It’s the final week of stewardship month! Where has it all brought us? We’ve watched a parade with a short little man, spoken to healed lepers, wrangled with persistent widows and unjust judges, even prayed with Pharisees and tax collectors--all these stories of Luke that have made us consider what faithfulness looks like…what we might offer God to show our commitment.

This last week, I want us to return to Zacchaeus. Let’s think again about how incredible his encounter with Jesus must have been. And, this time, let’s pay special attention to what happens to him because of this meeting. Maybe if we understand what’s happening, we can touch the miraculous power that’s at work there too.

I hope you’ll come and be a part of our commitment-making that will happen as we offer our stewardship promises before God, and that all together we will experience God’s blessing as we seal it all in worship.

In hope,

Hardy

Please join us immediately following the service for our Coffee Hour

(in-person in Trinity Court or online via Zoom).

“Why are they treasured? Who knows? But maybe you can say at least this about it-that they're treasured less for who they are and for what the world has made them than for what they have it in them at their best to be because ultimately, of course; it's not the world that made them at all. ‘All the earth is mine!’ says Yahweh, ‘and all that dwell therein,’ adds the Twenty-fourth Psalm, and in the long run, presumably, that goes for you and me too.”

Frederick Buechner, describing Zacchaeus and other misfits of the Bible

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycomore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’