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The tax collector up a tree
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Once I saw a cartoon that had a picture of a poor man sitting in the sand, naked except for a loincloth around his waist. He had a piece of pottery and was scraping his sores.


A young man in a business suit was coming up behind him, wearing sunglasses and carrying a briefcase that said, “IRS.” The caption said, “Hello, Mr. Job. I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”


 Throughout history people have hated taxes, and as a result, we have not been fond of tax collectors. These feelings were intensified during Jesus’ time, because the tax collectors worked for the Romans who occupied their country. On top of that, tax collectors in Jesus’ day often extorted more taxes out of people than they owed.


So the story of the little tax collector up a tree in Luke chapter 19 has to be one of the funniest stories in the Bible.


Jesus was coming to Jericho, a border town where people often had to pay import and export taxes. The name of the head tax collector was Zacchaeus, and he had gotten wealthy cheating people. Zacchaeus heard about Jesus, and wanted to see him. But he was too short to see over the crowd. Very likely, the crowd took delight in blocking his view. Here was a chance to put that sorry tax collector in his place.


So what did he do? He climbed up in a sycamore tree to see Jesus. When Jesus came to the spot, He stopped and looked up at him in the tree. There was one of Jericho’s wealthiest citizens, hanging out of a tree, his robe flapping in the breeze. The crowd must have snickered at the scene.


But then Jesus did a shocking thing. He said, “Zacchaeus, come down here. I must stay at your house today.” Undoubtedly, the crowd gasped. “The Lord is going to eat with that thieving traitor! Doesn’t He know who he is?” they must have thought.


Then an even more shocking thing happened. Zacchaeus hopped down, had Jesus for dinner, and was so changed by the Lord’s willingness to accept and love him, that he repented of his sin, gave half his money to the poor, and repaid everybody he had cheated. “Today salvation has come to this house!” Jesus rejoiced.


Now here’s the lesson: The very person that you and I laugh at and scorn is the same person that Jesus loves and accepts. He even loves ... this is hard to say ... he even loves the IRS!


(Copyright 2013 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.)

Is there a church for a big woman with an itch?
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A pastor was called to be guest preacher at a church. He knew this church was different when the congregation ended every line of the hymn with the shout of “yeehah!”


As he stood to preach, he noticed that people were spread out on the pews. He would see a person, then a space, then another person, and another space. He wondered why nobody sat next to another person, when he noticed on the pew beside each person was a cowboy hat.


Another time this same preacher was invited to a new church in the city. He was surprised to see that everybody there looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box, because they had piercings and earrings on every part of the body imaginable. A rock band was playing alternative music on the stage.


As different as these two churches were, they were both growing and reaching people for Christ.


Years ago I was pastor of a small country church in the backwoods of Mississippi. There was another Baptist church just five miles away in the town (population 600). The pastor’s wife at the town church asked me, “Why don’t our two churches merge?” I said, “There are people in my church who would not feel comfortable or fit in at your town church.” She said, “Oh, come on. We’re a small town church. What could be so different?”


I said, “Well, I got one really big woman in my church who, when she gets to feeling an itch, she pulls her dress halfway up and she scratches herself.”


The eyes of this pastor’s wife got really big and she said, “I see what you mean.”


I forgot to tell her about another woman in my church who saw a roach running across the wood floor, so she stomped on it with her bare foot, laughed and shouted, “Aha! I got him!”


Yep, the culture was definitely different where I was pastor.


Jesus upset the religious establishment because He crossed cultural barriers. He loved to eat with tax collectors and Gentiles and other strange people. Jesus walked into the land of Samaria, full of half-breed Jews who worshiped in weird ways and talked different and smelled different.


Jesus walked right up to a Samaritan woman at a well and started talking her language. He accepted her culture, but he let her know her sinful lifestyle had to change. Soon she had the whole town following Jesus (see John 4).


So what cultural barrier is keeping somebody in your community from hearing the gospel? If you tear down the cultural barriers to share Christ in your neighborhood, you may hear the angels shouting, “Yeehah!”


Copyright 2014 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.