Faith In Action: Teachings of Jesus

(audience applauds)
Doug Page: Good morning.
I'm thankful to be here.
I'm thankful for the invitation,
and I thank Ava for the introduction as well.
I want you to know, Ava mentioned we've only worked together
and known each other for a couple months.
It's because my family moved to Lubbock this last summer,
and I want you to know that we moved here,
and a decision to move here
was to work with a church here in town,
but as we made that decision,
one of the things that my wife and I and our family
was talking about, praying about,
was the opportunity that Lubbock provided
to be around people like you.
And so even though we've never met before this moment,
you were a part of the reason that we moved to Lubbock,
to be in a place like this,
to be around people like you who I believe in,
and I just want you to know
that even though we haven't met before,
that there are people that don't know you,
that you've never met, that live in this city,
that care about you, that believe in you,
believe in your generation,
believe in what God is doing in you,
and are praying for you as you live here in Lubbock
and pursue your education.
And so I just want you to know that as we start.
I wanna begin with one of my favorite stories
from a guy named Eugene Peterson.
Eugene Peterson tells a story
about growing up as a child in Montana,
and life was perfect for Eugene.
He had everything he wanted.
He loved going to school.
He loved being with his friends.
He had a great life, great family.
Everything was good, except for one thing.
There was a guy in his life, a bully, named Garrison Johns,
and Garrison Johns didn't like Eugene,
and he especially didn't like Eugene
when he learned that Eugene was a Christian.
Garrison wasn't fond of Christians,
and so every day after school,
Garrison would find Eugene, and he would taunt him.
He would call him names.
He came out, and he gave him the name Jesus Sissy,
and he would say, "Hey, Gene, you Jesus Sissy?"
And he would push him, and he would taunt him.
He would mess with him,
and Eugene was kind of trying to deal with it,
trying to make sense of how do I deal with
and process my life with this bully.
Everything is great, except for this one guy.
You know, I can't seem to get rid of him,
and so he talked to his mom.
His mom was a godly woman,
and she encouraged him to remember Jesus' teaching
on the Sermon on the Mount about loving your enemies,
which sounded good, but was really hard
for an 11-year-old boy to put into practice,
and so he went back to school one day,
and the same thing over and over again, right?
And he's coming home from school,
and there was this day, this late spring day in March
when something inside Eugene snapped,
and he grabbed Garrison Johns by the collar,
and he pinned him down on the ground,
and he put his knees on top of Garrison Johns' arms,
and he just starts wailing on him,
punching him in the face over and over and over again.
There is a crimson river of blood
that is spilling on the ground,
and in a moment of kind of panic,
he's like, "What have I done?
"I've kind of lost control of myself."
And then his Christian teaching kind of comes back to him,
and he says, the first thing that comes to his mind,
he says, "Garrison Johns, confess.
Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior."
(congregation laughing)
And Garrison Johns doesn't say anything,
so Eugene just punches him again,
and more blood spills out on the ground,
and he says it again.
He says, "Garrison, confess.
Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior."
And Garrison finally says, "Okay, okay, okay.
I confess, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior."
And then Eugene writes in his book,
when he tells this story,
he writes these words, and I'm quoting here.
He says, "Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert."
(congregation laughing)
In the story that Ava read today,
Jesus is traveling into the town of Jericho,
and there is a guy that lives in this town named Zacchaeus.
And Zacchaeus was a Jew who had become a tax collector,
which meant he worked for Rome.
And tax collectors were hired
to bring in taxes for the Roman government.
But in order to bring in money for the Roman government,
there was a way that they went about doing their job,
and that involved putting pressure on people.
Tax collectors were not only collecting taxes,
but would often extort people,
would take more money than they needed to,
take more money than people actually owed.
So when you think of a tax collector,
whatever it is that you think of,
you need to think of something like a mafia leader,
someone who's a punk, who's a bully, right?
This guy didn't have any friends.
He had cheated people for years.
So word gets out that Jesus is coming into town,
and Zacchaeus wants to see this Jesus guy
that he's been hearing about.
But there's a crowd, and he's short.
And so he looks over, and he sees this sycamore fig tree,
and he decides to climb up in this tree like a little boy.
And Luke tells us in Luke 19
that Ava read from a minute ago,
that when Jesus reached the spot, he looked up.
It would be easy to think that Jesus was going to Jericho
for a lot of different reasons that day,
but that meeting was not an accident.
Jesus went to Jericho, I believe, to see Zacchaeus.
More than Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus,
Jesus wanted to see him.
And Zacchaeus noticed something
that was different about this man.
He felt safe.
He didn't feel shame or embarrassed.
He didn't feel like that,
even though Jesus certainly knew who he was
and what he had done and the kind of person
that he had been and how he had treated everybody
in his life, that something was different
in his way that he perceived Jesus to be.
So he climbs down from the tree
and welcomes Jesus into his home,
and what a meal it must have been.
This semester on Tuesdays,
you're gonna be looking at this theme of faith in action,
stories from Jesus, and this story, I think,
is a great picture of someone's faith turning into action.
Zacchaeus was consumed with his wealth,
consumed with his authority,
consumed with himself and his life and his comfort.
But once Zacchaeus met Jesus, everything changed.
His heart changed, and then his priorities followed.
He gives away half his possessions,
and then on top of that,
he gives back to people that he's wronged.
It says up to four times the amount
that he's taken from them.
Zacchaeus became a friend of the poor in Jericho,
a friend of the marginalized in Jericho,
a friend of the people who had been cheated
previously in Jericho.
For a long time, when I read this story or heard this story,
I only noticed three characters in the story,
the crowd, Jesus, and Zacchaeus.
But then I noticed a fourth character, the tree.
Zacchaeus met Jesus, and his faith turned into action.
And it's that tree that lifted him above the crowd
that helped him to see Jesus clearly.
What I know and what you know
is that right now in our world,
there is a need for people to be sycamore trees
in our world, helping to lift people above the crowd,
above the noise, above the distractions,
so that they can see Jesus clearly.
Jesus didn't beat Zacchaeus up.
He didn't make him beg for mercy.
Jesus looked him in the eye, and he ate a meal with him.
He saw him for who he was.
He saw his humanity.
He believed that he was more than his actions
and more than his history, more than his life had been.
He believed that there was something else
that awaited him in the future.
One encounter with Jesus, and his life changed.
As you go today, my encouragement to you
is to think about what we might learn
from Zacchaeus' encounter with Jesus,
turning our faith into action,
helping live in a way that models for other people
that we believe a change is possible in our lives.
And think about how you might be
and continue to be a sycamore tree to others,
helping to lift them above the crowd
so that they can see Jesus more clearly.
Have a great day.
You're dismissed.