A Christmas Story ADVENT GOES TO THE MOVIES A CHRISTMAS CAROL LUKE 19:1-10. DECEMBER 7&8, 2013 Pastor Bob Petterson. Covenant Church of Naples PCA

Transcription

1 COVENANT PULPIT A Christmas Story ADVENT GOES TO THE MOVIES A CHRISTMAS CAROL WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JESUS COMES? LUKE 19:1-10 DECEMBER 7&8, 2013 Pastor Bob Petterson Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples FL (239)

2 [Film Clip from A Christmas Carol Movie] Was there ever a more miserable miser in all of literature than Ebenezer Scrooge of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol? The very name, Scrooooooge rolls off your tongue like a Christmas curse. Scrooge is the original Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The tight-fisted tightwad salting away a fortune from pennies squirrelled away over the years. The conniving cheapskate who lives in self-imposed poverty because he can t part with a single shilling for his own enjoyment or comfort. He even refuses to buy enough candles to light his house. Dickens writes, Darkness is cheap, so Scrooge liked it. He shortchanges those who work for him, is ruthless to those who owe him money, coldly impervious to pleas of widows and orphans, and without a charitable bone in his crotchety old body. Dickens pens this description of Ebenezer Scrooge: Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint Dickens calls him a man devoid of the milk of human kindness. When asked to contribute to the poor at Christmas, he asks, Aren t there debtors prisons and poorhouses? The gentleman asking for Scrooge s Christmas charity replies, Yes, but they would rather die than to go to such places. The nasty old miser spews out his venom: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population of the world. But most of all, Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas. He has two infamous words for the season: Bah, humbug! When his nephew greets him with a Merry Christmas! he snarls back, If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. But everything is about to change one Christmas Eve. As Scrooge readies himself for bed, he is visited by the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley, who drags the chains forged by his life of greed out of the bowels of hell. Marley warns Ebenezer Scrooge that he too is standing on the precipice of an eternity lost. But he still has time to change his ways. This very night three ghosts the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future will visit him. It becomes a night of revelation for Scrooge as these Spirits take him on a roller coaster journey from his childhood to his future gravesite. Scrooge sees himself for who he really is: a miserable, moneygrubbing miser who has squandered his life in the pursuit of wealth and power. Though his money coffers are overflowing, he is a spiritual pauper

3 utterly alone, without friends or a future. The Ghost of Christmas Future a fearsome apparition, the faceless Grim Reaper in black robe points his skeletal finger toward a newly-dug grave in a dismal cemetery, and on the tombstone is etched those awful words: EBENEZER SCROOGE Scrooge has seen enough! He pleads with the silent Ghost, If I change the course of my life, can the end not change too? Then, with a scream of horror, old Scrooge falls into the grave and spins downward in a bottomless pit. He awakens with a start, twisted in his beds sheets. In sheer relief, he discovers that he is alive! He still has time to become a new man. Jumping out of bed, and dancing across the floor, he feels the first real joy of his miserable life, I don't know what to do! I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! In this Victorian era Christmas classic, turned into a thousand stage plays, movies, television specials, and musicals, Charles Dickens Scrooge captures the very essence of every Christmas Carol: the Advent is about redemption. Redemption is at the heart of every great story. Even Hollywood can t escape that fact. The Gospel is about a hope that springs eternal! If a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner like Ebenezer Scrooge can be changed, so can the rest of us. Our Lord may not send an apparition like Jacob Marley, or the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present or Future, to apprehend us but he will not let those he loves go so far down that he doesn t send someone to point us to redemption (even if that someone is this poor preacher, giving this poor message to those of you God loves this morning). In this gospel story of an ancient Jewish Ebenezer Scrooge, the tax collector Zacchaeus we see exactly why God s Son came to earth: Jesus didn t enter this world to brighten our December, but to transform our lives. This baby wrapped in rags, and laid in a cow s feeding trough, was predestined to hang on a cross in a garbage dump outside the city of Jerusalem. From the time he left heaven he knew that he had an awful date with destiny 33 years later. He never doubted for a moment why he had come. He states it succinctly in his encounter with Zacchaeus: For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10) Jesus came to transform us whether we are a covetous old sinner like Scrooge, a notorious mob boss like Zacchaeus, or a goody-two-shoes church person who trades in respectable sins. There are few roles more delicious than that of Ebenezer Scrooge. Lots of performers have played him from the greatest Shakespearean actors, to Academy Award winners, to Mr. Magoo, the Muppets, Scrooge

4 McDuck, and even Ken of the Ken and Barbie Dolls. (My favorite is Alistair Sim in the 1951 classic of A Christmas Carol). But no one plays Scrooge better than Zacchaeus. And no one needs Scrooge s redemption more than that ancient tax collector. If the truth be told: every one of us is more Ebenezer Scrooge than we dare imagine or care to admit. As hard as it is to picture Ken and Barbie playing Scrooge, it may be even tougher to imagine any of us as a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous sinner. We would rather think that we are more like sweet little Tiny Tim or long suffering Bob Cratchit. But Ebenezer Scrooge lurks in all our hearts. Jesus came to redeem Scrooge, Zacchaeus, and us too. The Old Testament poses a question: Can a leopard change his spots? (Jeremiah 13:23) The Christmas story says, No. But Jesus can change a leopard s spots! Jesus can change covetous old sinners like Ebenezer Scrooge and Zacchaeus, a woman caught in adultery, a pharisaical bigot like Nicodemus, a cowardly disciple like Peter, and even people like you and me and all those other people that we have written off as irredeemable, unsalvageable, and unchangeable. Jesus came for one reason: to transform lives. The moment we give up on ourselves, or others, we have lost the reason for the season. Here are three truths (or verses) from Zacchaeus Christmas Carol: 1. BECAUSE JESUS CAME, WE SHORTSIGHTED SEE WHO WE REALLY ARE. The first verse of Zacchaeus Christmas Carol begins with these words in verse one: Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through Jesus was passing through because he was on his way to somewhere. This was an intentional journey. Several days before, he had been in the far north of Israel, at a place called Caesarea Philippi. He told his disciples that the time had come for him to go to Jerusalem to die on a cross. He and his disciples began to move southward on a journey to which all of history had pointed. 700 years before, an Old Testament prophet had captured Christ s intention: I have set my face like a flint and I know that I shall not be ashamed. Isaiah 50:7 He took the time-honored road from Galilee to Jerusalem: south, down the gently slopes of the Jordan River Valley rather than across the steep, rugged hills of central Israel. Jericho sits at the southern end of Israel a crossroads city. At Jericho, the road takes a sharp left, westward, rising almost 3,000 feet from the lowest city on planet earth up to Jerusalem. Every Jewish pilgrim on the way to the Holy City stops in Jericho to rest up, fuel up, and screw up his courage to climb that treacherous Jericho Road through twisted badlands filled with hungry predators. But Jesus doesn t have time to stop. He s passing through. He has a date with destiny. You and I, and all the Ebenezer Scrooge s in a world of lost

5 sinners, are without hope, if he doesn t make that crucifixion. All of history has come together at a single juncture to make redemption possible. Jesus can t be late! But a single tax collector named Zacchaeus is as important in God s eyes as a whole world of lost people. So is every one of you in this room. Jesus not only dies for the world, he dies specifically for individuals. He redeems us each, one by one. It s no accident that this story takes place in Jericho. Jericho is the lowest city on planet earth. You can t get any lower than Jericho. And you can t get any lower than Zacchaeus. Jericho is the oldest continually inhabited city on planet earth. No city has witnessed more sin and misery than Jericho. Few people have been involved in more sin and misery than Zacchaeus. The words of Dickens could be applied to him: a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous sinner. Everyone knows it. When Jesus stops to fellowship with him, the townsfolk lift up a chorus of complaint in verse seven: He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. Jericho is also the playground of the rich and famous. Jewish kings and Roman officials build their seasonal palaces there to escape the cold of Jerusalem winter. The rich and famous come to its spas, sports arenas, and theaters. They go to resorts at the nearby Dead Sea to bathe and pack their aging bodies in mud, hoping to experience the ancient version of a face life or Botox treatment. Jericho is tantamount to Naples, Florida: the playground of the wealthy, a warm weather retirement center, and a place for businessmen and entrepreneurs to strike it rich. I wonder: is there a Zacchaeus in Naples? Now we meet the Ebenezer Scrooge of this gospel story. Verses two and three say, A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. Pause and let that word tax collector rattle around in your mind. Almost always two words appear together in the gospels: tax collector and prostitute. There is a reason for that. Both tax collectors and prostitutes sell themselves to the highest bidder. The crowd later calls Zacchaeus a sinner. We all know that we are sinners. But there are some sinners so much more sinful than all the rest of us, that we vanilla, garden variety sinners feel quite justified in labeling them the real sinners. We need these high-roller sinners to make our sins seem like petty peccadillos by comparison. Understand the ancient tax collector. The Roman conquerors never dirtied their hands collecting taxes. Instead, they found locals who were

6 willing to turn traitor. The Romans set the tax codes. The tax collector made his money by collecting more than the going rate, and pocketing the excess. The Romans turned a blind eye to this extortion. Corruption was the price for keeping the machinery of Rome humming. People don t easily pay exorbitant taxes. So the tax collectors employed gangs of hoodlums to strong arm those they were fleecing. These were the 1 st Century version of the Mafia. Zacchaeus was a Benedict Arnold who sold out his countrymen, and prostituted his soul to the army of occupation. He was a crook who bankrupted businesses, ruined families, and took the food out of the mouths of babies and widows. In short, he was a mob boss. But worse, verse two says that he was a chief tax collector. To put it another way, he was the Boss of Bosses the Godfather of Jericho Mob Families. He was both feared and shunned. No synagogue would have allowed him to darken their door. Not only that, he was short. He probably had a little man complex that made him as sadistic as that movie gangster, Edward G. Robinson in the old Hollywood classic, Little Caesar. He was every bit a mean, moneygrubbing, and miserly mobster as Ebenezer Scrooge. But now a celebrity was coming to town: Jesus, the miracle worker. Already he had healed a blind man while coming into old Jericho. He would heal another blind man on the way out of town as he headed toward the newer resort town of Jericho. But the blindest man of all was Zacchaeus. Helen Keller once said, The only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision. Crowds had packed the sides of the road to catch a glimpse of the most famous man in Israel, and perhaps get a healing of their own. But, as we said, Zacchaeus was short. Not only that, if he got out there in the crowd without his bodyguards, the crowd might turn on him. Shortsighted Zacchaeus had to come to grips with two facts: 1) A selfawareness of who he was. In a word: too short to see Jesus, and too hated to venture out into the crowd. All the money he had extorted, and all the power he had accumulated couldn t make him an inch taller or a step closer to Jesus. We will never find redemption until we understand who we are or, more precisely, who we are not. Scrooge had to come to that painful point of self-awareness. Zacchaeus did too. And so does every one of us. The road to redemption begins when our eyes are opened. There can be no salvation without repentance. There can be no repentance until pride is shattered: the mob boss shinnying up a Sycamore tree, hanging on branches as precarious as his power. Jesus stopping and looking up at him, pointing him out to the crowd. Everyone has a good laugh. Hey it s Little Caesar up in the tree! There s nothing more painful than having your sins and shortcomings exposed in a public place. 2) A willingness to do whatever you have to do to get a clear sense of who you are, and a better sense of who Jesus is. If you have to meet

7 Jacob Marley wrapped in the chains of greed, and realize that you are forging those same chains that will drag you down to hell, then do it. If you have to climb a Sycamore tree and be embarrassed in front of the whole town, then do it. Whatever it takes to find your redemption in Christ, do it. The joy that comes after the shame is worth it all. Jesus came to take up a cross. Christmas cannot be separated from the cross. He calls us to take it up too. It means death to self, death to pride, and death to all that which kept us down and held us back from seeing who we really are so that we can be all that God has for us to be. Zacchaeus discovered the heart of the gospel: there can be no salvation apart from a tree. He had to climb that Sycamore tree as surely as Jesus had to hang on another tree a week later. 2. BECAUSE JESUS CAME, HE ACCEPTS US SINNERS AS WE REALLY ARE. Look at the second stanza of Zacchaeus Christmas Carol: When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. So he came down and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. verses 5-7 Jesus meets Zacchaeus right where he is: the Master meets the Mob Boss. Jesus wastes no time. He has none to waste. Neither does Zacchaeus, Scrooge, or any of us. Verse five: Zacchaeus come down immediately. Today is the day of salvation. Scrooge knows that a grave awaits him, and, beyond that, an eternity that dwarfs all of our todays. None of us has a moment to wait or waste. Eternity comes in the blink of an eye when we least expect it. Zacchaeus, Jesus will only come by for a brief moment. He will never pass by your way again. Look at Jesus words next: I must stay at your house today. Jesus has no choice. He must go to Zacchaeus house. He tells us why in verses 9&10: Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. There is a world of lost sinners; the spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham. God promised Abraham some 4,000 years ago that, through his Great Son, he would save people from every nation of the world. In Galatians 3:16, St. Paul tells us that that Great Son of Abraham is none other than Jesus Christ. There are lost sons and daughters of Abraham in this room today. It doesn t matter how much we have sinned, or how far we have fallen. Jesus says of the Mob Boss of all Bosses in verse nine, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. But it has to be today. Tomorrow Jesus will be on the Jericho Road going up to Jerusalem. When he passes by you need to let him come on in to your house and your life. The crowd is incensed. Nobody likes Scrooge. Even fewer people like Zacchaeus. He has gone to be the guest of a sinner. (verse seven). No one ever creates a scandal among good religious folk more than Jesus.

8 And this is the greatest scandal of all: he loves us just the way we are gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, religious bigot, or notorious sinner. He knocks at the doors of the most unlikely folks and says, If any one hears my voice, and will open, I will come in and fellowship with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20). Isn t it too bad that the religious folk aren t always as forgiving of sinners? How about it: have you asked Jesus to come home to your house, and take up residence in your life? 3. BECAUSE JESUS CAME, HE TRANSFORMS US TO BECOME WHO WE CAN REALLY BE. Jesus meets us where we are, and accepts us for who we are, but he never allows us to stay where we ve been. Redemption is all about transformation. Scrooge becomes a different man. So does Zacchaeus. The word repentance literally means to turn around and go in the opposite direction. Zacchaeus is so overwhelmed by the love of Jesus (maybe he is the first person to ever love this despicable tax collector for who he is). Love is the most powerful change agent in the universe. The Mob Boss gushes out in verse eight, Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. Isn t it interesting how many times in the gospel, redemption begins with our pocketbook. What is the thing you love most: is it money, or affirmation, or power, or prestige, or position, or the esteem of others? What happens in those places is the proof of the puddings as far as Jesus redemption is concerned. He has come to tear down the high places, to topple our most precious idols, and to cut off the chains that bind us up the most! I wonder: did Charles Dickens think of Zacchaeus when he created Ebenezer Scrooge? Surely, Dickens knew that the reason for the Christmas season is not so much to brighten our December as to transform our lives. A Christmas Carol ends much like this story of Zacchaeus, with these parting words about Scrooge: He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them May our story, or the last verse of our personal Christmas Carol, end the same way. Or, as Tiny Tim might say, And may God bless us, one and all. [Final film clip from A Christmas Carol Movie] Copyright December 7&8, 2013 by Covenant Church of Naples / PCA