Following Jesus isn't as easy as it sounds. "Put your feet in my footsteps; obey my teaching; be like me." As if!
Liking and sharing Jesus' message assumes we know what that message is. "If someone slaps you on one side of the fasce, turn the other cheek." "Love your neighbour as yourself" - and your neighbour is whoever crosses your path. "Forgive those who offend you 70 x 7 times", which isn't about doing maths but about forgetting to count. Liking and sharing these messages is a hard call.
If instead we learn from Jesus way with people, how he treated them, spoke of them, thought about them, it doesn't get any easier. In the Gospels Jesus is often and again about relationships, belonging in God's community, breaking down barriers and walls. His parables, those stories about God's love and judgement, and about this God who goes looking for sinners, the marginalised, broken folk, beaten up by life - those stories are about lost sheep found, lost sons struggling their way home, victims of violence tended by the least likely Samaritans, people who work an hour being paid the same as those who worked all day. This is a God of scandlaous grace, who breaks down barriers, whose mercy offends, whose forgiveness is free and costs the very life of God. Liking and sharing Jesus' message is a hard call. Too hard if all we have to do it is our own choices, motives and energy.
So those people Jesus met, and who were never the same afterwards. Zacchaeus who went looking for Jesus but because he was a small man, had to climb a tree to see over the heads of the crowd. No he wasn't a cheat, more likely on a commission, a cross between a pay day loan agent and a dispenser of benefit sanctions. Understandably he was hated, despised, named and shamed. Maybe the sycamore tree was for camouflage. And what happens. The kingdomn of God happens.
Jesus tells him to come down, quickly; that he must,not might or may, but must have a meal with him. It's the self-invitation and the gift of friendship and acceptance that breaks Zacchaeus wide open and dismantles those inner walls of greed and grievance. Half of my possessions I give away to the poor, and full compensation for all who have been overcharged. To like and share the message of Jesus is to dismantle walls, welcome the stranger, accept and show mercy to those whose lives are lonely, broken, messed up.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast…..
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
And as has been said in thousands of so-called childrens' talks, "that’s a bit like Jesus." Something there is that doesn’t love a wall that wants it down. The friendship of Jesus dismantled the walls inside Zacchaeus by accepting him and embodying the love and friendship of God. What.s more the walls between Zacchaeus and everyone else were breached; this man is restored to the community and himself becomes a living parable of God's welcome.
No wonder Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house." Jesus' message to Zacchaeus is quite simply, yes. Each of us like him, scared, camouflaged, looking for meaning and love, a place to belong and a community to belong to, the same word, Yes. We like and share Jesus' message by liking and sharing the love of God with those people blessed enough to have us in their lives – and those people we are blessed enough to have in your lives. Following Jesus is a hard call, made possible by the very grace that calls us to be forgiven forgivers, merciful receivers of mercy, graced givers who embody the love of God in Christ.
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