doing that. By calling the little loan shark Zacchaeus from the tree and including him in the life of the faith community he liberates the man from his marginal life and makes the society more whole.  He does not by going deeper into a personal faith, into reflection about who we are as people.  He brings together the outside faith and the internal faith.

(I read the following in Homiletics:) “Zacchaeus has gone up a tree looking for Jesus, but it was Jesus who came seeking Zacchaeus on his way to Jerusalem :The Son of Humanity came to seek out and save the lost,” says Jesus, and showing up in the house of this tiny tax collector demonstrated to everyone in the crowd that those who were up a tree in their lives were the ones Jesus was and is seeking.  Interestingly that last statement of Jesus in this passage has most often been used to suggest that saving “the lost” is all about private and personal conversion, which results in getting someone’s soul in the right place after death. What happens to Zacchaeus, however, is a much more comprehensive kind of salvation-a salvation that comes to the whole “house” and results in transformative healing of the whole person in the present, not just the future.  The salvation that Jesus offers changes Zacchaeus’s life through and through, and, as a result, it benefits those around him. The poor benefit from Zacchaeus’change from greed to generosity, receiving half of the loan shark’s  possession which would have been substantial.”

Friends, when I was on my sabbatical a number of years ago, it occurred to me one morning early that I should change the sermon, because people just can’t listen that long anymore. I needed to move the goal posts of sermon making, break it up into categories so I wouldn’t be focusing on old jokes and inane stories just to keep people awake.  During our exploration meetings this Fall and Spring maybe you all will come up with ways to move the goal posts of how we do things at this church.  That is one reason why we are doing that.

But the same can be true of people’s personal life and their family life.  How many times do people make the same errors in judgment in dealing with people they love or used to love?  How many times do people keep going around in circles?  How many times do they say and do the same thing again and again and again.  What keeps them from moving the goal posts, from changing the game, from getting at in a fresh new way?

Friends, Jesus came looking for people who were up a tree. Indeed we’re all up a tree at one point or another.  Jesus has come to invite us down, to offer us a new kind of life, to live lives that reflect that kind of healing, wholeness and salvation God brings.  While doing that he changes the rules about how the game of life and the life of faith are played. He goes from the oppression and injustice and suffering thinking of the Old Testament to a more whole idea of justice, transformation and forgiveness.

Friends, may we change the way we live as Christians in a way that makes us whole.  May God help us!