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The Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray preaches the sermon at Pilgrim’s 60th Anniversary Vespers service. Photo by Angela Sampson.
Reverend brothers, friends, and fellow believers.
What a marvelous thing: Zacchaeus has a divine visitor. Today salvation has come to this house since he, Zacchaeus, the wee little man, is also a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save—the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
A house is an important thing. You’ve renovated yours. I don’t know what it was like before, but I like it now. It’s got good acoustics. You sing beautifully, and it helps to have a few guys in red stoles, too. My wife and I just sold our home in Houston, and we’ve bought a new home, but we’re not living in it, yet. It’s undergoing some renovations. We are living like the wandering Aramaeans of old, out of suitcases and boxes. But—and maybe you’ve sold a home and had this experience, you—you move out of it, and my wife sat down in the middle of it and wept. We’ve lived in the same house for 16 years, we’ve raised our children there, and there is a house full of memories and joy and even some grief in that space.
What’s a house? It’s brick and mortar and two-by-fours and carpeting and whatever. What’s the big deal? It’s because that house holds something important; it holds important memories of who we are and what our kids have done there. We remember being around that kitchen table and praying, not just for meals, but at times when there was sorrow and trouble, and there was death, when there was surgery to go through, when teenage children did stuff—well, those of you who are parents know what I’m talking about. Those things you can’t pack up and put on a moving van. That’s why it’s so hard when we leave a house and move to a new one.
It’s also hard when you renovate one because you remember what this place was like before. Oh, you can certainly say now it’s greatly improved, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t remember the time when—fill in the blank. And it’s very much connected with the things that you did here. Perhaps you remember a beloved parent’s casket sitting right there. You could think about a son or daughter or even yourself in that glowing white gown. (Well, I’m sure your son wasn’t in that glowing white gown; he was in a tuxedo.) Your wedding day is important. You can think about that child who was baptized in this Font in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. What an important event! And the fact that the furniture perhaps has been moved around a little bit, the paint’s different, the windows are different, doesn’t change any of that.
The great thing about our God is that He’s willing to be in the houses we built. He condescends in the Old Testament to be in the tabernacle, the temple. And Solomon has to admit in that Old Testament lesson, you don’t have any reason to be here, you don’t have to be in the box we built. But, you see, we’ve got a God Who’s so gracious that He’s willing to place Himself in those boxes, so that we can lay our hands on Him, so that we can hear Him speak in a specific place, so that we can come here and kneel at this altar and have His servants place in our hands that precious body and in our mouths that blood of life. That’s why I just love the last word of that Old Testament lesson, “and forgive.”
God comes among His people here, in the little humble house He’s built here where you have worshiped, many of you for 60 years—well, maybe not many of you, some of you, maybe a few of you, maybe not. Okay. But this is your spiritual home. It doesn’t have to be a great temple. Why? Because God condescends to make use of the smallest places, your home, your kitchen table where the coffee is filled, where the sugar is poured out, where children are hugged, and where you pray together for God’s blessing, and you go through the devotions on that daily basis, the Word of God is there. And that makes holy the place where you live, just as it makes this place holy.
God doesn’t have to be here. He chooses to be here for your sake, like he chose to be in the presence of Zacchaeus, that horrible sinner, that tax collector, the outcast from society. Jesus, God’s eternal Son, condescends to come to the home of sinners. Oh, that we should be just like Zacchaeus. It’s easy enough to shake our finger in his face and say, “Zacchaeus, you sinner, you tax collector, you collaborator with the Romans.” The fact is Jesus came to his house. This is a place for sinners. Those of you who are not sinners need now to stand up and leave, please. Ah, no takers. That is as it should be.
The church must remain quite clearly the community of sinners because we come here and God forgives. He gives Himself to us in this wonderful preaching—oh, wait a minute, his wonderful preaching. God has set His word on your pastor’s lips; he can’t help it but preach because his lips will burn if he does not. And he comes and he just doesn’t give nice speeches—actually, pastors are lousy speech makers. He comes and speaks the word of God. That’s no ordinary word; it does what God says. When your pastor says to you, “I forgive you all your sins,” they are gone! He is saying them away. The word of God obliterates them as far as east is from west. He drowns them in the depths of the sea. You’re free. You’re free. Your sins are gone. And this is especially for lousy sinners like us. We come here with that admission time and time and time again, “I, a poor miserable sinner.”
And there’s a whole world of people who struggle to say those words, and it’s because they don’t know the forgiving God. It’s not because they think that they’re better than anybody else, they don’t know about God’s forgiveness. It’s really hard to say, “I, a poor miserable sinner” if you do not know the gracious God Who condescends to come and take away your sins in the person of His own Son Who bore your sins on the tree of the cross and took every single one of them away. Oh, yes, I am a sinner. I have a God Who takes away my sin. I have a God Who condescends to come to the house of sinners. I have a God Who will sit and eat with sinners. I have a God Who will feed sinners. I have a God Who has gone into heaven to prepare that perfect place just for me, though I am a sinner and through Christ I am cleansed, and that place is ready for me, and I will see Him face to face.
My home and house is prepared and it is in heaven, and this beautiful house is a sign, just a sign, of that continued presence with God that you will have in eternity. But it is all here, every bit of it; it’s just that we walk by faith and not by sight. There are some Lutherans out there, that’s good. It’s okay not to see. Why? Because your God speaks. Our church has a blind mission outreach; we get, I don’t know, 20, 30, sometimes as many as 40 people there. The majority of them are sight handicapped. Boy, do they listen well. A Lutheran preacher just loves those blind people because they listen beautifully. They don’t see. All that they believe is heard. Ah, that we were so blind. Ah, that we were that lost. Oh, that we were such sinners that the Savior would come and proclaim forgiveness to us, that He would save lost ones like us, that He would forgive sinners like us. Sixty years of grace gifting to God’s people here, and maybe 60 more. But you won’t be here. Right. It’s okay, the pastors come and go. God buries them sooner or later. But He’s always here, because this God seeks and saves the lost. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses human understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.