Happy New Year!
Could not get up on-time to go to the 10am service at our church so we went to a church with an 11:15 service.
www.RiverWood.cc
1500 people showed up in 4 services for Night Before Christmas.
Next Sunday at MTS Centre
Zacchaeus (Luke 19) was a wee little man....
The story works well for children. Nice story of repentance. That misses the real point.
Jesus was passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. It was a taxation and balsam production city. The tax guy was rich.
They were not popular. They were self-employed contractors who collected whatever they wanted, paid the contracted amount to the Romans and kept the rest. So they got filthy rich and hated.
Z wanted to see this famous man Jesus but did not dare to mix with the crowd. He climbed a tree.
When Jesus got there, he called Z "the righteous one" and invited himself for dinner. The crowd got indignant and complained about Jesus going to spend time with this scrum man. Arrogant and proud people take offence.
Zs life is turned around. Grammar can be tricky? The tense in the original is present. I "give" half I "repay" what I ripped off.
Jesus is about acceptance. Jesus came to Z because he is the outcast. Not to save the country club crowd but the least of them.
Who is the Z in your life? The scapegoat? The rejected in our society. We are called to be acceptors not rejecters. A Dr had to remove a tumour from a young woman's face. In the process he cut a nerve that left her face twisted. Her husband loved her anyway. He accepted her.
The point of the story is that Jesus searched Z and said there is no room for judgement.
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