11--5-95	Just Doing What's Right	Hab. 1:1-4; 2:1-4

2 Thess. 1:1-4, 11-12

Luke 19:1-10

Several days ago I was having a conversation with a person who believed very strongly that one's salvation is dependent upon his or her works, rather than upon by the grace on of God. And, while I agreed that good works are important and indeed the kind of response one might expect in a person who believed in Jesus as Lord and Savior, I still had to insist that if any one of us were to depend upon our good works to get us to heaven, we would all be lost. For none of us is perfect and perfection is what God wants in all of us.

And, so, as we talked, I asked the question, "When Jesus walked this earth, what would our religion be like if he had lived and preached a doctrine of justification by obedience to the Law of Moses rather than the Good News, The Gospel, that he did preach. In fact, I asked, "How might the Bible read if Jesus had preached a doctrine of works righteousness?"

The thought intrigued me. Indeed, how would an account of Christ's life read if that is what Jesus had taught? So, I sat down and started to write a few verses of what such a biblical account. And so I'd like to share a portion of it with you this morning – words from what I call The Bad News Bible:

1And as he was passing through the streets of Jerusalem the Scribes and Pharisees brought a women to him who had been caught in adultery. "Master, what do you say we should do with her?" they asked.

2"What do the Law and the Prophets say?" asked Jesus.

3"Moses said to stone her outside the city gates," was their reply.

4"Well, then," said the Lord, "What's keeping you? Do you have a few stones for me to throw, too?"

5After the woman's dead body had been taken away, Jesus washed his hands, according to the custom prescribed by Holy Scripture. Just as he was drying his hands, he looked up and saw ten lepers come his way.

6"Teacher," they said to him, "can you save us from this terrible disease?"

7"How dare you approach me this way?" he said. "Don't you know that God's Word forbids lepers from coming in contact with the clean? Besides, one of you is a Samaritan! Get away from me!"

8When the lepers departed Jesus started walking through Jerusalem, once more. By this time the Scribes and Pharisees knew that he was their friend and certainly the Messiah. As he walked along there was a large crowd of Pharisees surrounding their hero, Jesus – so large that he could hardly be seen in the crowd.

9And, there was a man, Zacchaeus, who was short of stature, and a tax collector, a man despised by the Scribes and Pharisees for cooperating with the Roman authorities. He climbed up into a tree to get a better look at Jesus coming down the street. 10As Jesus approached he looked up at Zacchaeus and said, "You dirty runt of a scoundrel! So, you thought you could get a better look at me? May you be cursed for eternity for your vile, ungodly deeds!"

11Jesus then went to the house of a Pharisee to eat supper. 12As he sat down at table with the Pharisee, a woman of the streets came in, kneeled before him, and began to anoint his feet with oil, washing them with her tears, and wiping them with her hair. 13Jesus reeled back in disgust and told her, "Get out of here you filthy harlot!" 14Hearing this, the Pharisee's friends took the woman outside and flogged her, quoting the Law of Moses about how a woman should not touch a man.

15After dinner Jesus returned to the Temple. It was Friday night and the Sabbath had begun. 16As he approached the Temple he met a man who had been blind since birth. Looking at the man, Jesus said, "I suppose you want me to heal you! Scripture is clear that I can't heal you on the Sabbath. Besides, you're a sinner. You deserve to be blind!"

17And Jesus grew in favor with the Scribes and Pharisees and was proclaimed the Messiah.

Now, of course, we know, thankfully, that the scriptures do not read like this. However, if Jesus had not preached a Gospel of forgiveness and grace, I am sure that what you just heard could pass for Holy Scripture. But the fact is that Christ came to earth and walked in our midst to proclaim God's love and to heal the brokenness between ourselves and God. And, so, he didn't join with the Pharisees in stoning the adulteress, as the Law demands. Instead he asked them, "Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone." And then turning to the women he told her to go and sin no more. And when he was approached by the ten lepers for healing, he didn't shun them for their disease, as the Law demands. Nor did he tell the Samaritan Leper to go away, as the Law permits. Instead he healed them all. And when the sinner Zacchaeus climbed up into a sycamore tree to get a better look at the Messiah, Jesus didn't condemn him, as the Law of Moses did. Instead, Jesus invited himself to dinner with him.

In fact, Jesus' whole ministry, his message, was a surprise to the Pharisees and to the Sadducees, and to the sinners, alike. And the Gospel of Jesus Christ continues to be a surprise to us, even today. For even as we live and work together as Christians we often forget about God's grace and forgiveness. In an effort to find something stable to hold on to in the rolling waves of life's storms, rather than seeking shelter in the comfort of the Spirit's feathery wings or in the assurance of God's providence, we often harbor our lifeboats in the bays of legalism. And when the church does this it fails God and falters in its mission to be the Body of Christ.

When we as members of the church define ourselves by who we are not we cling to a legalism that Christ, himself, rejected. There are those church people, for instance, who look at the evil of the world and point out the sins of others and say, "Thank God we're not like those people!" As Jesus saw Zacchaeus up in the tree, he could have said something like that. He could have said, "Thank God I'm not like that hated tax collector up there." And, indeed, he probably heard some of the people around him saying that very thing as he approached Zacchaeus up in the tree. There were, no doubt, those righteous people in the crowd who were shocked when they heard Jesus invite himself to Zacchaeus' house. But that's why Jesus did it. He wanted to show the people that they aren't God's children, simply because they somewhat successfully follow the rules laid down by Moses. Rather, they are God's people because God has chosen them. And that, my friends, is grace.

God chooses us, as well. Why? Because we have successfully followed God's laws? No! It is because God loves us. Does God love us because we have successfully separated ourselves from the rest of the world's sinners? No. God loves us because God has made us and we are God's children. It's as simple as that. And putting Christ at the center of our lives means remembering who we are.

And, so there is no separation between saints and sinners. That's why Jesus was able to go to a sinner's house that day and encourages us to do the same. There's no gulf between the good and the bad. That's why Jesus could heal the sick and encourages us to do the same. There's nothing keeping us from ministering to sinners. That's why Jesus saved and forgave the adulteress, and healed the blind man and the lepers and the foreigners and encourages us to do the same. And, my friends, the Church has grown over the centuries only when it has remembered this amazing truth.

Still, in the grace that we see being lived out in Christ's ministry to Zacchaeus, there is Zacchaeus' response to that grace. When Jesus came into Zacchaeus' life something wonderful had happened. And when something wonderful happens to us it is only natural that there be a response. And Zacchaeus' response was to stand up and say to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I have half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Here, Zacchaeus promise to Jesus was his response to God's grace. And we need to notice, here, that he was saved, not because of his response, but because of God's grace. Nevertheless, his response was good. And Jesus acknowledged the grace that had elicited Zacchaeus' good response, saying, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

Just doing what's right is our response to God's saving grace. Just doing what's right is evidence that we have put our faith in Christ. Just doing what's right is what is expected of a Christian. Just doing what's right is a part of being a servant of God. Just doing what's right doesn't bring us salvation. Rather, just doing what's right is concrete evidence that Christ and God's grace is at the center of our being. And what a joy that is! We are relieved of the burden of having to be perfect in works. Now we can be perfect in grace. What a gift that is to us from God! What good news! And that's what the Gospel is all about.

When we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others we become like Christ – we open our doors to those who are in need of God's grace, we sit down at the same table with those who are sinners, we make no distinction between "us" and "them". For we are all one in Christ, children of the Heavenly Father, fellow travelers on this journey called life.

Amen.