How Does It Look On You?

Lectionary Reading: Luke 19:1-10

The movie Chocolat features a story about a free-spirit single mom who opens a chocolate shop during Lent in a provincial French village. Because Lent is seen by the Catholic church as a time of self denial, the opening of a shop selling rich, delicious and healing chocolate seems pagan and terrible to the people who openly demonstrate against the shop (although they manage to privately purchase and eat the chocolate). Through this whole struggle, a young priest is working on his first self-written sermon. After the intolerance of the church folks reaches critical mass and a terrible fire results, the townspeople are divided between self-righteous justification for their meanness and guilt over the tragedy when the young priest finally delivers his sermon. Here is what he says:

“…we can't go 'round measuring our Christianity by what we don't do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude... we've got to measure our faith by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”

What a perfect message of Christ – for those people and for us.

Measuring Christianity is an interesting notion. Some people have a Christianity measured by their love of Christ and their continuing efforts to walk in his Way. For others the measure isn’t something that beautiful or eternal. Others measure it by how good they are (or look), how much they donate to or attend church, how other people think of them, or how successful they have become. If you measure cloth with the wrong tool, your clothes won’t fit and they look bad on you. If you measure your faith by the world’s view, it looks bad on you too. In fact, to the rest of the world it looks bone ugly.

In his new book “Unchristian”, researcher David Kinnamon looks at attitudes of 16 to 29 year-olds (churched and unchurched) and finds the age group to be “skeptical and frustrated with Christianity”. Only 16% of that age group said they had a “favorable view of Christianity”. The age group’s most common comment was, “Christianity no longer looks like Jesus. Its “unchristian”. When asked to describe Christians with 5 adjectives the top five were:

Judgmental
Ignorant
Hypocritical
Homophobic
Political

Wow. That’s certainly a tragic vision of the Christian Way, and sad news for that generation. But in today’s very familiar lectionary story we find some great news. It’s a story that helps us use the right tools – and measure our Christianity in a way that befits Christ, and show’s God’s beauty to the world.

A Christianity Measured by Vision

People who have grown up in church have heard that song over and over. “Zacchaeus was a wee little man; a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for Jesus he wanted to see…”

Have you ever wondered why the Bible pauses to tell us that detail? Who cares if he is short? Why do we have to know he climbed sycamore tree? The purpose of this tidbit is to give us a sense of where Zacchaeus is in his faith walk. He’s a tax collector (a person the Jew’s consider a traitor because he works for Rome, and probably cheats people in the process), so we assume he is not at the beginning of Christ’s way. BUT, look again. He WANTS to see Jesus – so much so that he climbs a huge tree (sycamore-fig trees can grow to be 20 meters tall) just to see him. Salvation comes to Zacchaeus’ house because he is looking for Jesus.

Christians should still look for Jesus. Are you looking for him? Not just in prayer and at church or when you are sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for test results, but are you looking for him when it’s not easy? When you are too short (short on patience, short on time, short on grace) to see him, are you willing to go out of your way to look for him? When you have that person in your office or kid in your classroom that you’d just like to strangle – can you see Jesus sitting by him or her – holding hands, talking, healing? When someone disappoints or hurts you badly, are you willing to see him walking down the street, knowing forgiveness of that person is what he wants from you? Don’t measure your walk by how many times you think you show Jesus, measure it by how many times you climb to see him.

A Christianity Measured by Transformation

The people all scoff and snicker when Jesus goes to Zacchaeus’ house (and let’s be honest – we would too – we are all a little short on mercy sometimes). But the act of being with Jesus changes Zacchaeus in a way nothing else could. Suddenly the man whose only claim to fame was his ill-gotten wealth gives half of it away, and offers refunds that will take the other half. One visit from Jesus and the little guy goes from being Bill Gates to being Bob Poor-house overnight (plus, he has to get a new job). And it doesn't seem to bother him! Zacchaeus’ encounter with the Holy Christ transforms him into a man who values God's opinion and lives Christ's way.

Transformation isn’t just what happens when we meet Jesus. Its not the case that we encounter Christ, get changed and just live the rest of our lives as the aging new creation we’ve grown comfortable being. Transformation is an on-going life journey in a relationship with Jesus. It involves communion every day with God (churchy folks call that prayer or meditation), reviewing our ideas and actions, learning new things and correcting old habits. To the Christian, transformation is transportation – a way of getting closer to the person God made you to be.

A Christianity Measured by Intention

Notice everything Zacchaeus says is a “gonna”. He’s gonna pay the folks he cheated 4 times what he owes – he’s not getting out his wallet at the table – but he intends to make it right. I hope he did. Sadly, this like many encounters ends without telling us what happened next. Did Zacchaeus really give away his money? Did he pay back 4 times what he owed?

What do you think Zacchaeus did when he found out Jesus was crucified? He lived in Jericho – not Jerusalem – but he would have heard the news about that radical rabbi who got hung on a cross. So what does he do when he gets the news? Does he feel like a fool and say, “Dang, I gave away my wealth to follow that guy – now I’m broke and he’s dead! Call my Centurion boss; I want my old job back!”? Does he mourn the too young death of the rabbi who changed him from a money-grubbing sinner to a man who followed God’s justice and hope? I hope for Zacchaeus that he kept on the Way he intended and heard to good news that Jesus rose again.

Our Christianity means we need to keep our intentions before us. We need to keep following the path of peace, justice, love and transformation God set us on through Christ no matter what the future holds. If we give up on faith; if we give up on each other; if we give up on ourselves or give up on God because we meet some resistance - we have left our intentions in the dust and need to climb that tree and start over again. Christianity is measured by the walk we make in the rain, as well as the sunshine of God’s love.

So, look in the mirror of God’s eyes and show your walk of faith to God. Ask God as honestly as you ask your best friend when you’re shopping, “How does this look?” If God’s answer isn’t one you want to hear, then accept God’s forgiveness and start your walk anew. Sooner than later you’ll look around and see brothers and sisters – churched and unchurched – willing to share the journey of Christ with you step by step and day by day. Be open to them. Then, the Bible says, in the end God will say, “Well done my good and faithful servant” or translated into our modern words, “looking good!”