daily java

Daily Java:

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way. When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.” Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man  came to seek and save those who are lost.” (Luke 19:1-10)

Jesus always made those who were in leadership mad. Instead of kowtowing to them as he was supposed to (at least in their minds), he went to the wrong kind of people. Zacchaeus was the wrong kind of people.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. A tax collector worked with the occupation army taking taxes from the Jewish people on a commission basis. The Romans had to have a certain amount and the more the tax collectors could get, the more they could keep. It was a situation ripe with graft and extortion.

They were considered traitors. And as a result, they were hated.

It was the same feeling as the French had in World War II when French women would give themselves to the Nazi soldiers. If the French caught them, they would shave their heads and throw them into the street. The French felt the same was towards anyone who colluded with the Nazis.

The Jews felt this way about those who worked for the Romans, especially the tax collectors.

But who did Jesus go to dinner with? A tax collector. Who did he hang around with? People like this. All of them felt welcome with Jesus.

While he was at Zacchaeus’ house, the people (mostly the leadership and those they could get to gripe with them) were mad because he had gone to the house of a notorious sinner.

While they were complaining, inside the house, Zacchaeus blurted out that he would give half his wealth to the poor and recompense anyone that felt they had been cheated on their  taxes four hundred percent.

The leadership whined because things weren’t done their way and Zacchaeus did things God’s way. good things happened inside where Jesus was while stupid things happened outside where Jesus wasn’t.

The outsiders brought Jesus in while the insiders left Jesus out.

The outsiders always felt comfortable with Jesus and the establishment didn’t. But because the outsiders were with Jesus, and because Jesus is the kind of person who not only loved people, but changed them, the outsiders became better. The establishment didn’t.

It is the same today. The Christian establishment is never comfortable in the presence of the real Jesus. They like the one they have cobbled together over the years, a Jesus who is as judgmental and traditional as they are.

While churches that portray the real Jesus are changing lives, churches with the judgmental and traditional Jesus are dying.

And it should be that way. Jesus did not come to make people happy and to keep things the way they were. He came to change people. He was the ultimate change agent. He never left anyone unchanged.

Even if the change he left was anger, people were always changed when he came around.

I want to be changed and I want to have a place where people are changed into his glorious image (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Without that change, that glorious change, Jesus’ coming is worthless. Unless Jesus had gone with Zacchaeus and his group, nothing good would have been accomplished that day.

Jesus wanted change and he brought change whether people wanted it or not.