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The Lord be with you.

A reading from the Holy Gospel as written to us by Luke.

At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and he intended to pass through the town and there was a man there

named Zekios who is a chief tax collector and a wealthy man.

He was seeking to see who Jesus was.

But he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was very short. So he ran ahead and he climbed a

Sycamore tree in order to see Jesus who is about to pass by.

When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,

Zekias, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house. And he came down quickly

and received him with joy.

When they all saw this, they began to grumble. He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.

But Sakya stood his ground and said to the Lord, behold Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor.

And if I have extorted anything from anyone,

I repay it four times over. And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house because this

man too is a descendant of Abraham.

The human one has come to seek and to save what was lost. This is good news from the Lord. I'm going to largely read the first beautiful reading. It's one of my favorites in the whole Bible and

it's hidden away in the book of wisdom. I've used it often, even given it to people who hate themselves.

And that's a lot of people. Either by reason of abuse or gender or race or whatever,

seems like we find endless reasons to believe that we are unworthy.

And listen to this.

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