Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. Now a man named Zacchaeus was there; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to get a look at Jesus, but being a short man he could not see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, because Jesus was going to pass that way.
And when Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, because I must stay at your house today.” So he came down quickly and welcomed Jesus joyfully. And when the people saw it, they all complained, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, half of my possessions I now give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone of anything, I am paying back four times as much!” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this household, because he too is a son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
We are going to come back to this story. Meanwhile,
Psalm 17:8: "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me under the shadow of thy wings."
David asked to literally be the "little man of the eye,” the tiny reflection of yourself that you can see in other people’s pupils because you are being watched so closely by that person. David was asking God to be close, to keep an eye on him, to keep him safe. David wanted God to be near him, to focus on David such that his eyes were full of him, and to be for him. Deuteronomy 32:10 uses the phrase this way:
“In a desert land he found him (Israel), in a barren and howling wasteland. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye…”
We land here first. I can’t stress this enough. God is that close to his children. Whether that’s just those who follow Jesus or all of humanity (Paul said at Mars Hill that “we are all his offspring/children/ descendants“ ), God is near and God sees us. You might feel like you are overlooked, ignored, or unseen, but God is “apple of the eye” close. You are not alone. You are seen. You are loved.
It’s got me thinking about an implication of being God’s ambassadors, God’s representatives. We land here second.
We talk about being the hands and feet of Jesus, going places and doing things on behalf of God that reveals that the Holy Spirit has taken up His dwelling in us so that when people experience us they experience “Christ in us” (Colossians 1:27). I wonder, then, if we are meant to represent God by going into the “barren and howling wasteland” around us to guard and care for the “little people in our eyes” as well. If people are wondering, “Does God even see me and care?” that question is often answered when God’s people see them and care.
I’ve been thinking about this recently because of some realities of life that have highlighted the Christian burden of caring. When we are so close to people that they are the “little man in our eye,” we weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15) as we move through this barren and howling wasteland – and everyone weeps at some point. We will help each other carry burdens (Galatians 6:2) - and everyone carries burdens.
Doing this for everyone is an impossible task that only one person in the history of the world was able to do (let alone do perfectly) and that’s Jesus. But we, who as humans are God’s image bearers, and who as believers are ambassadors indwelt by God’s spirit; members of God’s body, the church – we must go into the wasteland and weep for more than our own sorrows and carry more burdens than our own.
But really engaging this can feel…unsettling. There was a reason Jesus’ audience wanted clarification on whom their neighbors were (Luke 10:25-37). The Bible says the man asking this question of Jesus was “seeking to justify himself.” I mean, it was one thing to consider your Jewish friends and family to be the neighbors to whom you extended the kind of love Jesus talked about when he summarized the Law, but….
• that Samaritan (Luke 10)?
• that Roman centurion (Acts 10)?
• that prostitute (Luke 7)?
• that tax collector we read about this morning (Luke 19)?
Yes indeed. That’s what “friends of sinners” do (Matthew 11:16-19). Those using that label thought they were mocking Jesus, but Jesus embraced that term: he was and is a friend of sinners.
So this tension of the Christian call to genuinely care about others including “the other”, to be so close that they take up that “apple” spot in our eyes, often places us in tense spots.
• Samaritans were aligned with blasphemy, and caring about them as neighbors made it look like Jewish people supported blasphemy.
• Roman centurions were aligned with the political oppression of God’s people; accepting them into the church could look like overlooking Roman sin.
• Tax collectors like Zacchaeus were traitorous enablers of economic oppression. Having a meal with them could easily look like enablement.
• Prostitutes were an obvious face of sexual immorality (and often fertility cult worship at that time). Spending time with them looked like you were minimizing or even overlooking their sin.
Yet God has his eye on them; he “came to seek and to save the lost.” And if he was in they eye of Jesus, he should have been in the eyes of God’s people. Wastelands have never been meant to stop Christians, no matter how barren and howling they are.
The God who created us, loves us, and offers salvation to us has a vested interest in His world. It groans because of the devastation that sin has wrought in everything. We are called to collectively groan as a church as we recognize the brokenness that has infiltrated everything God has created. In that shared weeping we represent the Immanuel part of how God is described - God with us, felt strongly because God’s people are with people in whatever wilderness they find themselves.
I have been thinking about this a lot since the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Parts of it were beautiful and entertaining; parts of it were a celebration of Dionysian or Bacchanalian revelries; a part of it (at least initially) seemed to parody Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, whether that was the organizers’ intent or not (they claim it wasn’t; some of the actors claim it was).
And I found in my reaction that I was not drawn to think of how I could get closer to people who live in a worldview that to me looks like an extravagant and howling wilderness so that they could see the love of God for them through me.
How do I want to see them? Like God sees them: with the kind of love Jesus showed Zacchaeus. With the kind of love that wants to invite them to leave the wilderness and join the banquet feast of the kingdom.
Where will I have to go? Into even barren and howling wildernesses, places that are uncomfortable and maybe even hostile.
How close will I have to get? Apple-of-the-eye close.
I think of Jesus looking at Jerusalem and weeping that the people keep looking for peace and not finding it. The organizers of the Olympic opening ceremonies have said they were trying to send a message that violence was foolish. It was apparently their (confusing and vulgar) attempt at a call to peace. Yet there will be no peace when the exploitative and even violent legacy of Dionysian revelries sets a moral compass.
So what did Jesus do when the Jewish people got their search for peace all wrong? He invited them to the banquet table.
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:10-13)
We also see the heart that motivated him.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.” (Matthew 23:37-38)
He wept for those living in desolation. In fact, He gave His life so they could have access to the peace that eluded them and take their place at the banquet table of the Kingdom of God.
What should we do when cultures or individuals get a search for peace all wrong, perhaps even shockingly so? Weep, and offer our lives to God as ambassadors engaged in a ministry of reconciliation as recorded in 1 Corinthians 5:11-21.
Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others…For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all who are dead, which is all of us. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again…
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
That, I think, should have been my first thoughts and emotions. I should have seen an opportunity for a ministry of reconciliation, and prayed that the Dionysian fields within my sphere of influence would be ripe for harvest.
* * * * *
I have been the apple in the eyes of many, thank God. I have had many people be the “little people in my eye.” Some dwell in the land of promise, some in the wilderness. I must choose not to look away. Lots of people should be reflected in my eyes, because they are in the eyes of Jesus. I was writing a list this week at stuff that came into my mind. There is plenty more that could be added.
• God’s people should be able to see those in poverty and sickness in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see those fighting mental and emotional battles in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see the reflection of those rejecting Jesus and accepting Jesus and wrestling with Jesus in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see those who love the church and those who have been traumatized by the church in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see the immigrant and refugee in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see the reflection of those dying of starvation, natural disasters, persecution, and wars in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see those who think Dionysian revelry will bring peace in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see those who support Trump and Harris and any third party candidate in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should be able to see the reflection of those who are broken or confused or even defiantly sinful as they wrestle with questions of sex and gender in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should work to see the reflection of their neighbors in this church in the apple of their eye.
• God’s people should work to see the reflection of their family members in the apple of their eye.
Why? Because we want to be like Jesus.
Who is my neighbor? Everybody.
We start with family, then friends and church family, but eventually anybody we know is fair game. We are just looking at the world and asking what breaks God heart. We pray. We intercede. We petition God to heal us and our broken land. We move closer to those who are hurting, because it’s hard to carry a burden from a distance.
This is not limited by party, organization, religion, nationality, social status…. I went through my list and color coded the people in my eye: red and blue for situations that, fairly or unfairly, are associated with the Right or Left; purple for stuff everyone agrees on. It’s a mix, because everybody is my neighbor.
Who needs to be “the little people” in a Christian’s eye? Everybody.
We know the power of the gospel. We understand salvation, and healing, and renewal, and grace, and hope, and peace and joy, and the beauty of righteousness. We are outposts of the Kingdom: wherever we go, we take the presence of Jesus and set up camp. And that camp is full of truth, love, and the message of a Creator who is in the business of redeeming broken things. And we can’t do that from a distance.
Choose your analogy: we run to the battle; we go to the fields in need of harvest; we sow the seed of the gospel in every soil we encounter; we love our broken and fallen neighbors just like Jesus has loved us.
Now….we can’t be equally invested in all of these things. God has placed us in certain places or with certain people or given us certain gifts and oriented our broken hearts in certain directions such that some things will move front and center in our attempts to bring gospel healing to the world. We will gravitate more towards specific causes (with the hope that as the church body works together we're covering our ground as a whole fairly well).
We should be careful not to dismiss those in whom God has place a different weight of gospel mourning. Not everybody can or will be in ‘your’ eye they way they are in someone else’s, but everybody should be in the eye of somebody in the church who sees the world with the eyes of Jesus.
Let’s start with us, here, in the church. Can we commit to being engaged with this church family so that everybody here has the privilege of is in the apple of someone else’s eye?
I know we are in that privileged position with God; I also know it feels practically real to me when I experience from the image bearers of God. We can’t possibly engage with everybody in the same way, but we can be praying and watching for opportunity to make sure no one is being overlooked or ignored.
We talk about being the hands and feet of Jesus. Let’s be the eyes of Jesus too. Simply caring for each other is a really, really practical way to embody the presence and love of Jesus.