Word to the Wise
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - Tuesday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rev 3:1-6, 14-22 and Luke 19:1-10]When he reached that place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zaccheus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down and received him with joy. [Luke]
The Gospel of Luke offers us many wonderful stories not found in the other three gospels: "the Prodigal Son, " "the Rich Man and Lazarus," "the Good Samaritan," (not to mention the story of Jesus' birth, etc.. However, the story of Zaccheus has a comic charm to it that one rarely sees in the gospels! Zaccheus' curiosity and physical shortness leads him to climb a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus passing by. The fact that he (Zaccheus) is a tax collector and a wealthy man does not make him stand on dignity. Jesus spots him in the tree and calls to him! The rest of the story is dramatic because Zaccheus experiences a complete turnabout in his life, much to the skepticism of the crowd. But Zaccheus stands his ground. Jesus sums it all up by saying, "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost."
Dramatic conversions do have the tendency to cause skepticism. But we cannot let our skepticism blind us to their possibility. In the case of the blind beggar, the crowd tries to silence him when he reaches out to Jesus for help. In the case of Zaccheus, the crowd dismisses him as a sinner. He is a tax collector! In the case of the Canaanite woman with a sick daughter, the disciples want Jesus to silence her. It might help if we put ourselves in the place of Zaccheus, or the blind beggar or the Canaanite woman. We would be seeking help in the face of the respectable sorts who claim to be followers. Conversion is needed on both sides of this equation and Jesus reaches out to all who are lost. AMEN
config
view
logs
4096.0 KB
71 ms
4
