A Church for People Who Don't Go to Church: Zacchaeus and the Gaze of Jesus

Introduction

"The Church is the Church only when it exists for others." Jérémie Meyer, pastor at la Chapelle, opens his message with this line from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: not to dominate but to help and to serve, to tell people, whatever their condition, what it means to live for Christ and to exist for others.

The title of the message picks up the slogan la Chapelle has carried since its beginnings: a church for people who don't go to church. The pastor is careful to explain what that means and what it does not mean. It means that the church's attention is focused especially on those who have not yet had the grace of meeting Christ. It does not mean that those already in the church are cared for any less, or that their spiritual growth matters any less. What la Chapelle refuses to be is "a bunch of goldfish that spend their time eating and swimming in circles in a sealed aquarium cut off from the world."

The church's mission statement is simple: that people far from God be transformed into disciples of Jesus Christ who make other disciples. Nothing invented there, the pastor reminds us: it is Matthew 28 applied to our reality. And throughout his ministry, Jesus himself had this tendency to hang around with people who don't go. His reputation in Luke 7:33-34 puts it bluntly: a glutton and a drunkard, "a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Tim Chester, in A Meal with Jesus, sums up his mission with Luke 19:10 (to seek and to save what was lost) and his method with Luke 7:34 (eating and drinking with sinners).

To understand this slogan, the pastor suggests reading an encounter that lies at its heart: Jesus meeting Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. He draws four decisive elements from it.

Message Outline

1. Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector

• Zacchaeus is not just any tax collector: he is the chief of the tax collectors, very rich and highly influential, the kind of person who could easily make you lower your eyes in the street. The pastor jokes that, given his short stature, it was probably more like "raise your eyes."
• The real problem goes beyond his height: Zacchaeus is a Jew in the service of Rome, and he robs his own brothers and sisters. Rome demanded a tax, and the collectors added a surcharge to line their own pockets. They demanded more from the people than what was required of them, under Roman protection. The people suffered it without being able to say a word.
• Despite the nature of his job, his bad reputation and his undeniable faults, an encounter is about to turn his story upside down. Jesus arrives in town, and Zacchaeus, like everyone in Jericho, wants to see this man everyone is talking about. Perched in his sycamore tree, he waits with a question deep in his heart, the pastor imagines: is he really who they say he is?
• And out of nowhere, Jesus calls out to him: "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house." Zacchaeus' reaction: "Huh? What? Me?" The crowd's reaction: "Huh? What? Him?"

2. Jesus looks up rather than looking down

• Jesus could have kept his head down: he knew perfectly well who Zacchaeus was. He was not intimidated; he simply saw further. In the eyes of every Jew present, Zacchaeus was a long way from the model he should have embodied. Yet Jesus looks up at him and calls him.
• In his place, we would probably have done everything to avoid meeting his gaze, "almost for fear of being soiled by it." In Jesus' day, two categories of people were despised to the core: prostitutes and tax collectors. The crowd's indignant reaction in verse 7 is therefore not exaggerated.
• The pastor suggests an exercise: imagine the person you despise the most, the one you consider the most immoral in the world. Now imagine that this is the person Jesus calls over to share a meal and a glass of wine. Disgust, anger, incomprehension: that is probably your reaction. It is exactly what Jesus has just done.
• Beware of leveling sin. In his book Jesus Is, pastor Judah Smith describes four levels in the way he approaches good and evil. Level 1: I am a good person, and I justify myself by comparing myself to bad people. Level 2: I am a good person, but I must have compassion for bad people. Level 3: I am a sinner who needs help as much as anyone. Level 4: I am loved by Jesus just as I am, as much as anyone.
• Judah Smith adds that he constantly needs to remind himself to live at this fourth level, because his natural tendency is to slide back to the others. It is never a done deal: you cannot say, "That's it, I've reached level 4." You have to stay there by the grace of God.
• The pastor's question: when you face people who don't go to church, do you tend to lower your eyes? And if you do approach them, from which level do you do it? Jesus, that day, decided to set his eyes on Zacchaeus and not to judge him, even though he had every reason to.

3. Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus' house rather than inviting him to church

• The pastor admits that for a long time he believed inviting someone to church was the believer's ultimate goal, the proof of real faith. Rereading the Gospels, he realized that this was not the kind of invitation Jesus made. He does not remember reading Jesus say, "You should go to the synagogue."
• Jesus invited himself into people's lives so that, in the end, he could invite them to follow him. "The end goal was never the church, it was never the synagogue. The end goal was Jesus."
• While preparing this message, pastor Loïc Richard recommended a teaching by John Mark Comer on hospitality. One observation struck him: when Jesus is with people of faith, raised in Jewish traditions, he teaches them and preaches to them. When he is with outcasts and notorious sinners, most of the time, he eats with them.
• Jesus had no house. He invited himself to people's homes, and often he did not simply remain the guest: he became the host and steered the conversation exactly where he wanted it to go. The pastor warns with humor: in Quebec in 2023, don't invite people over to someone else's house, you will make enemies.
• Theologian Robert Karris wrote that, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is either on his way to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. A lot happened around the table.
• The pastor insists: he is not saying we should not invite people to church. The book of Acts shows, on the contrary, that faith is lived and practiced in community. But the church is not the end in itself. The summit of the Christian life is not bringing people to church; it is bringing people to follow Jesus. Sometimes it simply begins by inviting ourselves into their lives to show them that Jesus loves them.

4. Jesus acts according to his mission rather than people's opinion

• Luke 19:7: "When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, 'He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner.'" Setting aside what people think of us is hard: we don't like to disappoint, we want to feel accepted by our peers, we don't like conflict, we don't want to come across as arrogant.
• "Want a scoop? There will always be people to criticize what you do and who you are." The real question then becomes: is who I am and what I do aligned with God's heart, his will, his Word? And if so, which voice will I listen to, other people's or God's?
• This is not about ignoring the opinion of those who love us and who love God: their advice matters. But on the day those people don't understand what God has laid on your heart, which voice do you listen to?
• The pastor marvels at Christ's steadiness every time the religious people of his day questioned his actions. Jesus was permanently connected to the Father and had no doubt about his mission, summed up in Luke 5:32 ("I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance") and in Mark 2:17 ("Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick").
• To have that assurance, there is no secret: stick close to Jesus, abide in him, seek his face, submit our will to his, take root in his Word. The Holy Spirit then gives discernment to recognize the good opinions around you, and the strength not to live according to others.

5. Zacchaeus is transformed rather than rejected

• On paper, Jesus had every reason to judge and condemn Zacchaeus. If there was one man on earth with the legitimacy to do so, it was him, because he was perfect. But Jesus did not choose to condemn Zacchaeus: he chose to show him grace.
• The pastor admits he is intrigued, even frustrated, by what happens between verse 7 and verse 8. In verse 6, Zacchaeus receives Jesus with joy. In verse 7, everyone is indignant. In verse 8, Zacchaeus stands up from the table: "Half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much." The most notorious sinner in town, the guy about whom people say, "If God can change this man, he can change anyone." What was said? How long did it last? It is not written.
• And maybe that is a good thing: if the conversation had been written down, we would have turned it into a method, "if it worked for Zacchaeus, it will work for everyone else." But Jesus had a particular approach and precise words for each person he met.
• Following Zacchaeus' courageous declaration, Jesus recognizes him as a true son of Abraham, a Jew who shows the faith God's people should show. A "hard slap in the face" for all the Jews who thought they were good people because they kept the law. "The one everyone identified as far from God was in reality the one closest to him."
• After the leveling of sin, the pastor points to a second mistake: leveling our closeness to God. We rank people: so-and-so, with his story, is "far from God plus plus plus, higher than the sky," the colleague who tests my limits is "far from God plus plus," my dad who no longer really walks with the Lord is "far from God plus," the young person who comes to church without having given his life is "more or less close," the Christian who never misses a Sunday is "close to God plus plus," and the pastor is "higher than the sky." That is not how it works.
• In Jesus' words, there have only ever been two categories: far from God or close to him, lost or found. No matter how long you think you have been walking far from God, you have only one decision to make: turn around. And when you turn around, you will realize that all that time you thought he was far away, he stayed close.
• Zacchaeus surely thought he was too far away too. He turned around, and he ran into Jesus. "In one instant of faith, Zacchaeus went from notorious sinner to true son of Abraham." There is no in-between. That does not mean what followed was easy: keeping his promise was probably hard. But the pastor wants to believe that Zacchaeus was faithful, like so many other men and women whose story Jesus turned upside down.

6. A church that remembers where it comes from

• If we want to be a church for people who don't go to church, we must learn to look up rather than down, to invite ourselves into people's lives rather than only inviting them to church, to act according to our mission rather than people's opinion, and not to fall into the double mistake of leveling sin and leveling our closeness to Jesus.
• La Chapelle experiences it: people look at what it does and say, "You're doing everything wrong." The team decided to stop fighting to change those people. It knows it is aligned with God's heart and his Word, humble in its approach, aware that it will make mistakes, but convinced that God will help it. Jesus too kept going despite the criticism, not without having his heart broken for those people.
• The pastor closes with two prayers. The first is for those who have been in the church for months or years: that God would rekindle a heart for people who don't go, because one day, those people were us. He himself grew up in a Christian family and yet went through a phase when he was one of those who did not go to church, before, as he says, "Jesus came and tore my life out of the darkness I was in."
• The second prayer is for those who think they have drifted too far from God: they have only one decision to make, and the pastor prays that the weight of guilt would fall, because we simply have to come before the throne of grace, where God receives us graciously.

Key Takeaways

• A church for people who don't go to church focuses its attention on those who have not yet met Christ, without ceasing to care for those who are already there.
• Jesus looks up at Zacchaeus instead of looking away. Grace is lived at level 4: I am loved by Jesus just as I am, as much as anyone.
• Jesus invites himself into people's lives and eats with them before inviting them to follow him. The church is necessary, but the end goal remains Jesus.
• There will always be someone to criticize. The question is whether what you do is aligned with God's heart, and which voice you listen to.
• There are only two categories: far from God or close to him. A single decision, turning around, takes you from notorious sinner to true son of Abraham.

Personal Application

1. When you face the people you judge to be furthest from God, do you tend to lower your eyes or to look up, as Jesus did for Zacchaeus?
2. From which level do you approach people: "I am a good person," "I am a sinner like them," or "I am loved just as I am"?
3. Who could you reach this week by inviting yourself into their life, around a meal, before thinking about inviting them to church?
4. What human opinion is stopping you today from doing what you are convinced God is asking of you?
5. Have you classified someone, or yourself, as "too far from God"? What would change if you believed that Jesus stayed close?

Scriptures Quoted

• Luke 19:1-10
• Luke 7:33-34
• Luke 19:10
• Matthew 28:19-20
• Luke 5:32
• Mark 2:17
• Hebrews 4:16

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "a church for people who don't go to church" mean?

It is la Chapelle's slogan. Jérémie Meyer explains that the church's attention is focused especially on those who have not yet met Christ, without neglecting the spiritual growth of those who are already there. The church refuses to be "a bunch of goldfish" swimming in circles in an aquarium cut off from the world. This mission statement simply picks up Matthew 28: make disciples.

Should we still invite people to church?

Yes, the preacher repeats it several times: faith is lived in community, and the book of Acts shows the importance of gatherings of believers. But the church is not the end goal. Jesus invited himself into people's lives, ate with them, then invited them to follow him. The end goal is and always remains Jesus.

What happened between Luke 19:7 and Luke 19:8?

The Bible does not say. In verse 7, the crowd is indignant; in verse 8, Zacchaeus stands up and promises to give half of his goods to the poor and to repay four times what he stole. For Jérémie Meyer, this silence is a good thing: if the conversation had been written down, we would have turned it into a method, whereas Jesus had a particular approach for each person.