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We have almost no personal description of the people who meet Jesus during his public ministry. Occasionally we get a name: Martha or Bartimaeus. But we are not told what color hair Martha had or how old Bartimaeus was when he met Jesus. Today\u2019s gospel is an exception to this pattern. It provides us with one clear personal characteristic of the tax collector, Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was short\u2014or as the lectionary delicately puts it, \u201cshort in stature.\u201d Now it is very likely that Zacchaeus did not like being short. In the ancient world, as today, there simply is no advantage being smaller than other people. We can imagine that during Zacchaeus\u2019 schooling and afterwards he had to endure a series of nicknames: peewee, runt, little man. A callus person could often make fun at Zacchaeus\u2019 expense, like saying, \u201cHey Zach, how the weather down there?\u201d It was not easy being short, and it is very likely that Zacchaeus simply saw his height as a disadvantage he would have to accept.<\/p>\n
Now the beautiful thing about today\u2019s gospel is that God uses the very thing that Zacchaeus sees as an inadequacy to lead him to Jesus. If Zacchaeus had been the same height as other people, he could have easily seen Jesus from the crowd. In the crowd, however, he would have been one of a hundred faces. But Zacchaeus was short in stature, so he climbed up the Sycamore tree in order to see Jesus. This made Zacchaeus uniquely visible to Jesus who saw him, stopped, called him, and announced that he must stay at Zacchaeus\u2019 house. The very thing that Zacchaeus saw as a limitation was used by God to change Zacchaeus\u2019 life, to make him a disciple of the Lord.<\/p>\n
This gospel is telling us that God uses all the parts of our lives to love us and save us, even the parts that we wish were different. Perhaps you always wished you were a better athlete, more coordinated. But despite your best efforts you always ended up being the entertainment in gym class. This gospel tells us that God is able to show you how to invest the time and energy you would have spent on being a state champion in wrestling in other areas\u2014in academics or the appreciation of beauty. Those investments will be a means of blessing time and again. Perhaps you still carry hurt because of favoritism in your family. You watched as your parents loved your brothers and sisters at your expense. Today\u2019s gospel says that God is able and has perhaps already used that experience of favoritism to make you a better parent, to give you the will to make sure that all your children see themselves as equally loved and valued. Perhaps you always wished that you were better socially, that you could make small talk or to mix easily in groups. Today\u2019s gospel says that God is able and may have already used your social awkwardness to connect you to someone on a deeper level, to help you find a friend or a spouse who knows and loves you not because of your glib language, but because they see your honesty in your heart. Those relationships can last a lifetime.<\/p>\n
We all have parts of ourselves that we wish were different. Today\u2019s gospel reminds that even those parts have value. Ask Zacchaeus. A limp, a scar, a fear of heights can all be used by God to deepen our lives and bring us to salvation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This homily was offered at Holy Angels Church in Bainbridge Ohio on 3 November 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5879,"featured_media":4922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/files\/2019\/11\/zacchaeus.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5879"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buildingontheword.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}