GOD ANDI THE REAL YOU BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Genesis tazi-9 Lafayette, Indiana
Luke 19:1-12 John M. Buchanan
March 4, We78

The Bible is a collection of very old books written by men and about men who Tived
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thousands of years ago.\ The Bible has becone a tradition:| we keep an open copy in the sanct~

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uary to indicate that ike it has special meaning for us:\we own copies of the Bible and display
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them in our homes to indicate further, that the book is’ Spacéal for us: [we give copies of

the Bible as gifts on special occasions ‘| brides sometimes carry Bibles down the aiste. \ The
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Bible is a very prominent book among Christian people, except when jt comes to the matter of

reading it.\ Somewhere along the line most of us have concluded that; one, the content of
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the Bible is outdated atnd=—epepecberet two, the Bible is a collection of religious doctrines xerelee

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and stories of people who are unreat [and three,

These conclusions are wrong.) And this sermon introduction is, in part, a commercial
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for an Adult Seminar that is beginning next Sunday at 9:30 under the titte, Cunderstanding
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the Bible." Nore to the point, I would like to explore with you this morning two_stories

from the Bible which are remarkably relevant, and which - after ust a little bit of inves-

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tigation - appear to have been written for a mentality and a religious mind set that é still

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prevalent - thousands of years after the fact.
Conclusions numbers one and twg were that the Bible is out-of date and that the_ people
of the Bible are otherwordly, religious, holy people - not like you and ne.\ Yet, in fact,

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God comes up with maxgsome rather unlikely and ordinary friends in the pages of the Bible,

Let's think first about Abcatan,\ His story occurs in the beginning: Nand both stages Jews
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and Christians know him as the "father of the faith.*\\abranan at the age of 75. was instructed

by God to pick up his belongings, gather his family, and move to a new land God had promised
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to give him. |} In addition, Abraham was promised that his family would become a great nation

and that _all the people of the earth would come to appreciate and honor him. \ Abraham did as

he was totd:\he packed his belongings, gathered his family, trayeled across Mesopotamia

-into Canaan and promptly began to build alters to the Lord. \ So far so goad; \and yet even

at this point we raise an eyebrow and wonder whether this is for real .\ Well, the next part
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is - although time didn't allow me to read this morning.

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Right aftey Abraham builds those altars to the Lord things start going down hill and

the story starts sounding a little more real \' famine hits Canaan, and Abraham has to decide
between feeding his family and living in the Tand God gave him, \ Abraham chose to eat -
and moved out of the land into Egypt where food was plentiful. \pia you ever, sacréfice a

high and lofty ideal because of economic necessity?\ Abraham did - right there in the 12th

Chapter of Genesis and that's only the beginning.

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sarah, Abraham's wife, was a very beautiful wonan | And Abraham - being a practical
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man - knew that tn an alien land her beauty well might cause him real problens.\ A mag cauld
get killed over a women like that.\ And so Abraham _convénced Sarah his wife to pretend that

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she was his si ster. \ And what he expected happened\ The Egyptians appreciated herg beauty,

someone told Pharoh about it, and before you know it, Sarah has become a part of Pharoh's

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harem. \ So delighted was he that Abraham was showered with gifts:\sheep, oxen, donkeys »

servants: Abraham became wealthy. \ Did you ever sel] out like that? Did you_ever hurt

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someone you loved to save your own néck?

Now, at this point that conclusion that the Bible is full of stories about unreal, other

worldly people ought to become a little shaky.\ Father Abraham, promised a Tand of his own, and
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so many descendents that they would be a might nation, is living iL up down in Egypt at
Pharoh's expense, with his wife - his only hope to have children, installed in Pharoh's
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stable of lovely women. And, at this point, the Bible in a strange way - begins to say

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something about God - something theological. | Common sense would dictate that God @#o back

to Mesopotamia and find another likely candidate for( "Father of the Faith.*) Abraham 1ooks

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very much like a loser. \ But Ged doesn't give up on Abraham: ¥@cd sees something in him that
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hasn't had an opportunity to grow yet.\ And we begin to sense something of the nature of God
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in Abraham's saga:|patience, faithfulness, forgiveness, Tove for unlikely and ordinary people.

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Because, as it turns out, Pharoh falls on hard times, and discovering finally that his
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favorite concubine is really another man's wife, gives her back to Abraham, escorts all of
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them - the whole family and their newly acquired belongings - to the border.\ And the story

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begins all] over again: [they move back into the land, and Abraham, older and wises Redden
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takes up whre he left off, building altars to the Lord.'

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God ~ the Bible seems to be saying from the very beginning - is interested in some
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rather ordinary people., who do some rather ordinary and human things. \ but let's look

again - to a different time, centruies later, in the city of Jericho \ This story is in the

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New Testament and it invelves another very unlikely man by the name of Zaccheus.
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Zaccheus was the chief tax collector in Jericho.\ How that tells us quite a bit about

the man.\ The Romans were the rulegxyof Judah and they had devised a very effective way of

collecting revenue from their Judean subjects.\ The job of tax collector was solid to the

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highest bidder. \ And the man who got thejob was allowed to st whatever rates he chose - so

long as the Romans got what they wanted. \ And so it was an immensly profitable occupation.

Zaccheus was the Chief tax coltector:|that means he set the rates ~ and presided over a team
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of men who actually did the collecting. | Tt also means that no one in all of Jericho was so

hated, so despised, as Zaccheus. \He was a traitor to his people, his nation, his religion:

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he was cooperating with the enemy. \ Worse yet, he was becoming rich as a result of his peopte's

subj fagation. \Perhaps you can remember seeing pictures of what happened after the liberation
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of Paris during the Second World War.\ The shop keepers and merchants whe had cooperated
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with the Nazis and profitted by the occupation were tarred_and feathered. \The government

officials were tried for treason - those who were not executed in the streets. \ Well, that's

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a clue to the way the people of Jericho would have felt about Zaccheus.
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So when Jesus came to Jerigho and noticed Zaccheus sitting up in a tree to get a_better

view, and then called him by name and invited himself to Zaccheus's house for lunch, the
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good people of Jericho were a little disturbed. \ oF all the people - of all the Pharisees
and Scribes and good, respectable religious folk he could have chosen to be seen with - why

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in the world would he pick Zaccheus?

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And again the Bible seems to be saying that God sees something in ordinary people ze

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that nobolly else can see. \ sesus saw something in Zaccheus that Zaccheus himself hadn't been
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able to see.\Zaccheus had sold out:\he had chosen a way of life that isolated_him from his

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friends, his religion, his nation ~ in order to become wealthy. tte was hated and he knew it.
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He couldn't have had a very high regard for hinget#\he had to have spent many a sleepless

night waltowing in his own quite. \ But here was a man who thought he was worth something.

Abraham and Zaccheus are two examples of Biblical men who were very human \jen whose

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stories ring true because they acted like people we know - they did things that we've done.

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And through them comes a word about God and man that is remarkaby relevant.

Thousands of years after them a major religious problem for a lot of people is the idea

that God finds them loveable:\ that God loves us as we are;\that we don't have to pretend

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we're something we're not in order to become God's friends s\that God is vitally concerned
about our small, private tives ;\and that he sees something tn us that other people don't see -

that we sometimes don't see ourselves.

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We've been taught, most of us, that the Chief end of man is to meet the expectations of

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others. \ and that serves us well - sometimes \ It motivates us to strive for excellence -

Sometines::\ it pushes us into extending ourselves, to becoming more than we would be on our

own ~ sometimes. \ But sometimes it has another effect.\ Sometimes trying to meet the

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expectations of hhers causes us to distrust ourselyes. \Sometimes it causes us to try to do
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things we really don'twant to do, or to pretend to be something we aren t.\ We've all known

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the fwhtility and agony which results when a father expects his son to be an All-American

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athlete, and an All -American Tittle boy is not. \1 knew a college student who almost had

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a nervous breakdown because all his life his parents had expressed thier expectation that
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he would become a Doctor\and after_two years of Pre-medical education it was abundantly

clear to him and his professors that he didn’t want to be a doctor.

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Sometimes we carry those expectations right into adulthood, and life becomes a test track

for us, just one yace after another.\ Sometines expectations which were planted in us in

chitdheod become so oppressive that we end up hating ourselves for failing to meet them, and

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needing psychiatric care in order to live comfortably with ourselves.
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When it comes to religion, our culture over the years has formulated a rather clear

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expectation, a detailed model of what the "religious" person ought to be\ It involves
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being other-worldly,| not enjoying life too_much \ praing, dressing conservatively, living

moderately sand using a certain vocabulary, punctuated with stock, pious phrases. \1I_keep
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encountering that in people who tell me they aren't very religious, and somehow ‘fgg! that

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that feeling disqualifies them from Christian discipleship and Church nenbership.| What _they

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mean is that they don't measure up to the expectation level of a religios person" in our culture:

and I always want to tell them that God's friends in the Bible - and even Jesus himself -

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wouldn't have done very well on that score either.
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For the Biblical witness is precisely that God does find time for peopie like us, ane “That

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he saw inthem something of worth and value, even when nobody else aid\ The Bibiical witness
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is that God is singularly uninterested in and unimpressed with the expectation levels men

place on ethers. \ particulary when it comes to religion | Jesus obviously didn't care that
Zaccheus was known as a sinner and traiter by the good peaple of Jericho.

In fact one way of reading the Gospel accounts ef Jesus' life and ministry is - as a

mounting conflict between him and the traditionally religious people of his day. | The

people who were most offended by the Zaccheus incident wre religious people \ people whose
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conforming to the popular expectations of their religion had shut them off from others *

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people who had drummed Zaccheus out of the human race. Yin example of that happened in the

letters to the editor column of the Journal Courier last week \. In the name of religion a

writer proceeded to try, judge and then convict sieeabell words of hatred, a young woman who

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had an abortion.\ Jesus wasn't interested in that -\he was oppossed to the kind of religion
that tells its adherents that they have arrigved \that there is no more growing to do A that

living a religious life is simply a matter of conforming to théir own expectation Wel.

God saw a “Father of the Faith" in an unlikely senite by the name of Abraham.\ And

when Abraham didn't come through:\when he failed tobe what God saw in him, God didn't give

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up: \he @® helped Abraham put the broken pieces of his life back together and strt out

again. \Jesus saw something in a wretched Tittle man by the name of Zaccheus \a man who

defied every commonly accepted expectation of a “religious nan".\ Jesus saw the real Zaccheus.
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Someone has written
God sees a princess in_every scrub girl
a free man in every slave
a son in sery stranger
And in @ recent edition of the Devotional Magazine "Alive Now# , there is a theatogical
phraphrase of - the story of Cinderella:
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"She was a princess
in rags
all
with/the possibility
waiting to be set free.

Grace_has a lot of official definitions.

1 like to think of it
as God
with a glass slipper

tn his hand.

And if that's a bit too flippant for you, you can have it in the words of a Yale

Divinity School professor who used to tell his students:

"It's true that God never asks us to do more than we can manage with our own human
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gifts and possibilities... But we always underestimate how much that is."

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God sees the real you \ the person you keep nidden from cthers:\the person you hide from

yourself. \ God sees potential in ya:and me_that we didn't se know was there. | God knows

who we are ~ who we really are beneath all the striving to meet the expectations of others.

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God knows us - and God loves us very much. \That is the Good News.\ It means we are free
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to affirm and enjoy =m who we are:Lit means we are free to grow and become all that he
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wants us to

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Abraham -- Zacchews -- You and me. AMEN

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Tadue, semelwe, us ods \ow ai Feat be & ourselves * spomekimes Uae
spond Ger ‘\anweree Guiomk of eome in dw Wwe Sencar elye,
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we are i Hah you been aye ws ath we need ~ko be Gan
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Wa RAE YS Yous Sreewds. Amen