Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Twelve Steps: Zacchaeus, the Poster Child for Step 8
I just wanted to mention a bit of the background before we get into our eighth step, a little bit of background to our relationship with the Bible Church. We have that picnic at the end of the month, and it's really more than a picnic because we have an intentional relationship with the Bible Church, which is a church in Ipsilani, predominantly African-American, and one of the purposes of the relationship, why it's intentional, is it's a way for us at a very grassroots level to break down the racial walls between black and white in the church, and you may know that 11 o'clock on Sunday mornings, Dr. Martin Luther King called it "the most segregated hour in America." Michigan, according to the latest, the 2000 census tract data, is the most segregated state in the union, southeastern Michigan in particular, so we have a challenge, we have a task, and it doesn't matter what we believe about diversity. It's a matter of what we do, if ten churches had intentional relationships in every given community across the racial divide and made a point of connecting one-on-one with people across that divide, what a difference it could make on this issue. Our picnic is a really awesome picnic. We have been doing about ten years, so it gets better every year, and so I really encourage you to consider coming out to that picnic, plus it allows you to see beautiful downtown Milan, which some of you I know haven't seen, some of you snooty in arborites haven't been to Ann Arbor, because you think, well, you know, I'm in one of the top cities, but Milan has a charm all its own, and it's a nice little town of the southern part of the county. For, you know, a year-long trek through the 12 steps in 2004, first weekend of every month, we take one of the 12 steps, think of the 12 steps as a spiritual discipline for real life transformation, popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous, but really rooted in truth that is trademarked in a sense by God himself, a few resources I'd like to bring to your attention. One is the big book, it's just titled Alcoholics Anonymous, it's written by Bill W. I think his colleague Bob W also helped out with this, but this is an awesome resource for dealing with alcoholism, also helpful with other addictive processes, and then a nice little handier thing is called 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, so if, I don't know if you're just interested in the synopsis, this is a great resource, you can get these through the Alcoholics Anonymous website, I think we're linked to that through our Care Ministries page on our website, and then there's another resource that I'd commend to you, it's kind of like a background document, a source document, if you will, for the 12 steps, and it's called the Bible, 66 different books compiled into this book called The Book, and really especially embedded in the lives of people in the Bible you find the 12 steps, it's like hidden treasure in their lives and it comes up real clearly when you get to the Gospel, the New Testament, but it's hidden throughout Jesus is as it were the anonymous presence in the 12 steps, so I highly commend this book, and if you haven't read it, maybe suggest a translation by Eugene Peterson called The Message, which is especially accessible to modern ears, but let's just take up, we're on step eight because it's August, the eighth month, but let's just look at the preceding seven steps, get a sense of context. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable, and if alcohol is not the monkey on your back, insert whatever is, step two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, step three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our spouse. Oh, I'm sorry, common mistake, Freudian slip, of ourselves, five, admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs, six, we're entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character and then seven, step seven, humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings, which leads us up to step eight. And by the way, we got the high school students in for the 12 step series because often in high school, it's other students who end up being the first responders to fellow students who are in the grip, maybe the early stages of an alcohol addiction or other addiction. And so, I think the 12 steps can be great information for high school students to get a sense of what it really takes to get a monkey-like alcohol off your back. And so, I'm thinking it's especially helpful in high school to get a sense of these issues both for yourself and for the friends around you. Okay, step eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all, like to maybe start us off with a little suggested imaginative exercise, little flight of fantasy, likely to think of someone, pick out someone in your actual life who is near and dear to you or maybe someone who is near but not dear or dear but not so near anymore, but someone who has a lot of promise but has been derailed for some reason by some fatal flaw, whether it's an addiction or a character defect or maybe missing a core value or two or a blind spot that is undermining them left and right, you might be married to that someone. Someone might be a parent, might be a sibling, a child, a friend, God help you if it's your boss, maybe you've given up trying to fix that someone or maybe you are still tied up in knots, trying to make them better. Of course, we can all imagine someone like that in our lives, maybe quite a few in our lives. The chances are just by sheer probability that many of us or someone else is someone, I suppose, here in this room. But I'd like you to think further about something which is really remarkable. Imagine now that that person in your mind, some just wonderful process begins with them. They actually begin to come to grips with themselves. They face up to who they are and the impact they're having on other people. They begin to look back at the wake their life is leaving behind them and the destruction, the flotsam that's back in that wake. But somehow this new perspective doesn't crush them, doesn't paralyze them, but it only humbles them. Imagine now that the same person actually comes to you and says, "You know, I'm facing up to some really painful things about myself and I realize that I've done things and I've said things that have caused you harm and I'm here because if there's any way that I can make it right, I want to." I mean, wouldn't that just make your day for someone important in your life to approach you like that? Wouldn't that slip your lid? Wouldn't that just knock your socks off? Wouldn't that blow your mind? Wouldn't that rock your world? Wouldn't it rev your engine? You know, wouldn't it light your rockets? Wouldn't it trip your joy switch for someone in your life to approach you like that? You would feel that there is something wonderful indeed loose in the world. Well step eight is a sign that there is something indeed wonderful at loose in the world and that wonderful thing is the dynamic, the life-transforming reign of God. Jesus called it the kingdom of God. It's what he referred to when he encouraged us to pray that the kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus was very much about this world and us in this world, made a list of all persons we had harmed. Now for such a spiritual book, this source book that I recommended the Bible, the Bible has an awful lot of lists in it and sometimes you stumble over the sheer volume of lists in the Bible, it starts actually with a kind of poetic list of the days of the week, day one, day two, day three and so on. You have just all sprinkled through lists of people called genealogies. There's a whole book in the Old Testament called the Book of Numbers which lists the families of Israel by tribe and by name King Solomon, one of the great kings of ancient Israel was a great botanist who catalogued the plant life of the time, presumably made lists at the dawn of time in Genesis chapter two, humanity is tasked by God with naming the animals, coming up, if you will, with a kind of list. It's almost as if our first task, if we're to engage the real God, is to open our eyes and take stock of reality. What is? Not what we want to be, not our fantasy of what should be, but what is? Let's start there if we want to get to know the real God. That's what a list is. It's a naming, it's a taking stock, it's a facing up to what actually is. Made a list of persons that we had harmed. There's not a book in the world that has a higher view of what a person is than this book that we call the Bible. It's in this book that we get a revelation of God as a personal someone, that he's more than just a force, he's more than just like a principle behind the cosmos, but he's actually a complex somebody. I like the in-carded dictionary on my laptop, I got a new laptop and I'm such an old fart and such a way out of it when it comes to technology, but I'm surrounded by all these tech wonders and so I thought I'd get the T-shirt, I thought what the heck, I've made the switch, I put the bumper sticker on the back of my car and I'm trying to make like I'm hip because I have a, I have a, I book. But anyway, so the in-carded dictionary number six is the definition that finally gets to this sense of the person of being with special moral value because of some spiritual status or autonomous nature, but a wonderful definition of what a person is, this is the sense in which God is a person, is personal. In fact, you could say we are only persons because God is personal, we're made in his image and likeness and it's our being persons that is right at the heart of that, you could say that God can't be love unless he is also personal. You know, the scientists would say, you know, what is the most complex, contained system in all of the universe known to us? And we might think of the stars or a solar system or a galaxy, but the correct answer is actually the human brain, the most complex system in all of the universe. There's nothing more mysterious, there's nothing more complex, more fascinating, there's nothing more dangerous when it's broke and more wonderful when it's working than a person. Jesus said if we do something for even the least valued person in society, it's as if we're doing it to him, beyond God himself, there's nothing more holy, more sacred than a person. You know, we fix our nails and our cars and our computers and, you know, paint and patch our walls and fix our screen doors, but what could be more important than making amends when possible to those persons we have harmed? But we're getting ahead of ourselves because step eight is only about making the list and then becoming willing to make amends. Golly put like that, it just sounds so simple, why, you know, why haven't everybody gotten around and making such a list? But if you take a poll, I mean, there's not many people actually who've actually done step eight. Even in recovery groups, there are many people who've been there for years who've never actually gotten around to doing step eight, and yet it's so simple, it's just making the list, becoming willing. There must be something at work in the universe that's keeping us from doing it, something that's working on our insides that is preventing us from taking such a simple, simple step, and that something is called a game we play dodge ball. Dodge ball is in resurgence, we're told, they're playing dodge ball in Manhattan, so it's happening, and making a comeback, whether three dodges in particular that keep us from making a list, or if we make one, making one thoughtlessly, not mindfully, the first dodge is this, we forget to keep a laser focus on ourselves, you know, the harm that we have done. I don't know, maybe there's lots of people that you have unilaterally harmed. They didn't do anything to you, that nothing to provoke it, it's just out of the blue, you just nail them, harm them in some way, but most of the people who would end up on our list of persons that we had harmed would be people that we're in relationships with where the, you know, kind of tit for tat is the norm, isn't it a pity George Harrison's song, now isn't it a shame how we break each other's hearts and cause each other pain, how we take each other's love without thinking anymore, forgiving to give back, isn't it a pity, isn't it a pity, you know, we use this, Alice in Wonderland kind of arithmetic in our relationships, one harm cancels another, no, it doesn't work like that, one harm does not cancel another, one harm just adds on to another. We can only amend the harms that we do, and so it requires a laser focus on that and a refusal to be distracted by anything else to make such a list, second dodge we fall into is we often assume that long ago people we've harmed have gotten over it. So why, you know, like, um, allie McBeale, a big McBeale the old to sitcom few years back, the lead attorney in her firm, I think Richard was his name, his favorite little phrase by Gons, you know, he'd do some stupid thing and the way he would deal with it, he'd go to the person and say by Gons, like I'm moving forward, you know, like, you know, let's just move on, you know, whether someone's gotten over it or not is really irrelevant to our list, the getting over it actually in some sense is their responsibility, but the harm is our responsibility and so it takes that kind of laser focus that refusal to be distracted by irrelevant concerns and then the third dodge, maybe the biggest one in terms of emotional impact, we're afraid, we're chicken, we're just so afraid that if we consider all this harm that we've done, somehow this process will lessen us, it will hurt us and we're just barely surviving as it is, what a bummer we think to make such a list, it might drive us to drink, you know, with addiction, it's so hard to see beyond your own skin because the addiction is sucking all the life out of you, it's so hard to face the harm that we've caused others, you know, all addictions are isolating, it's what they have in common, they isolate us and they train us in the ways of isolation, it's so easy to think when you're in the grip of an addiction that I'm only hurting myself, but every addiction also has something else in common, it leaves harm behind in its wake, we become self-absorbed, we become missing in action and harm is done often to the people we care about most and of course we actually know this deep down in our bones, so we lock down that awareness in some deep dark cellar in our basement inside of our souls but you know, it only grows more powerful in that cellar, it's like they say about mushrooms, mushrooms feed on dark and you know what? The stuff of stuff happens, fame is what mushrooms grow on and so there's a need to get this out into the light and when we get it out into the light on a piece of paper it actually lifts something from us and so we need a little inspiration in order to take step A, don't it, we need a little motivation, we need to have a sense of the joy that's before us in order to go through the agony of actually doing a step A and so I would like to call on Zacchaeus from the New Testament, a character in the New Testament who is the poster child of the eight step, I introduce to you as evidence Zacchaeus, Luke chapter 19, there's four narratives of the life and ministry of Jesus by the name of their authors, Gospel of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John and we're in Luke who is a physician, we probably know the most about Luke of all the Gospel writers, he was a physician, probably a Gentile meaning he wasn't Jewish and he had a fairly well developed historical sense, his Gospel pays special attention to Jesus' radical inclusion of women and it also includes a big emphasis on the healing ministry of Jesus, Luke being a physician, he would have been interested in that but we also have this Zacchaeus account here, let's start with the first four verses, Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through, a man was there by the name of Zacchaeus, he was a chief tax collector and he was wealthy, he wanted to see who Jesus was but being a short man he could not because of the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way, now this introduces the underlying theme of the whole account which is a certain light heartedness in the account of Zacchaeus, I mean Zacchaeus is wealthy and he's short which also means in cultural context he's probably, shall we say, quite portly because if you were wealthy in the ancient world you demonstrated your wealth, your Lexus as it were was your very high fat diet and so to be a little bit rotund was like quite the thing in the ancient world, so we pictured this short wealthy portly guy running ahead of the entourage and getting up in a sycamore fig tree, whatever that might be, running kind of childlike up the tree I picture Zacchaeus, now the text goes on, when Jesus reached the spot he looked up and said to him Zacchaeus, come down immediately, I must stay at your house today, so Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed him gladly, slight heartedness in the whole account, all the people saw this and began to mutter, he's gone to be the guest of the sinner, now you want to picture here a semi-public affair, Zacchaeus brings Jesus to his home, Zacchaeus is a wealthy man would have owned something like a compound there in Jericho and he would have had probably a meal prepared for Jesus out in the courtyard where the invited guests were brought into the table but there would be like the whole neighborhood around watching what was going on here and that's where the grumbling no doubt took place and the grumbling is because Zacchaeus as the chief tax collector would have been like a notorious sinner in Jericho, he would, tax collection was the organized crime of Israel, Zacchaeus is like the John Gaudy figure in Jericho and that's why Jesus knows who he is, doesn't have to ask because everyone knows who John Gaudy is in New York City but Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, look Lord, I like his childlike enthusiasm, here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor and if I've cheated anybody out of anything I will pay back four times the amount, now for a tax collector to say yeah I've cheated anybody out of anything, it's like a politician saying if I've spun the truth for partisan advantage, yes, now the wonder of all this change of heart on the part of Zacchaeus is it's just absolute suddenness, it's unexpectedness and it's appropriate perhaps that we're in Jericho, Jericho if you remember was a very important city in the history of the people of Israel, it's the city, the ancient city whose walls came tumbling down as the people of Israel brought out of bondage in Egypt were taking over the promised land without a shot being fired were told the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, you know an encounter with Jesus does that, walls are tumbling down in the heart of Zacchaeus, defensive walls, walls that he's erected to protect himself and his turf, walls of rationalization are tumbling down, walls that have been blocking off the voice of conscience for years come tumbling down, walls that say you know I am so far gone these people would never accept me even if I did change, it's all come tumbling down in his heart, you know there's just no way to read this account without feeling the excitement, the childlike, wondrous excitement of Zacchaeus, now he's not actually done this has he, liquidating half his assets making good for all the people that he's done dirty to financially but he's willing, he's publicly willing so I say he's the poster child of step eight someone else to be the poster child of step nine that's next month actually making the immense but already in this account we have the like unfolding sense of liberation surrounding Zacchaeus's step here, he's been resisting the will of God all these years and something happens and he stops resisting the will of God, you know the strain it puts on a person's soul to just constantly resist the will of God, I mean talk about a force of nature, you know wow the weight it puts on you to resist the will of God in your life and when you turn around and you're no longer resisting the will of God but you're willing to go with the will of God, just like an enormous weight it's lifted off your soul, the sense of relief is overwhelming, it's like old happy day and Zacchaeus is right in the middle of that old happy day experience, on the face of it he should be experiencing just the opposite, he is after all coming to grips we think for the first time with all the harm he's done to all of his neighbors, he's coming to grips with the shame of his life and his profession, he's facing up to the alienation of all those good people of Jericho who are now so upset with him and yet there's a different factor in the equation that is lifting him up and that factor is the presence of Jesus backing him up before the angry crowd, we read it here, Jesus said to him today salvation has come to this house because this man too is the son of Abraham, Jesus is not just speaking to Zacchaeus he's speaking to Zacchaeus in the presence of the crowd and his words are to the crowd as much as they are to Zacchaeus this man too is the son of Abraham, men an awful lot in historical context because Zacchaeus to those people was a traitor and he had no place at the table with Abraham, he was an outsider, he was in exile, he was an unclean pariah in Jericho and for Jesus to label him otherwise this too is the son of Abraham is a really big deal in historical context, for the son of man and now he's speaking to the crowd directly, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost, you know making your way back from exile, maybe it's an exile from an addiction, maybe it's just an exile for other things, you know coming back from burning so many bridges with so many people not least of which is God himself, you know to walk a road back home like that is a really humbling road to walk down, if you are anywhere on that road today you know that it is not an easy climb to walk that road, retracing one steps, you know facing the messes you've left behind, what one has become under this addiction or this power of sin that's got you in this darkness that got you in its grip, that's a real via Dolorosa, that's a real path of sorrows when you walk that road and you need a little help along the way and along the road, every step along the road back to sanity, back to recovery, back to repaired relationships, you have the voice and the presence of Jesus saying today salvation has come to this house because this woman, this man too is a daughter, is the son of Abraham for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost, this is a theme throughout Luke's gospel, Luke makes it clear that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who turns around than over 99 so-called righteous who having it all together have also no need of God, this all throughout the gospel of Luke is that theme, the primary source of joy in loose gospel is this very thing and we're touching it right now with the words that Jesus is speaking in the presence of Zacchaeus and the crowd, the joy of heaven surrounds those on the road to recovery, it buoys us, it assures us of the Father's acceptance wherever we are in the process on the road, first step, second step, it doesn't matter, doesn't wait till you complete the process is the joy is there from the beginning, this too is a son of Abraham, affirms us, secures us as we face maybe the anger that our lives have caused in others or the frustration in others or the tension in some of our relationships that we're going back to correct to make a difference if we can, you know when you stop defending yourself, God becomes your defender and he defends you even from what you've got coming and that's what gives you the courage to go back and to deal with those issues, they say in the Hebrew prophets, I'm thinking Isaiah maybe, but I'm not sure, maybe this is, well it's somewhere in the Bible it says, it's St. Paul, the joy of the Lord is your strength and the primary joy of God in our lives now is the joy of us coming home, of us turning around, of us dealing with our stuff and the joy of the Lord is our strength in that process. You know if you've been walking a road to recovery and it's a real grind, it's real important to open up your ears to the voice of Jesus speaking this word of joy because it's strength for you and you get to tap into it right now, right where you are and all your brokenness you get to tap into it, right now it's the empowering presence of Jesus on the road to recovery. I think I finished, I would like to ask the band to come back up and we're going to just have some time as we close, good we're not in the big rush, I commend myself for my brevity. What does it mean that the congregation is also flapping for my brevity? I take that as a compliment. I choose to take that as a compliment, we're going to, you know the Christians have this cockle-me-me idea that when you get together to worship there is like an incentive for that which is a kind of presence of Jesus with us that is, I don't know, more than usual. Jesus said whenever two or three get together, they're am I in the midst of them and we want to take advantage of the presence of Jesus, kind of like Zacchaeus took advantage of Jesus coming through town and here's where we get kind of mixed up. We come to church and we think, well, since we're worshiping God we want to give him our best and so we kind of put, we don't really have much that's best so we kind of put on what we think is the best, our kind of religious face and we come to God like that and that mask is just, it might as just, it's titanium, it's just, God doesn't get through that. We've got to take off that mask and we just have to come to God as we are because He's the real God, in reality is the only place you can find God, He's nowhere else and so we come to Him in our brokenness because it's our brokenness that is the point of contact with a God who saves us and so rather than being ashamed of our brokenness, you'd be an idiot not to feel a little bit bad about it but rather than being ashamed of our brokenness it's what we bring to Him when we bring ourselves and when we do that we find that we meet God and God meets us and church is a place for that to happen, hello, why shouldn't that happen in church? It can happen at Breyerwood, why shouldn't it happen in church, I'm thinking. And so this time is really a time for us maybe to keep that in mind and as we reflect and maybe if the Holy Spirit's been nudging you or speaking to you, do this Luke 19 text that you just, through the worship, present yourself to God in your brokenness at your point of need and that's also why we have time during the end here for people who want you to come forward for ministry just like the open space up here is available to anyone who wants to come down, we have a team of people, prayer ministry team just available to pray for people and again that's just taking advantage of the presence of Jesus that's here what we're gathered together at our point of need so if you come here today and I know there's some folks like facing big surgeries next week or maybe you're battling an infection or dealing with some kind of a health need and would invite you to come up and get some prayer for healing if you're maybe part of a, maybe your first contact with God meaningfully was in a 12 step program but maybe your connection with your higher power is a little bit vague it's not real clear and you're getting the feeling that there's more to this higher power than just your kind of vague idea of God. I just want to invite anyone who wants to in that position who wants to make Jesus your higher power to do that and you just do it by asking him and you know the fact that he's Lord means he can handle it he'll do good for you as a higher power and he's not unfamiliar with these steps he's not unfamiliar with these steps that you're on and he's really kind of anonymously the ground on which you're walking and he's also willing to be your companion on the road so if you want to make Jesus your companion to your recovery and just invite you to if right there at your seat you're welcome to transact this business with him or if you'd like to come up and ask someone on the prayer ministry team to help you pray through this you know maybe just offer a way of praying to receive Jesus as Lord of your life and I encourage you to come up during that time and and to do that but especially I think the heart of Jesus is here for those who on that road to recovery but it's just tough terrain it's tough going and you desperately need the lift that Jesus gave is the keyest and it's available to you all and so I invite you to come forward and just invite the prayer ministry team to just pray the blessing of Jesus over those folks and that just invite the presence of the Holy Spirit to be with them and to strengthen them but also I think there are some people who are in that very tough position of you're waiting for someone in your life to come to their senses and maybe it's a kid maybe it's a parent who knows but it's a really important person to you and they're just not there and you've given up trying to make them better but the hardest thing to do in the world is just to wait for someone like that and you need strength for that waiting you need hope for that waiting maybe some of you who really need to do an act of surrender yourself and release that person to God that you don't have what it takes to save a person from an addiction for example you don't have what it takes you're not equipped God has what it takes God is equipped and so you may have to surrender that person in your heart to God to get an unbearable weight off your shoulders and so I want to invite anyone who is waiting for someone and needs to maybe make that act of surrender just to come up and to get some prayer for that or to do it in your seats whatever works for you okay was anything else from the prayer ministry team that we had okay why don't we stand up and I would like to just invite people to start coming down now let's see how many folks are up here and if you would like to respond any of these things this invites you to come on up so we can make sure there's enough room and there always is so don't worry and that's great yeah come on right up and yes oh great thanks me and my a10 is the joy of the Lord is your strength for those of you Bible trivialists there great I just want to let's let's be the body of Christ and and do something for our fellow travelers on this journey and just right where we are just pray down the presence of the Holy Spirit we're just going to take a moment now to invite the Holy Spirit to come be with all of us but especially to those who have particular need this morning and then in case you're concerned the focus will be completely off you and we'll get on to focusing on God and worshiping so Father we just thank you for the reality of the risen Jesus who is more alive more present here and now than ever before through the Holy Spirit we invite that same spirit to come to settle over us we welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst and I pray for just the now the surrounding presence of the Holy Spirit that comforter who is sent from heaven to just like a blanket of love come around everyone who has a special need for that empowering presence today as we come in our brokenness so come Holy Spirit we welcome you we say you can do what you want to in this place so come amen let's uh let's worship go ahead team and praise you will (gentle music)