Once upon a time we all were “wee.”
For me it was late 20th Century.
I don’t recall my wee-child years as being easy but even so was formed by the like-it-or-not protective, formative influences of Christianity. There was this song, and its catchy tune welded bits and pieces of the first verse all over me. Notes that always ring, decades later, when the name Zacchaeus hits my thoughts…
Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
And a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see.
Now as an adult reader, studier of Luke 19 the figments of my imagination have float-walked with that “Jerichoian” crowd. No one from that crowd can see or sense me, but I am there. Like Zacchaeus I don’t really know what Christ looks like, but his presence, his influence, his reputation has whistled me up into that pre-Jerusalem, dusty migration of Jesus toward the crucifixion.
Did the people of Jesus’ day know of, know about Jesus? It is 2021, do you know who George Floyd is? What about Donald Trump or Anthony Fauci? Have you met any of these? Probably not, I haven’t. Have you talked about any of these? All of these? More likely. Have you thought of them? Almost certainly and probably not stopping with the thoughts you tromped right on to opinions–strong ones.
So, slip and slide your minds off to Jericho, to a tax collector’s guild, a den of wealthy men, servants, girls of entertainment, loud or quiet music as fit the moment, torch lights flickering, some ale here and wine there. The imagination does not need to work hard to float-walk you into their houses and taverns, into habits built atop dirty prestige, atop street level, free-range tax agencies. If your imagination needs a boost go to Hugo, go to Dickens. From Les Misérables to a Christmas Carol, from Fontaine to Scrooge and Tiny Tim. Amongst those imagination-realities can you wander back to a First Century club or maybe an ale-house in Jericho. Does the French door creak as your figment opens it? Glance around a bit, “Ah, yes, there he is; more thoughtful than some; definitely not worried about what people think of him; he’s the man.” So go your invisible observances of a man, a not-so-wee-little man, but a tax-player whose tune evoked taxes from the payers.
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