Word to the Wise
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 - Tuesday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rev 3:1-6, 14-22 and Luke 19:1-10]"Zaccheus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down quickly and received him with joy....And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost."[Luke]
Yesterday it was blind Bartimaeus who got our attention. Today it is Zaccheus the tax collector. And once more there is a crowd that tries to be a negative foil to Jesus' ministry. They tried to silence Bartimaeus and now they grumble because Jesus is going to dine with one of the most hated kinds of people in the Jewish society of Jesus' time - a tax collector! Tax collectors are never popular, but in Jesus' day they represented the Roman empire, an occupying military presence with pagan practices. Just to handle the money required for paying the tax made the collector ritually unclean and anyone who touched the collector became unclean. Jesus was going to dine with such a person? YES!
I remember my nephew as a little boy singing, "Zaccheus was a wee little man and a wee little man was heeee,,," Jesus made him a giant in the sight of God and hopefully in the sight of the crowd. Pope Francis, in his initial encyclical, THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL, referred to the church as "a hospital for the sick and wounded." We are challenged to be "missionary disciples" and to receive and preach the gospel with JOY. Zaccheus not only received Jesus with joy, he promised to change his life, to give away half his possessions to the poor and repay anyone he had extorted anything from well over the amount dictated in the Law of Moses.
Bartimaeus and Zaccheus have much to teach us. Are we seeing and listening and changing our own ways so that we can accompany Jesus on his journey in good faith? AMEN