Reasoning
based on Isaiah 1:18
Pentecost 23/Proper 26 Midweek
October 31, 2007
Pastor Richard Mau
Today’s Scripture
Psalm 130 Isaiah 1:10-18 Luke 19:1-10
In God’s words to his people through Isaiah, we wonder if there is a conflict with what we previously have learned about worship and sacrifices in the Old Testament. On the surface it appears that the people are inundating God with what he asked for, sacrifices of animals and feasts on certain occasions. It seems that God is unreasonable.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus appears unreasonable to the crowd that has gathered to see him, to hear him, and maybe even to touch him. He picks this little Zaccheus out to go to his house. Zaccheus is not little just in physical stature, but the people had him on the lowest ring of the food chain as he had sold himself out to the Romans as a tax collector. He took advantage of that position to rip off his neighbors and take care of himself quite well financially and in his lavish way of life.
“Come now, let us reason together,” God calls out to his people in Isaiah. Jesus makes the same plea as he sits at Zaccheus’ table with the other “sinners” gathered around him.
God is tired of watching us make a show for him, for ourselves, and for those around us. God is calling his people hypocrites because the sacrifices and worship services are not what he has commanded them to be. Jesus eats with Zaccheus and his buddies because they see in Jesus who he really is and what God’s love really is. Jesus is not eating with the Pharisees because they are the real tax collectors in this account. They are the ones making people bow and grovel and do the “things of temple worship,” for self-serving reasons and not to bring glory and honor to God in faith and in thanksgiving to God for his loving kindnesses.
God cries out to his people, he cries out to you and me today. “Come, let us reason together…” he says. Put all of your baggage aside. God is telling us now what the real stuff is. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Get a red stain on a white garment and it is ruined. You cannot get that stain out. But God does. He does it with something that stains even worse, a washing in blood, Jesus’ blood. Jesus’ blood removes the stain of sin from you and makes you pure and holy again. That is what God wants you to understand as you live your life as a Christian. Live it in the humility and joy and enthusiasm of one having a miracle performed that once was thought impossible. The embarrassing red stain of sin has been cleansed by God’s love and his work, not by things that we do.
In the Old Testament those sacrifices and blood of animals pointed towards the perfect and complete sacrifice, Jesus on the cross. People had changed the focus on what God does for them to what they are doing.
When Jesus
approached