“Don’t stop, keep walking, don’t make eye contact, just keep moving.”
Sometimes, on an overseas trip with Saving Moses, I’m in shady situations and this is what I quietly say to myself. These are words that I’ve often thought as I’ve been in dangerous environments, when I’ve been around sketchy people or when I’ve been released after being interrogated in various countries.
I’m very grateful that Jesus is different than me – He stops, He engages, He sees and He improves people and situations. I say this because of the end of Luke 18 and the beginning of the next chapter (keeping in mind that the whole chapter and verse format was an added overlay after the original writing). If we take away the chapter and verse formatting, we see two consecutive occasions when Jesus is the catalyst who runs against what’s popular and drastically upgrades the lives of two individuals.
In the first situation at the end of Luke 18, a blind beggar is sitting by the road and hears a big commotion going by. When he learns that Jesus is passing by, he yells out to Him. The crowd reprimands the blind man and tells him to be quiet. But he isn’t dissuaded. On the contrary, he yells out even more and louder. In response, Jesus stops. The blind man is brought to Jesus and He heals him, restoring his sight.
Immediately after this event, Jesus enters Jericho. A very wealthy, super short and highly disreputable chief tax collector, Zaccheus, wants to see Jesus. Because he’s vertically challenged, he runs ahead of Jesus and climbs up a sycamore tree to see Jesus as He is passing by. And Jesus stops. He looks up and tells Zaccheus to come down because He’s going to stay at his house! Naturally, the crowd grumbles and finds it unacceptable that Jesus would engage with this yucky tax collector, a sinful man.
In thinking about these two situations, each man had distinct challenges (blindness, height and ugly sin) but they didn’t let their individual struggles stop them from trying to get around Jesus. Additionally, just because the crowds were against them, they weren’t deterred from connecting with Jesus. And from this engagement, each man was drastically changed. The blind man received his sight and the tax collector became generous and noble (giving away half his wealth and repaying anyone four times as much if he’d cheated them). When we have genuine experiences with Jesus, there’s great potential for us to be significantly transformed by improved vision and character upgrades!
It’s also interesting to note that not only were the individuals changed, but also the surrounding crowds. The crowd that told the blind man to be quiet changed their tune to worshipping Jesus after the blind man miraculously received his sight. And it’s probable that many people in the crowd who complained about Jesus hanging out with the short sinner tax collector would also be the beneficiaries of Zaccheaus’ transformation to generosity and integrity.
So when Jesus stops, everyone benefits. Thankfully, Jesus stopped a lot in the Gospels and He wasn’t picky about who He stopped for. Let’s also remember that Jesus stopped many storms, both in external weather conditions and cyclones inside people.
To reflect Jesus’ choices, we would do well to stop, spend time with Him and let Jesus wholly be His Magnificent Self in all our lives!
