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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
October 7, 2024
By a supportive presence we (teachers) can create the space with safe boundaries within which students can give up their defensive stance and bend over their own life experience... As teachers we have to encourage our students to reflection, which leads to vision —theirs, not ours. Henri Nouwen, Reaching out
Reading: Luke 19:1-8
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, and he could not see over the crowd. So, he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Zaccheus came down at once and welcomed him gladly… Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
Meditation by Glenn Beamer
I have long felt a connection to Zaccheus: I’m short and liked climbing trees. I haven’t been a reviled tax collector, but I worked my way through academia writing about federal and state taxes. My son Conor has googled these scintillating publications and has enjoyed revealing that their readership has been, shall we say, limited.
In Luke 19, Jesus’ teaching is not accomplished via instruction. Jesus turns the practices of our world upside down and empowers Zaccheus first to host him and then to decide how he will transform his life from isolated tax collector to community benefactor. Jesus creates a safe space in which Zaccheus can host him; a place in which Zaccheus’ grace and beneficence, feeding Jesus and selling half his possessions, can begin.
I experienced a powerful lesson about becoming a teacher as a student at William and Mary. I enrolled in introductory golf. The professor was W&M’s legendary golf coach Joe Agee—a 3-sport letterman, an inductee into several halls of fame, then in his 32nd year coaching at W&M. One class Coach Agee invited his eight neophyte golfers to run with him in a 5k benefit run that Saturday. He offered to pay for any student who could not come up with the $3 entry fee. In a sense, our professor asked us to come down from our metaphorical trees and join him to do some good in our community.
That Saturday morning was cool & windy. We joined Coach Agee at the starting line. Back then I ran 8-minute miles, and my professor ran 7-minute miles. At the 2k mark a classmate, Cathy, had fallen 75 meters behind. She was struggling to find, let alone maintain, a pace. Coach Agee doubled back to her. I expected he would encourage Cathy with something banal like “You’ve got this!” and then resume his pace. But Coach Agee didn’t do that. He slowed Cathy down. He told her to relax and recover and he walked with her. Just as Jesus made himself present to the isolated Zaccheus; our professor made himself present to our classmate who was struggling alone.
Coach Agee and Cathy resumed jogging, crossed the finish line, and rejoined our cheering class. Cathy looked relieved and her smile reflected a hint of pride. Coach Agee called us together and said we could be proud of ourselves—we had all finished. Coach Agee understood that Cathy needed the space in which to sustain her run and then make her contribution. Just as Jesus understood the importance of empowering Zaccheus to make his unique contribution—giving away half his wealth, our golf coach understood Cathy was more likely to finish if he gave her the space in which to find her pace, not his.
Too rarely we tell our students, our children, or our coworkers, “Slow down, I want you to set your pace and find your unique path. Your progress is more important than my success.” Jesus presaged Nouwen’s admonition “to encourage our students to reflection which leads to vision—theirs not ours.”
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