Patrick Comerford
The celebrations of Epiphany-tide continue today, and the week began with the Third Sunday of Epiphany (21 January 2024). Today is also the seventh day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and in the Calendar in Common Worship, the Church of England remembers Saint Francis de Sales (1622), Bishop of Geneva and Teacher of the Faith.
Christmas is a season that lasts for 40 days that continues from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February) The Gospel reading on Sunday (John 2: 1-11) told of the Wedding at Cana, one of the traditional Epiphany stories.
In keeping with the theme of Sunday’s Gospel reading, my reflections each morning throughout the seven days of this week include:
1, A reflection on one of seven meals Jesus has with family, friends or disciples;
2, the Gospel reading of the day;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
An icon showing Jesus calling Zacchaeus down from a tree in Jericho4, The meal with Zacchaeus (Luke 19: 1-10):
The story of Jesus becoming the guest of Zacchaeus in Jericho is one of those stories that is unique to Saint Luke. Shortly after telling the story of the Pharisee and the Publican in the Temple, Jesus arrives in Jericho – perhaps the home city of the man who was helped on the side of the road by the Good Samaritan.
There, a man who wants to see Jesus is probably pushed to the back of the crowd for two reasons that count him out: he is small in stature, and he is a tax collector.
The physical problem shows how Zacchaeus is pushed to the margins by those who should have counted him into their social and religious community. He is of little stature not just physically, but socially too.
Can you imagine yourself as a little child trying to see a great parade, or standing among adults at a football match when you were so small?
Did everyone want to let you through?
Or did you not count?
No-one stood aside for you. And no-one is going to stand aside for Zacchaeus. They belittle him, and they probably think he deserves it – after all, the taxes he collects support the Roman occupation and administration.
But Zacchaeus overcomes, rises above, his exclusion, by climbing the tree – is there a symbolic reference here to clinging to the Cross? In any case, Zacchaeus climbs the tree to see Jesus – something you could imagine a child doing, but surely not the sort of thing a well-paid civil servant should be seen doing?
Zacchaeus sees Jesus and Jesus sees Zacchaeus.
And Jesus invites himself not just to dine with Zacchaeus, but to stay with him.
‘Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today’ (verse 5).
Normally, it is the potential host rather than the intended guest who does the inviting. So once again, Jesus the Guest becomes Jesus the Host.
Zacchaeus is delighted. But the good burghers of Jericho are unsettled. They murmur that Jesus is heading off to dine with sinners.
We are so self-righteous at times in our churches that we are very unwilling to welcome those who would be seen today as the little people. One rector I know in a comfortable parish challenged his parishioners, who are very generous in their giving, especially when it comes to development agencies, mission agencies and what we once called Third World causes.
He asked them how they would react if Syrian refugees were moved into a vacant hotel or hostel in the parish on a Saturday night, and all of them presume.
In welcoming Jesus, Zacchaeus has what only be described as a conversion experience.
The NRSV translation tells us that he promises to amend his ways and that, in the future, he will give half his possessions to the poor, and return anything extra he has squeezed out of people when he has been collecting taxes.
Oh, the joys of being a PAYE/PRSI worker in the tax system we have in Ireland!
Unfortunately, the NRSV translation is a little inaccurate here. Zacchaeus makes no such promise about the future. He says, in the original Greek, that this is what he is doing in the present – the present tense is used.
If he is telling the truth, then Zacchaeus has been grossly misrepresented, misunderstood and libelled by his neighbours and within his own community, even at the point where he is dining with Jesus.
The present tense is important. For this day, on this day, Jesus affirms that Zacchaeus too is a child of Abraham, that he too is an heir to those promises made long, long ago to Abraham.
Those who needed conversion were not Zacchaeus and others like him on the margins, who were in need of seeing people as Christ sees them.
Jesus seeks out the sinners, the lost, those who are excluded, those counted out, and invites them to the heavenly banquet. Like Zacchaeus, they too are brought from the margins into the centre.
The one person everyone thought was outside, is on the inside as far as Jesus is concerned. And those who think they are on the inside are in danger of finding that they are on the outside.
Are we welcoming enough, as individuals and as a Church?
How would you feel if Jesus came to your town or your parish one Saturday night but decided not to come to your church on Sunday morning, but to go somewhere else?
What if you were left without Jesus being present in your church on Sunday morning … in either Word or Sacrament?
How often are we prepared to welcome Christ’s presence among us only in the way we choose?
For those in the Catholic traditions, do we neglect Christ’s presence in the Word too often?
To those in the Protestant traditions, do we neglect Christ’s presence in the Sacrament too often?
Mark 4: 1-20 (NRSVA):
4 Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ 9 And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that “they may indeed look, but not perceive,
and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven”.’
13 And he said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’
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Christ calls Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree … is this story too familiar that it is difficult to find fresh insights? (Illustration © Henry Martin)Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 24 January 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Provincial Programme on Capacity Building in Paraná.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Christina Takatsu Winnischofer, Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (24 January 2024, International Day of Education) invites us to pray in these words:
Let us pray for teachers, professors and all those involved in educating children and young adults. May we care for them as they care for those they are educating.
The Collect:
Holy God, who called your bishop Francis de Sales
to bring many to Christ through his devout life
and to renew your Church with patience and understanding:
grant that we may, by word and example,
reflect your gentleness and love to all we meet;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Francis de Sales to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of the Conversion of Paul:
Almighty God,
who caused the light of the gospel
to shine throughout the world
through the preaching of your servant Saint Paul:
grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion
may follow him in bearing witness to your truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s reflection (The meal with Mary and Martha)
Continued tomorrow (The unwelcoming host: the meal with Simon the Pharisee)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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