“What’s The Matter

“What’s The Matter? You Matter!”

Text: Luke 19:1-10

© November 4, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

Over in Madagascar, the island country off the southeast coast of Africa, a tribe there has a rather unique custom. Once every five years the people of the tribe go out to their burial grounds and dig up the bones of all their ancestors. Then they take the bones and carry them through the village so that their ancestors can “see” how things are going. That tribe does that as a way of demonstrating their belief that even when people die, they still matter.[1]

A few years ago the Presbyterian Church prepared a summary of what we believe as Christians, what they called “The Brief Statement of Faith.” And that Brief Statement of Faith begins by declaring “in life and in death we belong to God.” In other words, like that tribe in Madagascar, we believe that whether we’re alive or whether we’re dead, we matter – we matter to God. We matter to God whether we’re rich or poor. We matter to God whether we’re tall or short. We matter to God whether we’re a saint or a sinner. No matter what we’re like, we matter to God.

And to a large degree that’s what this story is showing us that we just listened to from the Gospel of Luke. You see, in the town of Jericho was a chief tax collector named Zacchaeus. But as far as most of the people in Jericho were concerned, there was no way that Zacchaeus could possibly matter to God. After all, as far as most of the people in Jericho were concerned, Zacchaeus was one of the bad guys. He was someone who had virtual free reign to threaten people and to extort from them as much tax money as he could get his hands on.

And so when Jesus and his parade of followers entered Jericho, the people who lined the streets went out of their way to push Zacchaeus to the back. As far as they were concerned, Zacchaeus was an embarrassment to their city, a blemish. As far as the people of Jericho were concerned, how could someone like Zacchaeus possibly matter to God?

And the reality is that we continue to do that same sort of thing even today. We look at certain people, and based on how they appear or based on things that we know about them, we write them off. We figure that we have the ability to look at certain people and know who matters and who doesn’t. But when we do that, when we make judgments about people like that, sooner or later we come to realize just how wrong our judgments are.

For instance, a young man by the name of Joshua Bell got off at a subway station in Washington, D.C., and he proceeded to stand against a wall next to a garbage can. There was nothing unique about his appearance – he was wearing blue jeans, a long-sleeve t-shirt, and a baseball cap. But he had with him a violin, which he took out of its case and began to play.

And for the next 45 minutes Joshua Bell stood there on the platform and played as more than a thousand people got on and off the subway. But as he played his heart out, almost no one paid any attention to him. In fact, out of the thousand or more people who passed by him, only 27 bothered to stop for even a moment to listen. Everyone else apparently just wrote him off as some kind of a beggar. They wrote him off as someone who just didn’t matter.

But unbeknownst to those people, Joshua Bell is a world-renowned violinist. In fact, the violin he plays – the violin that he had with him there in the Washington subway – is a rare Stradivarius that’s worth more than $3 million. And only three days before his appearance there in the Washington subway, he had appeared at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where he sold out the place, with the average ticket selling for $100.[2] Sometimes we think we know for sure who matters and who doesn’t. But we’re not in a position to make that kind of judgment. No, God is the only one who’s in a position to make that kind of judgment. And as this story about Zacchaeus shows us, as far as God is concerned, everyone matters to God.

And so the good news is that since we all matter to God, regardless of who we are, regardless of what we’ve done with our lives, the good news is that we don’t have to hide from God. As you might recall, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and they sinned for the first time by eating some fruit from the tree that God had told them not to eat from, what did they do next? As soon as they sinned, Adam and Eve ran and hid. They knew that they had done wrong, and they tried to hide themselves from God.

But we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to try to hide ourselves from God. And apparently Zacchaeus understood that. Because instead of remaining hidden from Jesus behind the people there in that crowd, Zacchaeus ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus, and so that Jesus could see him.

It’s like some little kids who were playing a game of hide-and-seek. But every time they played there was this one little boy who, when he got into the best hiding place he could find, would yell out “Ready,” which of course gave away where he was. One day the boy’s father saw what he was doing, and so he took his son aside and explained to him that the object of the game was to keep quiet and keep yourself hidden. But even after his father had talked to him, the boy kept right on doing what he had been doing, yelling out “Ready” whenever he got into his hiding spot. But then it dawned on the father, that maybe his son was on to something – because the real fun of hide-and-seek comes when you’re found. After all, who wants to be left alone forever, undiscovered?[3]

It was real joy that Zacchaeus experienced when Jesus found him, when Jesus spotted him up in that tree and called for him to come down. It was real joy that Zacchaeus experienced when Jesus announced to everyone that he was going to go to Zacchaeus’s house and sit down and eat with him. It was real joy that Zacchaeus experienced when he suddenly realized that he mattered, that he mattered to God.

Who are the Zacchaeuses in our day? Who in our day are wondering if they matter to God? Although there are undoubtedly many Zacchaeuses in our day, I believe one group in particular that wonders if they matter to God are the children of the world.

Different studies have found that if a person hasn’t at least begun to have a faith relationship with Jesus by the time they turn 13, then it’s extremely unlikely that that person will ever have a faith relationship with Jesus.[4] That’s not to say that it’s impossible for a teenager or an adult to come to faith – but it is extremely uncommon. It just seems that if people learn as children that they matter to God, that’s going to have an profound effect on the rest of their lives. But if in their childhood years people don’t discover that they matter to God, it’s unfortunate but highly likely that they will never come to see that they matter to God.

The truth is that no matter whether we’re young or old, black or white, rich or poor, saint or sinner – we all matter to God. And so that means that no matter what we don’t have to hide from God. Because more than anything else it’s God’s great desire to find us and to show us just how much God loves us. That’s the great joy that Zacchaeus discovered. And it’s that same great joy that Jesus wants us to discover as well.