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The following message is brought to you by Preaching Today, a resource of Christianity Today International. Our first sermon is by Dr. Bruce Teelman, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His sermon is based on the story of Zacchaeus, Luke 19, verses 1 through 10. His title, "When Life

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Crowds You Out." It happened on the wall of a subway in New York City. There was an advertising poster there which depicted a very dignified older gentleman recommending a particular product. And someone, probably a little boy, wanted to deface the advertisement and so he drew a kind of balloon coming

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out of the mouth of this dignified older gentleman. And then this youngster wrote in the balloon the dirtiest thing he could think of to say. He wrote, "I like," and he meant to write "girls," only he made a mistake and instead of writing "girls," G-I-R-L-S, he wrote "grills," G-R-I-L-S. "I like grills." Then someone had come along

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and with a felt-tipped pencil had written under that, "It's 'girls,' stupid, not 'grills.'" And then another party, for the handwriting was still different, had come and written under that, "But then what about us grills?" Now what about us grills? What about the people that nobody seems to like? What

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about the people who feel like they've been crowded out of the middle of life, shoved aside, pushed somewhere where they don't want to be? What about grills? A young man sat in my apartment about three weeks ago and with tears rolling down his face, told me that the other kids thought he was weird, that they

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oftentimes isolated him. He told me in so many words that he was a grill. Well, this sermon is dedicated to him. A girl in her middle 20s said to me some months ago that she wanted to get out in the middle of the garden of life. She was desperately tired of being pasted to the wall in human experience. She wanted to be the

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kind of flower that people sometimes saw and noticed and appreciated. She was saying to me in so many words, "I'm tired of being a grill." And this sermon is my response to her. An older gentleman who deeply loved his wife and lost her to death. They were a beautiful couple, beautiful in every way that you might

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choose to describe people. They were lovely to behold. I'm tired of being a grill. And this sermon is my response to her. An older gentleman who deeply loved his wife and lost her to death. They were a beautiful couple, beautiful in every way that you might choose. They were lovely to behold and deeply devoted to each other and now

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she is gone. And he says to me with tears, you see grills cry a lot, "Life seems to be passing me by. It's rushing on all the time and somehow or other I don't seem to be able to get on to it anymore. I'm on the outside looking in and it makes me desperately lonely." He was saying to me in so many words that he feels like a

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grill. And then there's the person who's isolated because they're fat and they know people look at their fat and think about their fat. And then there are people who are homely. They have not been physically endowed like most of us and consequently they feel sensitive about it. And then there are the people who

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have never been taught the social graces. They feel awkward as if they have three legs or four eyes. It's not a very nice way to feel. It's kind of like dying. Dying over a long, long time. It's hard being a grill. Now of course I know I'm not talking to most of you. I'm probably not talking to you at all. I'm just

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talking to the person sitting behind you or perhaps in front of you or maybe the person seated beside you. I realize I'm not talking to you, but for a little while this morning would it be all right if I talk with the grills? If I said something to them out of the Bible? That's where the answer to the grill

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problem is, just like the answer to most major problems is found there. Specifically and I think most perfectly in this story in the 19th chapter of Luke. A story about a man named Zacchaeus. He was a grill. Jesus was coming to his town and and Zacchaeus wanted very much to see him. Now we don't know a great

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deal about Zacchaeus. It's generally believed that he was small of stature. Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus and and couldn't see him. And in the press of all the people crowding in to see the Lord, somehow or other he got shoved aside. He was crowded out and in what he did and in how he responded to that

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situation, I think there's very wise, wise teaching for all grills. The first thing he did was was perhaps to see just why he'd been crowded out of life. That's the first thing a grill ought to do, to see why he's been crowded out. Now look at the scene in Jericho. It may be that Zacchaeus was crowded out because of his

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success. He was a very wealthy man. Jericho was one of the principal trading cities of the day. It was described by some ancient writers as the divine land. And this man Zacchaeus was a tax collector which meant that he made his money from the prosperity of businesses. And in Jericho businesses were more

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prosperous than anywhere else. He was in a very real sense tax collector in the best city of all the land to be tax collector. He was at the top of his profession and as soon as you get to the top, as soon as you succeed, there are some people who will right away make you into a grill. Either because of awe or

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because of envy. Become really successful at anything and some people will separate from you immediately. Do you remember that sad note that Marilyn Monroe wrote just before she died in which she said that there were so many evenings when she sat at home alone and no one ever called her and asked her to

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go anywhere? Now we know why that was. Why everybody thought that Marilyn Monroe has so many places to go and so many people who are seeking her company all of the time. Why there's no use to my calling. Well sometimes people who succeed are treated like that. Other people draw away and sometimes it's

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envy. Here's the girl who does very well in school, straight A's. A lot of students will immediately turn her into a grill just because they resent her success. Here's the businessman who does very well in perhaps a very difficult business undertaking. He succeeds and immediately there are some people who

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will resent that success. Some people are grills just because other people are not able to handle their success. That might have been part of Zacchaeus problem. Or it might have been that he was crowded out because of the way in which he had become a success. You see Zacchaeus wasn't much better than a high-class

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thief. He worked on what we would call today a cost-plus basis. The Romans would come into an area and they would put up the right of being tax collector to the highest bidder. And whoever bid the most money and paid it to Rome got the job. And then that person could go out and collect all the taxes they wanted to.

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Everything it took to pay off the Romans and as much as they wanted to line their own pockets beyond that. And the Roman soldiers would go with them to see that people paid up. Well now you can imagine. Here's a man who is paying the conquerors of his country. And then in addition to that at the same time that

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he's paying them, he is taking more money from his countrymen to make himself quite comfortable. Now a fellow like that isn't popular. And maybe that's the reason he was crowded out. Sin does separate you know. It separates you from yourself. It separates you from your neighbor. It separates you from God. And

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and some people are grills because they demand all of somebody else's time. They push right into the middle of life. They want the attention all the time. Their desires, their demands are so so pressuring that other people resent them and draw away from them. They don't want to be around individuals who have

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covered themselves with a blanket of wrong conduct and insist on intruding it into other people's lives. Maybe that was the reason Zacchaeus was crowded out. That probably was the major reason but there were others. It might also have been just because the crowd was insensitive to him. They'd heard about

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this Jesus. They wanted to see this Jesus. They heard that this Jesus was very loving and they loved being loved and so they crowded around to see this Jesus and in thinking about love and seeing this Jesus they became well unloving and insensitive. So that Zacchaeus got shoved aside, got pushed out. They were so

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anxious to have a good time themselves that they just forgot to look at this other guy who wanted to have a good time too. Sometimes that's what happens to grills. It's just because of the insensitivity and the lack of concern of people who, well, who really ought to know better. So look at that crowd there in

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Jericho. Why have they crowded Zacchaeus out? Why have they pushed him away from the one who is life? Well it might have been his success, it might have been his sin, it might have been their insensitivity, it might have been their antagonism. In any case, when Zacchaeus gets crowded out, what does he do? Well he

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runs and climbs a tree. I think that's wonderful. He runs and climbs a tree. There was a little bit of boy in this man, you see. He didn't care who knew it. He wanted to see and he wasn't ashamed to admit that he wanted to see. He was willing to, well, to use the parlance of our time, to let it all hang out. Now if

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you missed that sentence right there, you missed the whole sermon. That's the most important sentence in the sermon, so I'm going to say it again so you can get the whole thing. He was willing to let it all hang out. He was willing to admit that he was lonely. He was willing to admit that he was crowded out. He didn't care who

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saw him climb up that tree. You see, that's an unusual way for a grill to act. Most grills, in the first place, are afraid of facing themselves. They say you shouldn't do that. Too much morbid introspection isn't good for somebody. You don't want to really notice at all the fact that you happen to be a grill.

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You remember how your mother told you when you were young and a bully was picking on you and she would say, "Now just pretend like he's not bothering you at all and eventually he'll let you alone." You remember that? That was rotten advice then and it's still rotten advice now. Pretending the bully isn't there

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will not make the bully go away, but that's what a lot of grills do. They just don't take an honest look at themselves. They pretend it isn't that way, or they will become very, very vain. You know the way it goes. "Well, I don't want to be a part. I don't really want to be a part of the group at all. There are certain

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things about my lifestyle which set me apart from other people and that's just the penalty I have to pay for my prominence. Everybody is out of step, you see, but me." And while I confess that there are times when I hear them laughing over there and kind of lean over a little bit to hear what they're

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saying, at the same time, if I have to make a choice between being a part of that mob and living exactly the way I want to live, well then I'll choose this way and I'll stand alone. That's vanity. And there are a lot of grills who, when they get crowded out, run right away to find somebody who will flatter them.

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That's what most grills do, those kinds of things, but not Zacchaeus. He gets up at a tree where everybody can see him. He says, "Look at me. I'm really... Here I am up in this tree. This shows you how much I want to be a part. I'm opening all my doors. I'm opening all my windows. It can't be denied. Here I am. Yoo-hoo, Jesus.

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Look at me. I'm a grill." I think it's magnificent. I think it's courageous and beautiful and magnificent. You know, Copenhagen's a nice city and there are many things to see there, but if I could only spend one hour in Copenhagen, the place I'd go again would be the Church of Our Lady. That's where the great Thorvalds

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statues are. When you walk into the church, it's very dim. You can hardly see anything, but after you're there for a few minutes, you can begin to make out the statues. They're carved out of cold stone, but they look like warm, living personalities, so warm that they melt your heart. And there's one of

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Christ standing with his arms extended like this. There's a copy of it up at Forrest Lawn. And I walked up to that statue and it was a strange thing. As I stood there and looked at it, I thought, "He has his eyes closed. He must be at prayer." And then a man who was sitting in the front pew, whom I'd never seen

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before, said to me, "You have to get on your knees to see his eyes." And I got down on my knees and looked up, and there was such grace and mercy and compassion in those eyes that it was almost more than I could bear. Well, in a strange sort of way, when Zacchaeus climbed that tree, he was getting down on his knees. He was

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saying, "I'm a grill, and I need somebody to care about me, to love me, to let me into the stream of things. How about you, Jesus? How about you, people of Jericho?" Or you say, "Well, he didn't have to do that because Jesus must have known about Zacchaeus. He was a prominent man. Jesus must have known his circumstance." Yes,

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that's true. I suppose Jesus knew all about Zacchaeus before he got there. But that doesn't change the circumstance. It's still necessary for us to climb the tree or to get down on our knees, whichever figure you prefer. Think of it like this. Suppose you were coming home one night, and as you walked into your

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house, you happened to glance over and see through the window of the house next door, and there you saw your husband engaged in an adulterous act with your next-door neighbor. You go into the house completely destroyed. You pull yourself together. About an hour later, he comes home. Now, suppose when he comes home, he

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doesn't say one thing about what happened. You know what happened, and he knows what happened, but he doesn't say one thing about it. Or suppose, on the other hand, he walks in the door, and he comes to you, and he takes your hands, and he tells you exactly what has happened and why it has happened. Now, isn't that

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going to make a difference, that he confessed it, that he came right out and said it? Well, it's exactly the same way in regard to our conversations with Jesus, in regard to our conversations with anyone. Openness is the thing that is required. I want you to think about that, about openness. Jesus was open,

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you remember how on the Thursday night before he was crucified, and he had that difficult time of prayer ahead, he didn't hesitate to climb a tree. He didn't hesitate to say, "Come with me to the garden," and when he went aside to that little glade to pray by himself, he took his three closest friends with him into

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that glade. He had a hard job ahead. He didn't hesitate for one moment to cry out for help. They nailed him to a tree on Friday, but there were a lot of times in his life before that when Jesus climbed a tree all by himself. He was open. And what happens when you're open? Well, exactly what happened to Zacchaeus.

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Jesus sees Zacchaeus on his knees up in a tree, and he says, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down," and you know what Zacchaeus did? He made haste and came down, and the verse says, "And he received him joyfully." Just ran right down to where Jesus was, and Jesus says to him, "I want the key to your heart," and

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Zacchaeus said, "Here it is. Is there anything else you'd like?" Right away the crowd was upset. They didn't like Jesus spending time with this fellow. The applause turned into murmuring. The smiles turned into sodden looks. Jesus had just reigned all over their parade, and in an instant it was all over, and of

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course it became obvious to everyone who was there. It became obvious to Zacchaeus, too, and that must have meant a great deal to him. Zacchaeus noticed how the crowd acted, and suddenly Zacchaeus wasn't the only outcast in that group. Jesus was an outcast, too. Can't you see that dirty old Pharisee over in the

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corner saying, "Takes one to know one. That rabbi from Nazareth's a grill, too." That's the way it happened, and those two outcasts being open with each other kind of walked off together, just the two of them. That's what happens, you see, when one person is open to another person. They become very open, too. Gerard, the

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psychiatrist, calls this a dyadic effect. He says that disclosure begets disclosure. When we reveal, other people are inclined to reveal also. And after this began to happen, well, other things happened, too. There's no word in the story that says that Jesus preached any sermon to Zacchaeus. It just says the two of them

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were together, and the next thing you know, Zacchaeus is standing up and he's saying, "Everything I've ever taken unjustly I will return fourfold." Now, the law only required a thief to return twofold, and if the thief confessed to his guilt, he had to only return what he had taken plus one-fifth, and Zacchaeus

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was confessing. But what does he do? He says, "I'll give it back four times over, and then beyond that, one half of everything that I have I will give to the poor." Man, you see somebody moving into the middle of life. Take a look at Zacchaeus. He's really turning around. That's what repentance means. He's really

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turning against everything in his life that he'd been wrong. All of a sudden, this man is giving himself to justice and generosity as he never had before just because he's been with Jesus. There's three steps, you see, to getting back into the middle of life. One is to understand why you're a grill, success,

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sin, insensitivity, antagonism. The second is to climb a tree to be open about your grillishness, and the third is to act on the basis of the openness that is extended to you. You know, about this time last year, Mr. Matheson came to me and he asked me if I would go with the senior high youth of our church on retreat up

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to Mount Hermon last February. I love the young people of our church very much, and so I agreed to go look forward to it. And then we went. It was one of the most unhappy weekends of my entire life. I mean that very seriously because I've thought a great deal about it many months now, as a matter of fact. I can't

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ever remember having a more unhappy time. I got on the bus and right away I was a grill. They stuck me up in the front of the bus. All the seats around me were vacant. There was lots of singing and conversation on the bus, but almost every time I would move to where they were singing or to where they were talking,

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the conversation would come to a halt and the songs would stop. I was a grill, and I was very uncomfortable. When I got to the camp, there were almost 200 there, and yet I could walk from one end of the camp to the other by the hour and was never spoken to, never addressed with more than a perfunctory "Hi," never

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involved in any conversations. And I got uptight about it. I got very hostile about it, in fact. The longer I was there, the more hostile I became, till as I began to look at the camp, I became very resentful of some of the things that were going on there. I thought the speaker was absurd. I thought that the

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conduct of some of the young people at the table was vulgar and slovenly. I thought that the leadership was generally pedantic and pedestrian. I thought that the games were overly violent and sometimes cruel. I saw other kids being treated like grills by those who were in the center of things. I

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thought the songs were repetitive and boring and insipid. I didn't like the food. I became hypercritical about everything that was going on there. That's not usually like me, but you see, that's the way grills oft times react, and that's the way I was reacting. And it got to be so bad that instead of staying

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for the whole retreat, I hitched a ride into Santa Rosa and flew home when it was half over. When I got home, I wasn't any happier. I had a knot right here. I couldn't really talk about it with anybody. I'd never been cut off so completely in all of my life. I'd never been so much out of it as I was in the

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midst of that experience, out of it with people to whom I had tried to give a great deal, a very great deal. I can understand better now why James says that the prayer of confession has to come before healing. I had all this stuff locked up inside of me without being open, and I actually felt that I

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just had a continuous case of indigestion so locked up inside. It was the next Thursday night when two of the leaders came to my apartment uninvited. I was not particularly happy when they arrived, and they sat down and after a while they brought the subject up. Because I was rather offended by their

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being there, I proceeded to tell them what I thought, and I swung pretty hard. And of course they did what most people would do under such circumstances. They swung back. So I hit them harder, and they hit me harder. And then one of them said to me, "You know, you've never really cared about me. You've never really liked me,

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and you've never really loved me." Now I don't understand the psychological mechanisms of what happened next. I just know that here I was, deeply hurt because I felt that I had cared and been rebuffed, liked and been rebuffed, loved and been rebuffed. And all of a sudden I was being accused of not caring and not

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liking and not loving, and it was more than I could take. And I started to cry. It's a very embarrassing thing to cry before two young people when you're grown up and the senior minister. I don't ever remember crying that hard in all my life. I cried so hard I could not speak. It just came out of me. I managed to

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compose myself enough to ask them to leave, and they didn't go. And that was even harder. And so I cried and cried and cried. And finally I almost commanded them, "Please go!" And they went. And I got up and washed my face and went to bed and cried myself to sleep. The next morning I found a note from the two of

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them. In the note they said that they were confused. They didn't recognize how they had hurt and that they loved me. And suddenly everything fell into place. Suddenly I recognized that while I've been talking about liking and caring and loving, I'd never liked them enough or cared them enough or loved them enough

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to climb a tree and say, "I need to be cared for. I need to be liked and I need to be loved." And so I told them that. I said, "I'm a grill." I didn't apologize for what I said about some of the things in the camp. Some of those things were wrong and they'll never happen again. But still, the main fault was mine. And when that

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conversation was over, one of those boys came over and put his arms around me and hugged me. That hasn't happened to me since I was a very, very little boy. I'm not the huggable type. Grills often aren't. Well, I came to recognize then that I have to work on this. And much of my life since that time has been devoted to that.

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I made my biggest step just recently. I bought a house. I couldn't have done it without the help of seven or eight people in this church who took care of the down payment for me. I didn't have the money. And I'm going to have people living there, at least four, who are preparing for the ministry or at least

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seriously thinking about it. Maybe six, I don't know. It's a very scary thought to me. I've lived alone for 14 years. But you see, I feel crowded out. I feel it's desperately important to have life going through me instead of me just going through life. I don't want to be a grill.

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Well, some of you are looking at your watches. I've been looking at mine for a long time too. But go with me to Jericho once more. It's early in the morning. That's the house of Zacchaeus over there. There he comes out the door. That's his wife waving to him. He's very old now. See that basket he has on his arm? He

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carries it every day, very carefully. Notice how carefully he carries it. Let's follow him and see where he's going, but quietly. He'd be embarrassed if he knew we were behind him. Well, here we are on the main street. Where is he going with that basket? Crosses the street, puts the basket down on the curb, opens it, takes

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out a clay jar. What's in the clay jar? Well, he's taken the lid off of it and now he's walking over to that sycamore tree. See him pouring the water on its roots and standing there while it drinks and sort of patting and caressing. Did his lips just move? Did he talk to the tree? Was he

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praying? Well, he's old. Maybe just old people do those things sometimes. Now he puts the jar back in the basket, picks up the basket. Sun is higher now. People are coming out on the street. See how they all stop and talk to Zacchaeus? And Zacchaeus talks with them, and they smile and they laugh and he goes on. It's

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obvious that everybody likes Zacchaeus, isn't it? He's not a grill anymore. [BLANK_AUDIO]