Thirty-first
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Some
of us may remember, I don’t think it is in the comic strips anymore, but it was
Calvin and Hobbes. That
precious little boy and his little playmate the talking tiger. And it was one of the cartoons that one day
it showed Hobbes coming up to Calvin.
And Calvin was sitting there with a little sign saying, “Kick in the
butt for a dollar.” And Hobbes looked at
Calvin and he said, “Well, how’s business been going?” Calvin kind of shook his head and said, “You
know it’s awful and I don’t know why because there are so many people who need
a good kick in the butt.” Present
company probably excluded, right?
Yet
in kind of a crass way really says I think part of what our gospel message
is. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and
to save what was lost.” What’s the whole point of Jesus coming and the gift of
redemption? To take
away sin and to help us to change our lives and to turn back to the Lord. We do need, literally in a sense, a kick in
the rear end to get ourselves moving because we can get stuck so many times in
our selfishness, our greed, our sinfulness and we need to be able to break out
of it.
This beautiful story of Zacchaeus. He was the
chief tax collector. So
part of it too, not only because he was short physically, but he had in maybe
some way afraid of the crowd. He
was the chief tax collector. He was in
charge of all the others. Now we all
know tax collectors were not held in high esteem by their fellow countrymen
because they took the taxes, collected them, gave them to the Roman
people. They would in turn make a
bargain with the Roman authorities how much had to be owed then it was up to
them to get that from the people. No
sometimes they would barely make a living, how much they could pull out of the
people but the gospel says Zacchaeus was also a
wealthy man seeking to see who Jesus was.
The
important thing about it—very rarely in the gospels do we see Jesus calling
somebody by name. He’s walking along,
looks up in the tree and says, “Hey you, Zacchaeus
come down, I’m going to stay at your house.”
He calls him by name so that’s a tip off, the gospel saying Jesus calls
each of us by our own name too. Come
down I want to stay in your heart, not just your physical home, I come to be
with you. To give you My
gift of life, of redemption, to help you turn around from your sins.
What does Zacchaeus do? He gets the message. He says, “Okay, I’ll give half my stuff
away. If I’ve bribed anybody, took
anything,” legally he was only supposed to pay 1%, he says, “I’ll pay 4 times
over anything I may have taken from people.”
He as been converted. He got the kick in the rear end and now he is
changing his life.
What
does that say to you and me? I think it
gives you and me great hope because as Jesus calls us by name, then it means
you and I too can turn around and turn away from whatever it is that is
stopping us from really being the people God calls us to be.
Tie
it up with the first reading. For you
Lord love all things that are made. You loath nothing that You
have made. You and I are made, created
in the image and likeness of God.
If
I ask you this morning, tell me what your sins are, what are your failings,
where are the areas that you’re not going in a lot of us will come up with a
nice long list. I’m selfish, I’m greedy,
I’m proud, I hurt people, I gossip, I do this and do that. Good.
Make a list of all those things.
But now, the tip-off in the gospel. Jesus calls Zacchaeus
to the goodness within him. That’s
redemption. Jesus calls you and me to
the good that is in within us. What are
you good at? What are the blessings in
your life. What
are the good things that God has put in you.
If
we spent all the energy and the time thinking of how we fail, how we sin, how
we don’t measure up, what’s wrong with us, the bad things inside of us we are
cutting ourselves short, we are also cutting God short because He has put good
things in.
So
put the energy and the emphasis on what’s right within in you. On the goodness that is within you. See the difference? If we spend all this time and energy beating
ourselves up, we give it more power over us.
The
Lord said, “No. Do it a different
way. See the good that is within you and
keep moving towards that.” Are you a
good listener? Are you a patient
person? Do you have a beautiful
smile? Do you see the good in other
people rather than the things you don’t like?
Are you generous with your time, with your energy? Are you compassionate? Are you understanding?
Everybody
here has something very wonderful, good within you. You know what that is. You really do. And so many times we cover it up because we
are so concerned about what we are doing, our sins and our failures, we never
encourage and nourish and build up the right things.
So
maybe that’s a good message to take with us today. See the good that is within you. Ask the Lord to increase some particular
virtue or gift that you have. Again not that
you and I can say, “Wow, look at me how wonderful I am,” and then put it under
wraps. Take that gift, that goodness,
ask the Lord to increase it that you in turn can share it and give it fourfold
to somebody else.
Jesus
said, “I come to search out, to save what was lost.” Take a little time today, thanking the Lord
for the blessings in life, the good things, that we have. Chose one under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit and somehow this week share it and give it to somebody else.