Prevenient Grace | 5/4/25

• Reflection Questions

  • Who has been your "Jesus moment"—someone who saw you, knew you, and loved you anyway?
    Reflect on a time when someone met you with grace at just the right moment in your life.

  • Can you recall a time when you experienced prevenient grace without realizing it until later?
    What helped you see God's presence in hindsight?

  • In what ways might you be climbing a "sycamore tree" right now—seeking to be seen, known, or invited in?
    What are you hoping for in your current spiritual journey?

  • How can you be a presence of prevenient grace for someone else this week?
    Think about specific ways to meet people where they are, just as Jesus did with Zacchaeus.

  • What does it mean to you to "make love real" in your community?
    How might your actions reflect the unbounded love of God?

Transcript:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he. Sing it if you know it. He climbed up in the sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. And as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree and he said, "Zacchaeus, you come down! For I'm going to your house today. For I'm going to your house today."

Well, whether you learned this song or heard this story as a child in Sunday school, or you're hearing it for the very first time this morning, Zacchaeus's story of transformation and redemption is a tale as old as time. It's a story where wrongs are made right, where the villain becomes the hero.

But the way that we often hear this story, whether it's through scripture or hearing it from someone else, we are invited only to place ourselves in that tree with Zacchaeus. And I wonder what the story would feel like, how the story might change, if it were told a little bit differently.

This morning, I invite us all to think about what it would be like if we were actually walking in Jesus's sandals.

Jesus was making his way toward the town of Jericho, strolling casually behind his merry band of disciples who were just a little ahead of him. Jesus had no real intentions of staying in Jericho for very long, but as always, he was ready and willing to seize any opportunity that the Spirit of God lays before him to share the good news and to gather people together.

As they were entering into this town, he noticed that there were lots of people starting to come out of their storefronts or their homes to peer down the road to see he and his merry band of disciples coming toward the town center. And the crowd began to grow one by one as curiosity moved them together.

Up ahead, he noticed that there was the sycamore tree grove right in the heart of town where people were starting to gather, and he saw something that looked a little odd to him. There was some movement in the crowd as a small-statured man began elbowing his way through the crowd.

When that man finally popped out, Jesus sees that he goes toward the sycamore tree, and he looks at the crowd, and he stands up on his tippy toes to try to see who was coming down the road. And when he realized he couldn't, he looked up at that tree, nodded his head, hiked up his robes and adornments, and began climbing that tree.

I wonder if Jesus thought, "Man, this guy is resourceful."

So, seeing this man climb the tree, Jesus already knows his name. It was written upon his heart before even exchanging a word. Zacchaeus—pure and innocent—was the true meaning of this man's name. But sadness sweeps across Jesus's soul when he realizes that Zacchaeus has made some choices in his life that had moved him to a place that did not resemble his namesake.

So, with purpose and determination, Jesus hikes up his robe just a little bit and walks over to that sycamore tree where that branch was holding so much promise, so much potential, so much purpose for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And so, he says, "Zacchaeus, get your butt down here. I'm inviting myself to your house today."

Before Zacchaeus really understood who this man was, before he knew Jesus, Jesus saw him. Jesus saw where he was, in a sycamore tree adorned in opulence. He saw what he was doing—scamming fellow Jews out of taxes to line his own pockets for safety and security. He saw how he related to the people in the crowd around him—a crowd who treated him as a traitor or a high-class thief. Jesus knew him. He knew Zacchaeus's name. He knew Zacchaeus's capacity for goodness, his potential, his gifts, his heart, despite the choices that he was presently making.

And then Jesus offered to him an invitation, for Zacchaeus to see and to know Jesus in return. An invitation into something miraculous. Something transformational.

That is prevenient grace.

It is when Christ takes the initiative to bridge the gap that seems to separate us from God and God's love. It's God's continuous effort to grab hold of our attentions, to bring to us an awareness of the availability of love that is present in every moment, to help us step into a life of reconciliation and wholeness—what God had envisioned for each of us from the very beginning.

But so often we can only see these movements of grace as we look back on our lives. We only notice the way that God was weaving our stories toward goodness if we look in the rearview mirror—when we take note of the moments where we have felt seen by an important adult in our life journey, when we have felt known fully by the communities of support in seasons of life that feel like chaos or absolute upheaval and conflict, or those moments when we have been invited into something that we could never have imagined for ourselves.

That was God at work, moving us into a life of faith through prevenient grace.

I was on a mini bus with the name First United Methodist Church of Lakeland, Florida on the side. We were on the way to North Carolina for my very first mission trip ever as a sixth-grade girl with a youth group at First UMC. This was the first time I was away from my parents for more than just an overnight experience at a friend's house. And it was my first time really going away with this youth group, this new group of people that I had happened upon.

I was a different Marisa back then. I was a Marisa who was painfully shy, if you can believe it. A Marisa who wasn't sure of herself. A Marisa who really just wanted one friend in the universe. A Marisa who just wanted to belong somewhere.

And one of the things I loved to do as a sixth-grade girl was read. My nose was always in a book. And so naturally, I brought the book that I was reading on this trip. It was a very embarrassing book, looking back at it. The title—it was a novel—the title was called How to Be Popular. And I stuck that book down deep, or so I thought, into my backpack as it sat on the floorboard.

We made our way to a rest stop where we were all supposed to go out and grab snacks, and especially go to the bathroom. I don't know how many of us actually did. But as we got back onto the bus and got settled, my youth director, Kirk Dana—bless his heart, he's amazing, I love him, and he wrangled all of us so well—but he stands up at the front of the bus and holds up my book. It had slid all the way to the front of the bus.

And so, he holds it up and then he says, "I just want everyone to know that I found this book. And you are deeply loved by God. You—each of you—are beautifully and wonderfully made. And if this is your book, I have it in the front. Make sure you get it on your way off the bus." And then he sits back down.

You can imagine that my painfully shy self was a little mortified. But I was also curious. And so, I waited for everyone else to get off the bus, and I walked up to where he was seated and said, "Kirk, may I have my book back?"

And he said, "Here you go, Marisa. Remember—you belong here."

And that was all I needed to hear. Looking back, that’s all I really wanted. I wanted to belong somewhere. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be known. And I found that in Kirk Dana and in that youth group who loved me right into the kingdom of God and into a life of faith in Christ, and in myself.

I was given opportunity after opportunity to say yes, to experience that connectedness and that belonging. And I did. I said yes, right until the moment I said yes to ordained ministry.

That was prevenient grace.

Where would any of us be this morning without those people who loved us exactly where we were and exactly who we were at exactly the right time? Those people who would meet us in a sycamore tree, who would climb all the way up and sit right in the middle of our mess to help us, to meet us.

I invite you to take just a moment to picture that person or that group of people in your mind—to remember the moment or bunch of moments maybe where you felt deeply loved.

That was prevenient grace.

Last week, the Reverend Dr. Paul Chilcote was here, and he did a presentation on Saturday called The Fullest Possible Love, and in this presentation, he said this: "Our primary job as Jesus followers is to make love real." In fact, it changes our world.

How many of us are feeling like our world needs to be changed a little bit right now?

Friends, that is our call. If we claim to be a people of faith, if we claim to be Jesus followers, we have the opportunity not only to participate but to facilitate and help communicate God's prevenient grace to others.

We are called to be the person that we just pictured in our minds, for someone else. And we are invited to help someone else experience God's love, maybe for the very first time, through the love that we offer to the world.

This is who we are.

We heard and saw just moments ago Jean and Nick and the volunteers who help our children's ministry. They reminded us that this is what we do. Our children's ministry loves our children into the faith. We meet them where they are—as we pass out candy after candy at Trunk or Treat, the Fall Fest. We know our children's names as we dance and sing alongside them at Vacation Bible Camp. And our volunteers meet them exactly where they are—sit down with them and help them to navigate relationships with their friends, their parents, their teachers.

And as we do all of this, we share God's love and facilitate an experience that those children might one day look back on and recognize as prevenient grace.

But friends, if we are called to love the littlest of us, we must love all of God's children. We don't get to pick and choose who is the most deserving of God's grace and God's love. We are simply called to love all.

Including the adult ones of us.

Including the ones who prefer Star Trek to Star Wars—we are called to love them. We're called to love the ones with the screaming, rambunctious children right in the middle of the grocery store aisle when you're just trying to get a can of green beans—we love them. The ones who straddle two or three jobs just to make ends meet—we love them. The ones who argue simply for the sake of argument—we love them. The ones who bulldoze and bully just to get their way—we love them. The ones who fear being targeted because of the language that they speak or the ways that they express their culture—we love them.

We love the ones who hold up signs in the middle of the street—we love them. The ones that believe fear, intimidation, and elimination are the ways to greatness—we love them.

Because God's prevenient grace has no bounds. And neither should we.

So, friends, may the force of Christ's love go with us as we meet those sycamore-climbing children of God just hoping for someone to see them, just hoping for someone to know them, just hoping for someone to love them into abundant grace and a life full of hope and promise.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.