A story about a story teller
Saturday of the Third Week of Lent Hos 6:1–6 · Ps 51 · Lk 18:9–14
Imagine you are the one who has been cancelled.
You think differently. You said the wrong thing. You belong to the wrong group.
Nobody wants to sit with you. Nobody wants to defend you.
When you enter a church, conversations slow down. Eyes turn. Whispers follow.
You are not innocent. You took a job others refused — because you needed money. The media tore you apart:
Traitor. Collaborator. Thief.
Respectable people despised you.
You stopped explaining. You stopped defending. You accepted the label.
Then one day, someone noticed you.
Not your scandal. Not your failure. You.
And turned your story into a parable.
In that story, you stand in the temple. You don’t argue your case. You don’t compare yourself to anyone.
You simply say:
“Lord, have mercy on me.”
Not as a slogan. Not as a performance.
Like a child who finally admits: “Nobody wants to play with me. Nobody likes me.”
No pride left. No mask.
Just need.
And then something unexpected happens.
You realize that God is not whispering with the crowd.
He is not standing with the respectable.
He is not reposting your shame.
He is on your side.
Not because you were right. Not because you were better.
But because you were honest.
And you leave that place different.
Not approved by the crowd. Not cleared by the media.
And then comes the strangest part.
In the story, you are placed next to one of those respectable people who once despised you.
The roles are reversed.
The polished one — the admired one — suddenly feels small.
And you — the cancelled one — are seen differently.
Not as a headline. Not as a scandal. Not as a label.
As a human being.
And somehow, in the way the story is told, you become the one people understand.
The one they feel for.
The one they recognize themselves in.
You begin to ask:
Who tells stories like this?
Who takes someone written off and lets them stand with dignity?
Who dares to say that the person at the back of the room may be closer to God than the one at the front?
And when you discover the answer — that it was Jesus of Nazareth —
something shifts.
Because this is not just a story about you.
It is a story about how He sees people.
And once you realize that — once you see yourself through His eyes — you cannot stay the same.
You begin to speak about Him.
And while you try to understand Him — while you read, search, question, and write — you find something unexpected:
You are changing.
Who would have imagined that a story told from a different perspective could lead you here —
A cancelled man in the temple whispering for mercy
becomes a witness.
A tax collector becomes an evangelist.
Matthew picks up a pen and writes a story about Jesus of Nazareth.
And dares to give it a title:
Good News.
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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