Grateful for God’s Grace | Reformation Day Sermon 2022 on Zacchaeus

This Reformation Sunday, we continue our five-week series “Grateful For…” on gratitude, exploring the gifts God has blessed us with, and practicing giving thanks. This Sunday, the theme is “Grateful for God’s Grace” giving thanks for the promise that we are saved by God’s grace. In Jesus Christ, God has done what we could never do, offering us salvation and reconciling us to God. 

This week’s Scripture readings are Romans 3:19-28, Psalm 46, and the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. I found helpful and quoted from Will Willimon’s Lectionary Sermon Resource, Year C, Part 2. Previous sermons on this story for Reformation Day are here and here (and there is some overlap). 

Here’s the livestream and audio from the service at Christ the King, which includes choir and handbell music.

Today’s gospel story is one of my favorites, partially because it’s a great story of God’s grace for Reformation Day, but also because this story is where Christin and I got our dog’s name from.

Most of you haven’t met our dog, but he’s from a shelter and we think he’s a mix between a Labrador and a Bassett hound. He’s a “bassador.” Picture a full-size lab head on a long, short Basset body. When we were trying to think of a name, something Biblical for the pastor’s dog, we went with Zacchaeus, the vertically-challenged tax collector. He’s not very good at climbing trees though. Anyway, Biblical literacy through pet names!

This story starts with Jesus and his entourage entering Jericho. At this point in the story, Jesus is almost to Jerusalem, where he’ll be arrested and killed on the cross. As he approaches Jerusalem, huge crowds are following him. He’s at the peak of his popularity.

As he enters Jericho, a tax collector named Zacchaeus comes out to see him. You might remember from last week that no one in this time and place likes tax collectors. They’re seen as traitors to their people, collaborators with the Roman occupiers. Apparently Zacchaeus is particularly good at working with the Romans, because they’ve promoted him to be a chief tax collector.

Also, tax collectors are wealthy, and everyone knows it’s because they skim off some of the money they collect before passing it on—another reason for his neighbors to despise him.

When Jesus comes into town, Zacchaeus is curious about him; he’s intrigued. But again, he’s not very tall, and certainly no one’s going to save a place for him at the front of the crowd, so he climbs up a tree to get a look at Jesus. As he’s sitting up there in the tree, Jesus sees him, and he invites himself over for dinner. Not just for dinner, but to stay for the night. Maybe not the best example of good manners to follow, but it works for Jesus.

And here’s the picture of grace: Jesus doesn’t wait for Zacchaeus to invite him in. Instead, he invites himself into Zacchaeus’s life. That’s such a great picture of how God works.

Jesus isn’t out there somewhere hoping we’ll fight our way to him, hoping we’ll try hard enough to make it to him; no, he’s picking us out of a crowd and inviting us to follow, calling us to change our lives and join him. God comes to us.

And not just to the “good church-going folks.” Jesus comes to the people everyone else has written off, which makes him enemies. Will Willimon says, “Jesus got into all manner of trouble because he saved people that nobody thought could be saved. In fact, Jesus saved people that not many wanted to see saved! Some of them were poor and downtrodden; some of them were rich and questionable (like Zacchaeus). Jesus saves those sinners that nobody thought could be saved.”

Our readings skipped over it, but in chapter 18, right before this story of Zacchaeus in chapter 19, Luke tells us about a rich man who comes to Jesus to ask what he should do to inherit eternal life, to find salvation. Jesus’ answer was that he should give away all his possessions to the poor. The man went away disappointed. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of his stuff. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

After that, the disciples understandably ask, “Who then can be saved?” What does it take to get salvation? Do you remember Jesus’ answer from that story? He says, “What is impossible for people is possible for God.”

Zacchaeus is another rich guy, so we might assume he’s in a similar tough spot, addicted to his wealth, separated from God. He’s not at the top of anyone’s list for salvation. And yet, this encounter goes very differently, because Jesus does the impossible. He comes to Zacchaeus. He brings salvation to even his house.

Jesus does all the work. Jesus doesn’t wait for Zacchaeus to get his act together, to stop his sinful, cheating ways, to stop collaborating with the Romans; Jesus says, “I’m coming into your life. Let’s go.” And Zacchaeus is happy to welcome him. He obeys the call.

The central insight of the Protestant Reformation that we’re marking today is Martin Luther’s rediscovery of God’s grace. Luther recognized that no matter how hard we try, we can never live up to the standards of the law. We can never be good enough.

Paul tells the church in Rome, “’No human being will be justified in God’s sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” The more we know of God’s law, the more we recognize how we don’t measure up to it. Luther realized that we are fully dependent on God, that we can do nothing towards our own salvation. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But—and here’s the insight Luther latched on to—“They are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”

When we face loss in this world, when we look at all the evil going on around the world, even as we mourn the death of one of our own, this is our comfort. God justifies us by grace; God gives us eternal life as a free gift. As our Psalm declares, God is our refuge and strength. God is the mighty fortress in which we find peace and hope. No matter what happens, we don’t need to fear, because God is faithful, even when everything else falls apart, even when we fall short—especially when we fall short.

In the Zacchaeus story, Jesus makes the first move. All Zacchaeus does is respond. Jesus doesn’t ask permission; he just declares he’s coming into Zacchaeus’s life. Your faith is a gift from God.

It’s the Holy Spirit’s work in you. Everything you do in faith is a response to God’s action. Everything we do as Christians is in response to God’s grace given to us. Everything we do is out of gratitude for God’s grace given to us. The story of Zacchaeus concludes with Jesus saying, “The Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost.” This is the good news: God has come to us. Jesus enters our world to seek us out, to bring us home to our Creator, to our heavenly Father.

Sometimes Christians talk about how we need to find Jesus, as if he’s hiding somewhere. There’s a great comic of Jesus hiding behind the curtains. But we don’t need to find Jesus; Jesus finds us, which is good, because we aren’t capable of finding Jesus on our own. Our works cannot accomplish salvation, and thank God for that! We are saved by grace alone.

Martin Luther put it this way in the Small Catechism: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.”

We cannot save ourselves. We don’t even have the power to choose to believe. “But instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith.” Faith comes only through the Holy Spirit’s working. God showers us with grace. And when we are saved, when God gets ahold of us, then our lives change.

Willimon points out that when Jesus enters his life, Zacchaeus responds not by saying, “Wonderful! Now I can go to heaven and live forever,” but rather, “I’m giving half of everything I’ve got to the poor.” He responds to the blessings of grace God has given him, by doing what he does have the power to do: Using his gifts for good. We have a church word for those things we do to respond to God’s grace and blessings. Ready? We call it “stewardship.”

Sometimes we get mixed up and we reduce stewardship to putting money in an offering plate, or entering bank account information on a website. And stewardship does include money, but it’s much more than that. My favorite definition is “Stewardship is everything I do after I say, ‘I believe.’” Stewardship is about how you use your time, your energy, your resources in response to God’s grace for you.

We don’t do good works in order to gain salvation. That’s exactly what Luther argued against. Instead, because we are grateful for God’s grace, we spend our lives loving and serving others, following the example of Jesus, living a life of gratitude. Knowing our hope is found in Christ alone changes our lives, our priorities, how we steward everything our generous God has trusted to us.

Zacchaeus’ life was changed because Jesus entered his life, offering grace. May the same be true for you and me as we encounter God’s grace received in faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen

Read other sermons in this series: Grateful for All the Wrong Things and Grateful for All the Saints.