TODAY IS THE DAY FOR GOD'S EXTRAVAGANT LOVE

Wayward children.  Maybe you have one in your life – a friend, a family member, your own child.  That someone whom you love who keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over again:  making a mess of their lives, hurting themselves, breaking our hearts.

Read Jeremiah 31:31-34 and you hear the longing of God’s heart for the wayward people of Israel.  God had kept all of God’s promises to them.  He had delivered them out of captivity in Egypt, lead them into the land God had promised to Abraham, loved them and protected them.  But time after time, they broke their promises, following their own selfish desires and made a mess of things, ending up back in captivity and exile in Babylon.

Are we any different?  I don’t think I am.  I’ve done and said things that would have made my parents cringe.  I’ve made the same mistakes, the same selfish choices over and over again, making a mess of things and finding myself captive to my own self-centered desires.

And then there’s Zacchaeus.  You remember Zacchaeus – “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.  He climbed up into a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.”

Yep – considered a traitor because as a tax collector he worked for the Roman oppressors, he overcharged his neighbors and cheated his employers by skimming off the top.  Did he break his mother’s heart?

I know he grieved his heavenly Father’s heart, like the people of Israel did, like I have, like we all have.  God longed for the day when Zacchaeus would turn away from his sinfulness and hold God as close in his heart as God held him -- the day when God’s word wasn’t just something that was preached to him but became a way of life.

I know this because Jesus stopped in the middle of his journey to Jerusalem and to the cross where he would become the ultimate expression of God’s extravagant, over the top, take your breath away love.  Jesus, stopped and looked up at Zacchaeus hidden among the leaves of a tree (hidden by his shame?), and said, “Today is the day, Zaccheus.  Come down out of that tree, because I’m coming to your house.” 

We don’t know what Jesus and Zacchaeus talked about that day.  We only know about how it changed his life.

But I do know what God has said to me:  “You’re the apple of my eye, and I’ve engraved your name on the palm of my hand because I’m never going to forget you, never going to give up on you.  I hold you in my heart and I long to be in yours.  I am your God and you are my beloved.  I love you so much that even before you knew who I was, I sent Christ to die for you.”

Out of God’s extravagant love, Jesus came to Zacchaeus, just as God longs to come into God’s children’s hearts, to dwell there through Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus answered the longing of Zaccheus’ heart for that extravagant love of God.

We’re all here today because we’re longing for something.  We’re all seekers.  Even me.  I long for the presence of God, to be loved and accepted, to be part of community.  I’m looking for forgiveness and mercy, and healing,  I come seeking for truth that gives my life meaning and purpose and the strength to face the questions of life that have no easy answers. 


What are you longing for?  Today, Christ speaks to each of us.  “Today is the day.  Today I bring you the gift of God’s extravagant love.”  It's freely given and ours for the asking.  How will we respond to it today?

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