Our homily today is based on Luke 19:1-10.
The encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus has got to be one of the strangest–and funniest–scenes in the Gospel. So we’re told our Lord is, as usual, on his way somewhere, followed by the usual massive crowd. Then without any warning, he stops in his tracks, looks up–and, we can imagine, all the people around him instinctively looking up as well–to see, of all things, a man straddling a branch, hiding behind its leaves.
