Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year 3, NL)

You want to see and be seen by Jesus? Sinner, get ready!

Zaccheus doesn't mind the indignity of scrambling up a tree, as long as he’s on top.

White Americans aren’t the Israelites; we’re the Egyptians. Maybe we should follow their lead.

In Psalm 84, an expectant swallow makes her nest in the temple.

Stories of Christians working in the world offer hope that heals.

In God's life, all creatures get attention.

Sometimes you have to struggle to a new height, away from the crowded ground level, to gain new vision.

Zacchaeus's daily life as a tax collector was reduced to the symptoms of his society's sickness.

"Mary has chosen the better part," says Jesus, "and it will not be taken away from her." This is not what Jesus is supposed to say.

The gospel reading for October 31 comes toward the end of what most Lucan scholars call Luke's travel narrative. It begins ten chapters earlier at 9:51, where Luke tells us, "When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem."

One would expect to follow Jesus' progress on a map—but the coordinates make no geographical sense.

I knew the tale of Zacchaeus as we’ve all heard it—a short bad man climbs a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus—until I heard Charlie Cook preach on it one Sunday in the mid-’70s. Charlie was a short good man, and one of the most extraordinary pastors I have ever known.

It must have been the mother of all squalls. Some of the disciples were seasoned fishermen, skilled in the art of navigating dangerous waters. But this was a red alert. They were going to perish—and the one person who might turn the situation around was sleeping peacefully in the boat’s place of honor, the stern. They woke Jesus up with a strident “Don’t you care, Teacher?” But he did not respond to their lack of faith. Instead he responded to the peace within himself, and produced a calm that impacted nature as well as the frightened disciples.