G. K. Chesterton once commented that our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to learn to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again. The same thing is true of stories as well. The temptation is to quickly think, “I’ve heard it before. Next! Give me something new.” Perhaps our task, especially during this season, is to hear the familiar stories until they become unfamiliar long enough to become new again. One such story, probably my personal favorite from all the gospels, is the well-known tale below. I believe it is a gospel unto itself. I also believe it is an Advent story (though the lectionary puts it toward the end of Ordinary time and a few weeks before Advent in Year C). See if you can hear this story with new ears so that what is old news becomes new news and new news becomes good news.
Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town.
Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy.
When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”
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 19: 1-10
Artwork (Top to bottom):
1. “Zacchaeus” by Joel Whitehead. See here.
2. —-
3. Anonymous
4. “Zacchaeus,” Misereor Hunger Cloth by Alemayehu Bizuneh
Dan. Beautiful. Yes. It reminds me, circuitously, of this: Tony Hoagland.
“The Poet as Wounded Citizen” in December’s issue of The Writer’s Chronicle (courtesy of @Dorianne Laux):
“The artist is not a freak or an oracle or a genius. In fact, the artist is at the epicenter of normality. Poets are wounded in the same ways as everyone else, but with one particular distinction—they are not wounded to the point of speechlessness. Instead, they are wounded into speech. Their job, unlike the roles assigned to most of us, is not to conceal or disguise their woundedness, but make it glaringly evident. Poets are useful to the culture precisely to the extent that their experience is representative—representative and murderously frank.”
Thank you for your blessings.