Ordinary Time

Pause

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

“The Summons Song,” John L. Bell and Graham Maule, 1987

Listen

Everyone who saw this grumbled, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”

Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham. The Human One came to seek and save the lost.”

Luke 19:7-10

Think

Not only was Zacchaeus small, he was the guy nobody liked. His profession was known for cheating people out of money. But Jesus saw more than that. He knew Zacchaeus was more than his past, more than his profession, more than his baggage. He knew Zacchaeus’ name at its root means “clean, pure, just.”

What are you known for? At school? Home? Work? Do people see the truth of who you are? Once Jesus named the truth about Zacchaeus, that he was a man worth having dinner with, a man worth befriending—it changed everything.

Suddenly Zacchaeus, the man known as greedy, gave half his money away. Suddenly Zacchaeus, the man known as cheater, paid back his victims 400%. Jesus calls it like he sees it: “You want to know what being ‘saved’ is? This guy’s it.”

The short little man who forever felt like an outsider was proclaimed a son of Abraham. One who belongs to the faith. “This is who I came for,” Jesus says. “Give me the lost and lonely any day.”

Cari Pattison

Pray

Dear Jesus,
You say you’ve called me by name.
You seek me out when I’m lost.
You see inside my heart and mind,
And remind me that love is the truth of who I am.
Thank God.
Amen.

Go

The question is not whether God has called you.

The question is how and where and whether you will say “yes.”

Go into this day brave.
Go into this day believing.
Go into this day knowing
that you are already enough.