“What do you want me to do for you?”

Sermon on Luke 18:31-19:10

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS 

March 21, 2021

The grandma watches from the sidelines as her six-year-old granddaughter sits down next to another kid - a stranger - at the playground. The child says, “I need a friend. Will you play superheroes with me?”

The mom holds her four-year-old son on her lap in the darkened theater. It’s his first time going to the movies and he had been so excited. But once the movie started, he was overwhelmed by it all and she’s been quietly whispering encouraging words to him for over a half-hour now. He’s had his ups and downs, but now he’s reached a breaking point. He screams out - loud enough for everyone to hear - “Get me out of here! Get me out of here now!”

The preschool teacher turns around and notices something unusual on their walk. One of the two-year-olds has decided to sit down right in the middle of the sidewalk. She’s still holding onto her walk buddy’s hand. The teacher bends down to ask why she’s sitting and the little girl looks up with feverish eyes and says, “I don’t feel good. I sit down.”

3am. The new dad wakes with a start. The baby’s crying. Again. He pauses and listens for a minute to see if the baby will settle. But the cry is insistent and the dad recognizes it as a “I need to eat right now,” cry. Only two months in to this parenting gig and he already knows there are hungry cries, tired cries, “my diaper is wet” cries. His feet hit the floor and he’s off to help. 

Children’s ministers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief this week when they consulted the lectionary because LAST week’s Bible story was about the rich man and Lazarus in Hades….but THIS week’s story is about Zacchaeus. Whew! This is a children’s story. We even have a Bible song about it. Thank heavens. 

Zacchaeus is beloved by children and Sunday School teachers alike because is IS such a great story for kids. There’s something about this short grown up who climbs trees that’s so relatable, right? 

Funny thing is, though, kids aren’t the ones who really need the reminders this story provides. It’s a story about vulnerability and expressing need...and having those needs met. And those are areas of expertise for most kids. 

Zacchaeus doesn’t seem, at first glance, to be a vulnerable person. We’re told right off the bat that he’s a tax collector. Not JUST a tax collector, but a chief one - and rich. Another rich guy interacting with Jesus. We start to think, “I know where this is heading.” We remember the rich guy who ignored Lazarus. We remember the rich guy who couldn’t bear to sell all his possessions and just couldn’t make himself small enough to pass through the eye of Jesus’s metaphorical needle. 

But Zacchaeus is….different somehow. We aren’t told his motivations, but he wants to see Jesus. And since the crowds were thick and drones hadn’t been invented yet, he had to find a way to get up higher to see. So he scampered up a tree. Apparently his desire to see Jesus was so great that he didn’t mind looking a little silly out in public. 

I don’t think he ever imagined that Jesus would notice him, up there in the tree. And I wonder how he felt when this famous teacher, this stranger, stopped on the side of that Jericho rode and singled him out. “Zacchaeus, come down from up there. I need to go over to your house today.” His enthusiasm for seeing Jesus has led to Jesus seeing him. Not just seeing him, mind, but coming over to his house! 

Zacchaeus is an interesting character. We’re told just enough about him pique our curiosity. I’ve often heard him described as a mean ol’ tax collector, ostracized by the community. This encounter with Jesus changes him and he decides to be more honest in his profession. The restoration that Jesus speaks of at the end of the story is Zacchaeus’s repentance and the grace extended to him. 

But there’s another way to read this story, too. Biblical scholar Robert Williamson, Jr. says we don’t actually know that Zacchaeus is dishonest. [1] It’s possible that he’s doing his job as fairly as possible, but still disliked by the community because, hey, nobody likes the tax man. The NRSV says he’s going to give half of what he has to the poor but the original Greek there is actually in the present tense, “I GIVE half of what I have to the poor. And if I cheat anyone, I do my best to make it right.” [2] 

Read this way, it’s not so clear that Zacchaeus is repenting here at all. Instead, he’s defending himself against the grumblings of the crowd, who don’t understand why Jesus has singled out this tax collector - of all people! - for friendship. If this is the case, the restoration that Jesus speaks of at the end of the story might be a restoration of Zacchaeus to the community. “Here,” Jesus says, “This man may be a tax collector. But he is also a person, just trying to do his best. He’s a part of your community. He matters and is worthy of love.”

Whichever way we choose to understand Zacchaeus, his life is altered by this encounter with Jesus on the side of the road in Jericho. He goes out on an actual limb to encounter Jesus...and when he opens himself in that way, when he makes himself vulnerable, Jesus enters into his need and offers restoration, healing, transformation. 

Zacchaeus isn’t the only person whose life is changed on this day in Jericho. Before encountering Zaccheaus, he also befriends a man whose name is lost to history. This man is also sitting on the side of the road, but not up in a tree. Instead he is down in the dirt, sitting and begging for help on the side of the road. It feels like a prelude to Palm Sunday - Jesus comes into town and a crowd gathers for the parade. Over the din of the crowd, one voice rises above the rest, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Neighbors gathered near tell the blind man sitting at the side of the road to hush up. “There’s no need to make a scene. He’s coming down the road. He’ll be here soon. Just shhhh.” But he yells out again, even louder, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”

Where Zacchaeus didn’t seem vulnerable at first glance, this man wears vulnerability his sleeve. As a blind person in the ancient world he is utterly dependent on the community for support and care. Are we surprised, then, that he would so passionately and loudly cry out to Jesus for help? Like Zacchaeus, he makes a spectacle of himself...and it makes other folks uncomfortable. Like Zacchaeus, he captures Jesus’s attention. 

Jesus approaches the man and says, quite simply, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Hearing this, the man goes big. He asks for his sight to be restored. He isn’t afraid to ask for what he really wants, what he really needs. And he believes, somehow, that Jesus can make this happen. And so he asks. And his life is transformed. Jesus enters into his need and offers restoration, healing, transformation. 

Restoration, healing, transformation. Jesus offers them without reservation. His model is the reason we continue to do our level best to share hope, create justice, meet basic needs in our own communities and world. We see how Jesus did and we feel called to do the same. To speak up against injustice, to amplify the voices of those who aren’t heard, to build a better world for all people. No exceptions. 

I know that so many of us are do-ers. “Tell me what to do Jesus, and I’m on it. I will write a check, call my elected representatives, give my time, attend that rally….heck, if you need it, Jesus, I will even SERVE ON THAT COMMITTEE.”

I sometimes wonder if we get so caught up in the doing that we forget that we not only serve because of Christ, we serve THROUGH Christ. 

We are able to creatively resist, build, create, minister through the strength Christ pours into us. We couldn’t do this work on our own. We are enabled to do it by the one who walked the road to Jerusalem, the one who withstood the overwhelming cheers and jeers, the one who paused and made time to enter into relationship on the side of so many roads, the one who always stood with the marginalized, the one who sought out the vulnerable and restored them to community. 

This same one is with us here and now. This same one comes to us when we are vulnerable, weary, weak, needy and supports us each and every day. 

When we are able to follow in the blind man’s footsteps, in Zacchaeus’s footsteps, and be bravely vulnerable - 

When we scamper up a tree to encounter Jesus or shout out for help even though people around us tell us to simmer down - 

When we are able to ask for what we need - like the six year old at the playground, the overwhelmed four year old at the movies, the two year old who wasn’t feeling well, the baby who needed to eat at 3am - 

When we seek Christ, Christ will not leave us hanging. “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says in John’s gospel, “I am right here with you now.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks the blind man. And, friends, I believe this with my heart to be true: Christ quietly asks the same question of each of us when we turn to him in our honest, real, vulnerable need. 

“What do you want me to do for you?” 

What a gift, to be loved into newness by a simple question like that. 

NOTES:

[1] BibleWorm podcast for March 21, 2021.

[2] https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/10/who-then-can-be-saved-this-guy.html