Dear
Michele,
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31st Sunday of Ordinary Time
11-3-2019
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Zacchaeus
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There is a song by Billy Joel; called Piano Man.
It is about Joel’s early life when he used to play the piano in a bar.
Every night he would sing songs for the customers and in Piano Man,
he tells their stories. He tells about the waitress who is practicing
politics. And he tells about Joe who plays amateur psychologist.
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Then he tells one more story about the man
who comes to him and says, “Son, can you play me a melody?” I am not
really sure how it goes, but it is sad and it is sweet and I knew it
complete when I wore a younger man’s clothes.” We can picture the man;
he is in his fifties, an old worn suit. His life has not turned out like
he had thought, like he had hoped, like he had dreamed. Every night he
comes into the bar and he gulps a few to take the edge off the day and
the hushed conversation keeps the loneliness from creeping in.
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And the soft lights and dark walls protect
him from the sunshine outside. The mirror over the bar reminds him he is
not the man he used to be. The man he should have been, the man his
parents prayed he would become. And he sits listening to the piano man
and he is saying to himself that he once knew himself because he knew
the melody of his life.
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And then he somehow forgot that tune, and
now he needs someone to help him remember that song. “Son, can you play
me a melody? I am not really sure how it goes. But it is sad and it is
sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man’s clothes.” We
have a man like this in our gospel, Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Don’t
think IRS, here think Mafia or drug dealers. He was seen as a traitor
and collaborator with the occupying power; he was cut off from his own
people.
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As the man in the song goes to the piano
man, so Zacchaeus goes to try and see Jesus. By climbing a tree, he
communicated to Jesus his need, his search, his emptiness. So he climbs a
tree, if he cannot speak to Jesus, at least he will see him. Then Jesus
surprises everyone, he stops and speaks to Zacchaeus, the sinner and
invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house. Then the tongues start to wag,
“Doesn’t he know who this man is? What he is?”
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Then Jesus says he has come to find that
which was lost. Lost in the Bible does not mean to be damned or be
beyond salvation. It means, quite literally, to be in the wrong place,
to be somewhere you should not be.
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Look to our own lives, yours and mine, our
hearts are often in the wrong place. Wanting this or that, indulging in
resentment or wallowing in self-pity. And our minds are in the wrong
place.
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Filled with Technicolor, wandering and
fantasies or X-rated thoughts. Also, our affections are in the wrong
place, fixated on the wrong ambitions on the wrong people. Our bodies
are often lost in the wrong place. Here when they should be there,
pampered when they should be stretched. Allowed to wait around when they
should be waiting on others. Sometimes, parts of us, sometimes the
whole of us-mind, heart, body, emotions-get lost.
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Because our priorities are wrong, so how do
we put things right? Most of the time from this pulpit I talk about our
need for faith in Christ. But, today we are coming at that thought from
the opposite direction. I am talking about his faith in us. All of us
have sinned and we know it. But the gospel message is Christ believes in
us, Christ is committed to us. One week after Jesus called Zacchaeus
down from the tree; he would be arrested and put to death again in the
presence of thieves up a tree.
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And again with his last breath Jesus would
welcome every crook or sinner who turned to him. Why? Because he had
come to seek and to save those who were lost. People like you and me. In
many ways we are all a bit like Zacchaeus, some of us more lost than
others. But all of us lost to some extent or another.
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Like Zacchaeus, we are small people in many
ways. But, here every week at Mass we climb into the sight of God and we
say we are not worthy that He should come under our roof. But Christ
invites Himself in, He comes under our roof and gives Himself to us. And
He can say to us what He said to Zacchaeus, this day salvation has come
to this house. It is only in Christ that we can become whole; it is
only in Christ that we can become complete. We do not need anyone to
play us a tune.
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There is a religious novelist, Lloyd Douglas
who closes his version of the encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus
with these words. “Zacchaeus, said The Carpenter gently, what did you
see that made you desire this peace?” “Good Master, I saw in You the
Zacchaeus I was meant to be and when You showed me that, I could not
turn away.”
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