Hurry

A sermon on Luke 19:1-10 in five movements, preached originally for seminarians.  One interpretation of a little story about a guy named Zacchaeus.  

I.

There’s no time.  No time to get homework done, no time to call home and talk to mom.  No time to do all of the readings for class.

There’s not enough time to get everything done on my to-do list.  There’s not enough time to actually hang out with friends.  There’s certainly not enough time to preach the gospel in a four to five minute sermon!

II.

Jesus doesn’t have much time either. 

No matter how you read this story, as much as I tried to wring a message about rest out of this text, gospel readings never can quite mask the quick, down and dirty form of ministry that Jesus seemed to prefer.  These gospel accounts are full of immediately! passing through! hurry! and today!

And do you notice how Jesus is always moving?  He’s passing through Jericho, zipping toward Jerusalem. 

It makes sense.  A short life of thirty-three years.  And it’s less time than that, really, if we look at the brevity of Jesus’ ministry presented in the gospels.  Three years.  He must have been a passing comet, a blip on the radar. 

III.

So Jesus is passing through and makes a stop to call out to this guy Zacchaeus.  Jesus doesn’t waste any time on pleasantries.  No, “hello, nice to meet you,” but  “Zacchaeus! Hurry and come down! I must stay at your house today!”

Now. Today. Move quickly. 

And maybe Zacchaeus scampered out of that tree only to have a nice leisurely time with Jesus back at his house, but I don’t buy it.  The parable that follows up this story is that pretty harsh tale about not burying what’s given you in the ground, but instead doing something about what is left with you.  It’s this grand affirmation of action.  Zacchaeus gets out of that tree and explains and is affirmed for doing something.  If you want to be a part of this Jesus thing, you have to get caught up in the movement of it all. 

IV.

Dear friend, over saturated, over caffeinated seminarians, I can’t rewrite the story for you.  Christ’s imperative is still to hurry.  Jesus’ response to Zacchaeus isn’t the pleasant, calming the storm type Jesus we so desperately want to hear.    

Instead, this is a wake up call.  We’ve got three years in seminary, so we’d better move quick. We’d better be nimble.  We’d better get going. 

Not because we want to be the best or impress everyone, but because it’s impossible to believe in the kingdom of God and not have a sense of urgency to your actions.  We can’t really believe that Jesus has sought after us and not be responding with some kind of enthusiasm. 

I thought I was busy, so I looked for rest in this story.  But then I was reading for another class and got the statistic dropped on my head that even though right now we feel like we are unique in how busy and overworked we are, even just a few decades ago people were clocking more hours of work than what we are now.  We’re really good at filling our time, but it’s with this chaos, this messy disarray of scattered tasks. 

So sure I’m busy, but I’m occupied with all the wrong things. 

You can look real busy if you’re checking your phone all the time and waving your planner around and racing through your assignments just to get the grade.   Been there, done that.  

I’m rushing past you because my calendar tells me I have to, not because I’ve got the urgency of a message from God.   I’m not talking about salvation like Jesus was, I’m endlessly talking about how much I have to do, and then actually not doing much of anything. 

V.

So you’re busy? Overworked? Probably true. 

But ask yourself why.  What are you really so busy with?  What compels you to do what you do?   

Because God has called us, we have a reason to hurry!  We should have some urgency and purpose to our actions, and thank God for that.  Our frenzied lifestyles would look different if we were responding to the voice saying, “Hurry!  Come down!  I must stay at your house today!  Today salvation has come to your house, because you, you, and you are child of Abraham!” We’d be in a hurry, sure.  But it would be giddy.  We might look happy about what we were doing.  We would be so excited; we couldn’t help but move quickly. 

Give yourself ten seconds to think about what an active, excited, and passionate community of seminarians might look like. 

Don’t be busy just because.  Hurry down, because God has called you today.