Today Daily Devotional

Greedy people tend to be ­rather unpopular, partly because they can’t be trusted. Look the other way, and they might try to get more of something for themselves: money, possessions, power. We tend to avoid or exclude such people.

To the people in Jericho, Zacchaeus was detestable. He was chief of a network of tax collectors whose guiding principle was greed. They constantly overcharged for Roman taxes and kept the ­extra ­money for themselves.

But Jesus didn’t avoid or exclude sinners. Rather, as our text today says, “Jesus looked up” at Zacchaeus, who had climbed a tree in order to see Jesus as he came by. Then Jesus announced that he would go to Zacchaeus’s house—and that set in motion a radical repentance and repayment of all that Zacchaeus had stolen from others.

Eye contact is a powerful form of nonverbal communication. When eyes meet, souls connect. Jesus looks at each one of us—sinners by nature—and he offers love, forgiveness, and restoration. Do we avert our glance or do we fix our gaze on the lost people we encounter?

As Christ’s followers, we are his agents as we live and work among people drowning in a life of sin. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”—and he has passed the baton to us.

Jesus was doing heart checks, not money checks, as he watched people bring their ­offerings to the temple. He knew who was being stingy and who was being generous. And he explained how the gift of the poor widow was a true act of worship.

It can be tempting for church councils and nonprofit boards to focus too much on pleasing major donors, whose money can yield power and influence. It’s often the wealthy who are sought out for leadership roles and coveted as friends. Even in the body of Christ, money talks. But Jesus is saying here, “Not so fast.”

We also should seek out peo­ple with limited financial resources and abundant generosity to be part of our friend circles, to mentor others, and to serve as leaders. Rather than looking past those who seem to be least among us, we need to ask Jesus for his eyes to see one another’s incredible value and to learn from each other. Wealth can be here today, gone tomorrow. Jesus is concerned with the motives of the heart.

Recently a single mom who cleans houses for a living gave the church a packet of envelopes that each contained cash she had set aside from her weekly earnings. The total amount was not very much compared with that of a wealthier donor, but in terms of her heart and sacrifice, it was extremely valuable. Sometimes less is more!

An elder of the inner-city church where I served advised me that if I was serious about connecting with families in the local neighborhood, I had to get my hands dirty. In other words, I had to get involved in the messiness of people’s lives rather than doing ministry from a distance.

Jesus not only ministered to people who were outcasts of society—such as tax collectors who overcharged people and filled their own pockets—but he also called them to be his followers and to teach others about him. And when people like Levi invited Jesus to cele­brate their radical life-change, he joined with them and their friends, no matter how motley they might have seemed to “respectable” people. The outcasts were like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus had come to give them—and all of us—full life.

Sometimes we who are saved may think we are too sanitary to share the good news with people who are lost in sin. Jesus calls us to search them out and to love and guide them to spiritual health, as he did.

It’s easy to judge others who sin differently than we do. But what if we pray for people whose sin disgusts us? What if we show kindness to people who suffer from addictions, who are rebellious, or whose political views differ from ours? Then we’ll be getting our spiritual hands dirty.

When my grandson was five years old, he asked a lot of questions about God. Eventually we prayed together, and he asked Jesus to come into his heart. After saying Amen, my grandson looked up with wide eyes and announced, “He was already there!”

It brought tears to my eyes as I imagined my grandson being lifted onto Jesus’ lap, and Jesus’ placing his hands on him and blessing him. Jesus intentionally invited and welcomed children into his covenant family, and I do believe he is “already there” in a child’s heart through the prayers of his parents and grandparents.

Isn’t it striking that the very Son of God, the Creator of the universe, did not consider himself too busy or too divine to visit with energetic and blunt-speaking children? He did not rebuke them, as his disciples did, but instead he held them up as role models for pure faith. Jesus taught adults to be as trusting and humble as little children, and to learn from them.

As adults, we’ve seen more brokenness, sin, heartache, and hurt than many children have seen. So our faith can be rocked as we face challenges and as we take dangerous detours. But Jesus invites us to sit at his feet, accept his forgiveness, receive his blessing, and realize that he is always with us, just as he promised (Matthew 28:20).

In the church I grew up in, we used to sing, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.” This song was special to me because our extended family lived more than 1,000 miles away, and we shared most of our life and ministry with our brothers and sisters (and uncles and aunts) in Christ.

In today’s Bible reading, we find Jesus sharing life and ministry with the people in his closest circle, the ones who believed in him and gave up everything to follow him. Together they were doing the will of God the Father. They were Jesus’ spiritual family.

The point of Jesus’ naming his followers as family was not to dismiss the importance of his biological relatives but to show that the connection with fellow believers was vitally important. God wills for his people to be in community, to strengthen one another in faith, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). Our witness to the world as Christ-followers can be that we clearly “love one another” (John 13:35).

Sometimes our biological families disappoint, discourage, or dismiss us. But God calls us to a higher and wider network—to be the family of God to­gether. When we love and support one another, seeking to do God’s will and work together, we follow Jesus’ example of cherishing our spiritual brothers and sisters.

Today’s Bible reading is about Jesus’ first followers and how they invited others to come and meet him.

John (the baptizer) had met Jesus the day before, and he learned from God that Jesus was the promised Savior (John 1:28-34). So he shared that with two of his disciples, Andrew and another person. John had been appointed to prepare for the coming of Jesus, so when Jesus walked by, John said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”—indicating that Jesus was the one to follow.

After Andrew spent a day with Jesus, “the first thing [he] did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’” Jesus was the Savior they had been waiting for, so Andrew introduced Simon to Jesus.

On the next day, Jesus found Philip and said, “Follow me.” Then Philip went to tell his friend Nathanael that Jesus was the Savior whom God’s prophets had been promising for centuries. When Nathanael was skeptical, Philip urged him, “Come and see.”

One Sunday morning, after worship, a friend and I prayed with a man to invite Jesus into his life. Following that prayer, my friend pointed to someone standing nearby and said, “Go and tell him what Jesus means to you.”

Whom will you tell about Jesus and what he means to you?

There are two stories in this Bible passage: the parable about the man beaten by robbers, and the story about Jesus and the expert in the law. The main question from the legal expert was “Who is my neighbor?” And the main question from Jesus was “In this story, who was being a neighbor?”

Without saying it was the Samaritan, the legal expert admitted that the neighbor was the one who showed mercy. The Samaritan showed mercy to the beaten man in at least three ways:

He opened his heart. “When he saw him, he took pity on him.” The traveler saw a fellow human in need, and he cared. The injured man’s life mattered.

He opened his schedule. “He went to him and bandaged his wounds. . . .” He set aside his own plans to help his neighbor, to the point of getting blood on his hands.

He opened his wallet. Bringing the injured man to a safe place, the Samaritan paid for his care and even said he would pay later for additional care that might be needed.

Of course, in this story the priest and the Levite did not look good. They knew what to do, and they failed to act. We need to admit that there is some part of the “priest and Levite” in most of us. How often do we see people in need and conveniently look the other way?

From the day I was born until the day I headed off to college, I lived on a family farm in Iowa. We knew who our neighbors were. They lived across the road and down the road from us. We kids attended a country school together. Fathers and sons joined in gathering the harvests, and mothers and daughters joined in feeding every­one. It was a community effort. We were neighbors.

Jesus’ definition is much broader, though. People who are robbed are our neighbors. The Bible also mentions “orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). And we are not to forget “to show hospitality to strangers” and to “continue to remember those in prison” (Hebrews 13:2-3). Throughout Scripture, we are reminded ­often to love and care for people who are poor. People in need are our neighbors.

Like the priest and the Levite, our spiritual leaders are our neighbors too. So are our community members, friends, and family. Our own people are our neighbors.

Jesus pointed out especially that the Samaritan was a neighbor. To the Jews in that day, the Samaritans were despised like enemies. People may look different to us, and they may believe and act differently, but they are our neighbors too. Anyone who is other is my neighbor. All.

We learn many rules growing up: Brush your teeth. Look both ways before crossing the street. Always tell the truth. Which of these is most important?

Jesus was asked a similar question: Of the many commands and regulations in the law of God, which one tops the list? Jesus did not hesitate: “Love God above all”—and he quickly added the second: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And what kind of love does this refer to? In connection with God’s love for us, this is unconditional love—totally gracious, generous, and with no strings attached.

Notice especially that Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This means that if we are to love our neighbors unconditionally and generously, we will need to love ourselves that way too! God doesn’t make junk. We are created in God’s image; we are his masterpieces. It’s not just okay to love myself: God expects me to celebrate the person he created me to be!

The Golden Rule Jesus gave us—“Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12)—is another way of saying this command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Loving others well depends at least partly on our capacity to love ourselves.

In our congregation it is a tradition to sing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” during our New Year’s Day worship service. Some other churches like to sing this song as they worship on the last day of the closing year.

This song paraphrases Psalm 90. Even though Psalm 90 can be considered a song of lament, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” summarizes the content of this psalm in an uplifting way.

As we end this year, we reflect on the fact that God has been “our help in ages past” as well as “our hope for years to come.” When we look back on the year we have just gone through, not one of us can say we knew it would turn out the way it did. We cannot see into the future.

Yet God has been our help, and he has been our strength. God has “been our dwelling place through all generations.” So when­ever we face uncertainty, we can trust that, with God, we can find courage and strength.

God has made all things, and “a thousand ages in [his] sight are like an evening gone.” Yet the Lord our God will always continue to be faithful.

In the final stanza of the song, we profess our trust in God. We sing, “Still be our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home!” We have confidence to face the future because our hope for eternal life is found in God our Savior.