Back in the 1980’s, Catherine Ryan Hyde was driving alone at night in a rough area of downtown Los Angeles. Her aging Datsun 1200 stalled at the head of a freeway ramp and then the passenger compartment started to fill with smoke. She was forced to step out of her car in that dangerous neighborhood and immediately saw two men running at her, one carrying an open blanket he’d pulled from the trunk of his car. Catherine thought to herself, “I’m dead.” Then the two men ran right past her, pulled open the hood of her car and smothered the flames with the blanket. The fire department arrived quickly, called by another motorist. When the emergency was under control, Catherine went to thank those two men, but they were gone. Over the days ahead, Catherine decided since there was nothing she could do to repay her mystery Good Samaritans, she would commit to helping someone else. The first opportunity was another motorist with a cracked radiator hose. She stopped, cut the hose at the leak, reattached it and refilled the radiator with coolant. When they wanted to pay her, Catherine found herself refusing money and simply saying “pay it forward”. She wondered what it would be like to send another person into the world owing a favor to a stranger. Off and on, over the next twenty years, she got to thinking, what if one day one person did one nice favor to three different people and the next day those three people did the same and the next day those 9 people “paid it forward” to three more people each and on and on the same each day. Somewhere toward the close of the 18th day, the number of people whose lives had been touched by an act of kindness would pass the 300 million mark and within minutes exceed the total population of the United States! (Draw on clipboard) Such became the premise for Catherine Ryan Hyde’s best-selling novel Pay It Forward and a movie by the same title, both released in 2000. Hyde spins a heartwarming yarn about an 11-year-old boy named Trevor McKinney who comes up with the “pay it forward” idea for an extra-credit school assignment. His cynical history teacher dismisses it with the tactful, but deriding comment, “It’s rather utopian, isn’t it?” One could just as easily comment, “It’s rather Christian, isn’t it?” Because our good works are simply our response to the blessings we’ve already received from God through others; good works that we do with no expectation for thanks or rewards returned, only with the hope that others might “pay it forward”. This scenario arises in our scripture passage from Luke for today. Jesus was passing through the town of Jericho and because of the teaching and healing he’d been doing; crowds came out to meet this rising celebrity. Amidst the crowd was Zacchaeus, small in stature, but large in notoriety as chief tax collector in the region. Zacchaeus climbed a tree for a better view and Jesus, a Jew, who ordinarily would have been expected to ignore if not disdain the tax collector, paused to greet Zacchaeus and offered to dine with him. It was a risky and unanticipated favor that Jesus offered. Zacchaeus took Jesus up on the favor and together they went back to Zacchaeus’ home. They ate and talked and money could not have repaid Jesus for the kindness and compassion he’d shown or the ridicule he’d receive for going to the home of such a sinner and outcast in the eyes of the Jewish community. But Zacchaeus ended up paying it forward instead. In verse 8 Zacchaeus declares, “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.” Jesus’ entire ministry was characterized by giving things away for which no one could pay, including his very life, except to keep on paying forward the hopes and the healings and the promises that have created new generations of disciples for the last two thousand years! We’re a particularly blessed people. Here in the southwest suburbs we have excellent homes, jobs, education, health care, transportation, social services, recreational activities…and yet when one thing goes awry, it’s easy to slip from paying forward encouragement and assistance to paying forward negativity and complaint. There’s a fable floating around e-mails these days…A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” The mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap! Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but I’ve got problems of my own!” The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but I’ve got all I can do to keep up with the mess in this pen.” The mouse turned to the cow and said “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The cow said, “Moo…to bad to be you…” So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever. In her illness fresh chicken soup sounded good, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig for ham sandwiches. During this time the farmer got behind on chores and traded half a cow for some fieldwork. The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. A parable? Certainly. But lest we think it doesn’t matter whether we pay forward assets or liabilities, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. One night in April 1944, just weeks before D-Day, like all lonely servicemen, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower was writing a letter home to his wife Mamie. “How I wish this cruel business of war could be completed quickly. Entirely aside from longing to return to you (and stay there) it is a terribly sad business to total up the casualties each day – even in an air war – and to realize how many youngsters are gone forever. A man must develop a veneer of callousness that lets him consider such things dispassionately, but he can never escape a recognition of the fact that back home the news brings anguish and suffering to families all over the country… War demands real toughness of fiber – not only in the soldiers who must endure, but in the homes that must sacrifice their best.” Today, November 11th, is Veterans Day. At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, World War I ended in 1918. This was to be the war that ended all wars. We all know it was not. Japan, Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Lebanon, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq have all called new waves of men and women to personal sacrifice and we can only pay it forward by exercising the freedoms and pursuing the peace that they gave their lives to secure for future generations. Pay it forward. At its root, that’s what we’re doing in our United in Faith, Fellowship and Future stewardship and capital campaign this fall. We can never repay all the faithful Good Samaritans who have gone before us; who made their own sacrificial gifts to start this church, to complete three prior building projects, to creatively grow programs and build staff… No, we can’t pay them back, but in appreciation for this church family that has been given to us, we certainly can pay it forward. As we approach the 50th anniversary of our church, our commitment to underwrite our 2008 operating budget and to retire our debt from our most recent building program is our opportunity to do a favor for the Good Samaritans who come after us. I was visiting about this financial appeal with one of our members just this past week and he observed, “It takes more than one generation to do something great.” If you haven’t already done so, please prayerfully consider your gift to these two appeals and bring your pledge cards to our Celebration Sunday worship next week as our campaign comes to a close. For Catherine Ryan Hyde, Pay It Forward isn’t just a book and movie title, it’s a movement she continues to foster. She maintains a Pay It Forward website where people can post stories about acts of kindness received and given. Hyde also established a Pay It Forward Foundation, to channel financial gifts for further works of kindness. Hyde said she didn’t write the novel expecting a social movement, but it’s certainly been exciting to watch it grow all around the world. The original Pay It Forward book was written long before (Bible), and I can only imagine the excitement of God as it continues to grow!