Dragons (or being distinctive)

It's Chinese New Year (well it was yesterday really) and so it was fun to see some dragon dancing for the first time in a while. The colourful outfits, drumming and well choreographed dancing transport you to a different place, seems so incongruous seeing it moving down the High Street past Poundland!

It made me think a bit about being Christians in our culture.  The Bible talks about Christians being in the world but not of the world (John 17.15-18).  The dragons today really stood out as something different. But surveys have shown little difference between Christians and non-Christians in our society. What does it mean for Christians to live in such a way that we stand out (for good reasons)? I find it a challenge.  I meet many people who seem more generous or kind than me.  What makes my decision to follow Jesus, to try and live the way I think He is calling me to live, distinctive?  

How to embarrass yourself the Christian way

(c) William Hole - Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Tree

I wonder if you have ever done or been accused of doing something embarrassing? If you are a parent, you will almost certainly have been accused of being embarrassing by your child at some point! Fortunately I am not prone to being easily embarrassed which was helpful earlier this year during the baptisms we held at the Cheltenham Lido.  After I had baptised Charles and Sarah, I got out of the pool and tied my towel around my waist. And then continued with leading the prayers.  I was holding the microphone with one hand and suddenly realised that my towel was unwrapping and rapidly descending, not easy to catch and keep yourself decent with one hand.  Anyway, I survived and most people were gracious enough not to mention it afterwards!

In Luke 19.1-10 Zacchaeus puts himself in an embarrassing position. He has a very responsible, if despised job as the chief tax collector in Jericho.  It would have been a very privileged position because it was a town close to Jerusalem on a major trade route. And so he would have been a very wealthy man.  Wealthy people are used to having places of honour which makes this story interesting.  It might be normal when important people came to town for Zacchaeus to be invited to dine with them.  But as we begin this story, not only is Zacchaeus not invited to meet Jesus, but with such a big crowd gathering to see Jesus, Zacchaeus can't even see over the crowds and capture a glimpse of Jesus because he is too short.  But why does Zacchaeus even want to see Jesus?  He is clearly desperate to see Jesus, because he decides it doesn’t matter what people think, he will awkwardly clamber up a tree to try and get a chance of seeing this man.

Can you imagine it?  Zacchaeus wouldn’t be wearing trousers or shorts, he would’ve been in a flowing robe, so he may even have had to hitch his robes right up into his belt and show everyone his pants as he scrambled from branch to branch.  How ungainly, and how people probably pointed and laughed at him making a fool of himself.  “Ha! Look up there! It’s the tax collector, what on earth does he think he looks like, silly man!”

Perhaps his cheeks are red, and he hopes people will stop noticing him, but no! Suddenly there’s Jesus, and perhaps he sees people pointing and looking, and so he looks up too. But he doesn’t make fun of Zacchaeus.  Far from it.  Jesus is the one who looks on the heart, who knows our motivations. And he sees something in Zacchaeus that others have missed. And he says, probably with a smile: “Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down from there, I want to hang out with you at your house today.” I bet Zacchaeus swung down quickly, embarrassment forgotten, and with a broad smile on his face.  Everyone else though was grumbling: “Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner, and a rich one at that, just think about all the money Zacchaeus has cheated us out of, why does someone like Jesus want to eat with him, eat food brought with dirty money. Maybe Jesus isn’t who we thought he was…”

But the effect on Zacchaeus is totally the opposite.  As Jesus sits down at his table, Zacchaeus discovers who he really is.  You see, the name Zacchaeus means righteous one, or pure one. That is his true identity. And he suddenly realises that, and realises that he can change from who he has become.  The encounter with Jesus has opened the door to repentance.  And he says, "Lord I will give away half my money and repay those I have cheated by giving them back four times what I took." And Jesus tells him, truly you are a child of God, and are saved, considered righteous by God.

In Psalm 11 we read that God is righteous and God’s eyes scan the earth as God tests our hearts to see whether we are choosing wickedness or righteousness. To everyone who saw him, Zacchaeus was wicked, but Zacchaeus was willing to humble himself, to embarrass himself, by climbing a tree to find Jesus and to be restored to the man he knew he was born to be.

Jesus was passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, where He would also humble Himself and be nailed to a tree and be lifted up for all to mock. Zacchaeus has shown us what it is like to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, and as he did it he found Jesus willing to accept his repentance and to offer him forgiveness. And as a result he rediscovered who he truly was.    

May we today be prepared to die to ourselves, even to look foolish in the eyes of others, because we want to follow our Saviour, and become all that we were made to be.  Amen.

Gift

The last 3 years have been another journey of faith, living without a salary, albeit with basic living costs and academic costs paid for by the church. That in itself has been a gift, unexpectedly after 20 years of full time work being able to study full time again has been wonderful, and a real privilege that I have not taken lightly. It has also been very humbling to receive gifts from charities and individuals which have helped me buy books, go to conferences, repair my car, make pension contributions, replace worn out shoes, have little holidays and go on retreats. 

When I was properly 'living by faith' 12 years ago for the first time, it was hard to overcome my pride and accept what people wanted to give me. It was a good lesson though in learning how not to be controlled by money. Since then I've lived on a good salary and no salary, and have learnt how to be generous in different ways at different times. It still seems easier to give than receive, but learning to do both well is a spiritual discipline I think. 

Receiving God's gift of love, mercy and forgiveness is not as straightforward as it seems. Grace is hard to come to terms with, somehow we feel we need to earn these things rather than simply receive them with a grateful heart. But they are a gift, and accepting this greatest of gifts, is good training for learning how to receive and to give well in all areas of our lives.

Called to be....

I have been pondering the nature of 'calling' lately, and thinking about Mary as an example. More than anyone else in the history of the world she had the calling to the most high profile role - Mother of God. But it struck me that God’s calling to Mary to become the mother of Jesus was not the primary calling on her life. The calling on her life was exactly the same as the one on each of our lives as Christians, it is to hear the word of God and obey it.

Mary was living her normal life, one shaped by her genes, culture, family, experiences etc, but was living her life in a way that must have resonated with an obedience to God, and with a character that reflected His character. That meant that when Gabriel appeared to her, what happened wasn’t a new and sudden calling on her life, it was a moment that sparked into life the fruit of her primary calling. 

When I read Luke 11:27-28 it helped to clarify my thoughts about this. Jesus is teaching to a growing crowd, and Luke writes:

As he said these things a woman in the crowd spoke out to him, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed!" But he replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"
 

 

 

I love the way that Jesus underlines Mary's primary calling - to hear the word of God and obey it - without dismissing the reality of what this meant for Mary. She became Jesus' mother precisely because she was obedient in response to God what God asked of her, and being Jesus' mother was an important thing; just not the most important thing. Jesus words help us to understand what our priorities should be.

 

The act of calling into being is one of creation. When God creates us, He calls us. The very fact that we are alive, means we are called by God, and He is more interested in who we are becoming, how our character is developing than in what we do. Of course what we do is still important, but how we are doing it is more so. Perhaps then as we seek to grow as disciples walking alongside one another, one of the best questions we can be asking each other is "What is God saying to you at the moment? And how are you responding to that?" As we do this we can help each other grow in our primary calling of hearing and obeying God, because we all need help to do this.