Preacher, Chris Ayers

Embarrassment (You Aren’t One)

 

Luke 19:1-10

 

Jesus 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 Sycamore 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.”

 

Luke 15:1-2

 

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

 

 

I’m going to make a prediction. 

 

Local weather forecasters will predict snow, yes—snow, and all of Charlotte, and I mean all of Charlotte, will go to the grocery store to buy milk and toilet paper. -------And the Wedgewoodians will hope it’s so----so they get out of listening to a sermon. -----You know who you are.

 

No, that’s not the prediction I had in mind.  Here it is. 

 

No matter who is the next President of the United States, whether its McCain or Obama or Hilary or Romney or Edwards or Giuliani or Thompson or Huckabee or Ron Paul, no matter who gets elected I predict-------Are you ready for the prediction?--------I predict she or he will have their share of---------embarrassing moments.

 

During his presidency Gerald Ford honored Queen Elizabeth of England with a gala state dinner at the White House.  As any good host would, President Ford asked the queen for a dance.  He led Her Majesty to the dance floor just as the U.S. Marine band began playing------Does anybody remember the song?--------President Ford led Her Majesty to the dance floor just as the U.S. Marine band began playing “The Lady Is A Tramp.”  I kid you not.  Luckily, the Queen did not hold the musical mishap against President Ford or the United States.

 

Embarrassing Presidential moments.  When President George H.W. Bush was visiting Japan, he was ill with the flu and threw up at the dinner table, right in front of the Japanese Prime Minister!  Later he smiled for the cameras and cracked jokes about his dry cleaning bills.  Imagine the scene if he had eaten Wedgewood chili!  Amen!

 

The Bush family must have trouble with food because our present Bush, our current President in 2002 fell off a couch onto his face after choking on a pretzel and passing out.  Sporting a pretty nice facial bruise, Bush joked that he should have listened to his mom when she told him to chew his food!

 

My all-time favorite Presidential embarrassment, however, concerns President Carter.  You might want to look at the front of your bulletin to fully appreciate this story. 

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter escaped the White House and went fishing in a canoe on a pond in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.  Without warning, while Carter was separated from the secret service detail on shore, the President was attacked by-----get this---attacked by a vicious, looking for a fight, don’t mess with me, killer bunny rabbit.  Yes, a bunny rabbit.

 

According to press accounts:  It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the President.  Must have been a Baptist bunny!

 

Carter was at first said to have fought off the attacking bunny with one of his canoe paddles.  He later changed the story, so as not to offend animal rights activists, to state that he used the paddle to "splash water" at the rabbit and frighten it off. The rabbit is said to have made for shore after its "splash fight" with the president.

 

The President of the United States scared to death of, fighting-------a bunny rabbit.

 

Have you had any embarrassing moments?

 

Actually, the main questions I want to ask you are these: 

 

Has anyone had ever considered you to be an embarrassment?

 

Have you ever considered yourself to be an embarrassment?

 

I referred to Jimmy Carter just a few moments ago, but do you also remember Billy Carter?  I always wondered how President Carter felt about his brother.  While serving as President, Jimmy said of his brother, “I have more influence over members of the U.S. Senate than I do over Billy.”

 

Has anyone had ever considered you an embarrassment? 

 

Have you ever considered yourself to be an embarrassment?

 

Previously I’ve shared with you how my oldest brother, Steve, was Mr. Everything:  High School Valedictorian, Governor School, Morehead Scholar, Governor School faculty, and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t care to repeat even now even though I have an absolutely wonderful relationship with him.  That wasn’t the case when I was growing up.  Not only did I have to deal with envy and jealousy and my own self-worth and level of intelligence, I also had to deal with my sense that me, my other brothers, and my parents were an embarrassment to my hoity-toity, way past his raisin’, look down on his family brother.

 

I remember having to go to one of his debate team performances hosted by some Kiwanis type organization.  It was an evening debate contest with supper served and family members of participants were invited.  We weren’t that well off being that my father had been sick and out of work for over a year and I remember the tension surrounding what we wore-----and how we spoke----and the issue of our table manners. [1]

 

There are very few things I’ve hated more than feeling like an embarrassment.

 

Fred Craddock, Professor of Preaching at Emory, tells this story about a time in his life when he was confronted with embarrassment.

 

Craddock writes:  Our family, having lost the farm, had moved into town, and I wasn’t accustomed to it.  The isolation of the farm had made me rather socially inadequate, retarded I suppose.  We dressed in what was given to us by charitable organizations, and I went to school.  The first day of school the teacher announced, “Let’s get acquainted and start our school year by everybody telling what you did on vacation.”  I was off to a bad start, comments Craddock.  Boys and girls in the class reported they had spent a week in Florida.  Another had gone to Niagara Falls.  Someone else reported their family had gone to Washington and seen all the historical monuments and all that.  I was at the back of the class, and I knew the teacher would get to me pretty soon.  What was I going to say?  When you work on a farm all summer, what do you say?  Everybody else had such marvelous vacations.  Fortunately, the teacher didn’t get to me.  She said, “We’ll continue tomorrow.”

 

So I went home, and my father saw I was worried and said, “What’s the matter?”

 

I said, “It didn’t go well today.  The teacher wants us to tell what we did on vacation, and I just, you know, dug potatoes and picked and shelled purple-hulled peas and things like that.  I don’t have anything to tell.”

 

Dad said, “She asked you what?  She asked you what you did on vacation?  Obviously, your teacher is asking you for a lie, so you give her one.”

 

“But you and Mama have told us that we’re not supposed to lie.”

 

“Son, you’re supposed to obey your teacher.”

 

“But what am I going to say?”

 

He said, “Well, just pick the good parts out of several others and put it together, and you’ll be alright.

So when the teacher got to me, I said, “I went up to New York and Washington.”  I was somewhere on this side of Niagara Falls when the teacher called me out into the hallway.  She said, “You didn’t do all that.”

 

I said, “No ma’am.  I didn’t.”

“Well, why then do you say that?”

 

“Because I was embarrassed.”

 

“Why were you embarrassed.”

 

I said, “Because I worked on the farm all summer.”

 

She stopped the proceeding after that.

 

Craddock comments, “If I had though, if I knew then what I know now, I would’ve told the boys and girls what I did that summer, and I would’ve been the envy of everybody.  I don’t know if you know anything about sweet potatoes, but when sweet potatoes are at a certain stage of growth, they’re just kind of along bulb with a long tail, the root.  You can take one by the tail and you can knock a squirrel off a limb, or even better, you can send your sister screaming to the house.

 

I should have told them that, but I didn’t.

 

Have you ever considered yourself to be an embarrassment?

Has anyone had ever considered you an embarrassment? 

 

One of the things that attracts me to Jesus is the kind of folk with whom he ate.  He wasn’t embarrassed to be with people some individuals considered embarrassments.  And best I can tell, he didn’t himself consider them embarrassments.

 

Take Zacchaeus, for example.  Like us, he had done some things he shouldn’t have done.  Like us, he had committed his share of sins.  Like us, Zacchaeus was far from perfect.  Like us, Zacchaeus had a boatload of regrets and a long record of wrong turns.  Like us, he hungered for new starts and fresh beginnings and records wiped clean.  Like us-----like us, he-----he wished he had all those years to do over.  And perhaps like some of us, he had relatives who didn’t claim him, who had disowned him, who had kicked him out of the family, who were greatly disappointed in him and considered him an embarrassment.  But not Jesus.  Thank God, not Jesus.  No, Jesus said, “Zacchaeus.  Yes, you Zacchaeus.  Come down from that tree.  For today----for today I must stay at your house.”

 

And the really wonderful thing it that this action by Jesus was not a one shot deal, but instead was his modus operandi.  It was his way of relating, his way of looking at others, his way of recognizing others as children of God no matter, no matter what they had done or failed to do.

 

Has anyone had ever considered you an embarrassment?

 

Have you ever considered yourself to be an embarrassment?

 

As you come to the Lord’s Table may you will be transformed by these words:  “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

 

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[1] Later, ironically, I too would have to deal with my family being an embarrassment.  When I decided to quit trying to be “the favorite son” I was able to have more understanding of my oldest brother, my parents, my other brothers, and most importantly, a better understanding of myself.  

 

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