I went to the dog park this morning to do my assigned dislocated exegesis exercise. I picked this spot, not because I gave it a lot of thought but because I knew there would be people there, which fulfilled the basic requirement of the exegesis, and I really needed to walk my dog, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. I’m not very chatty in the morning, except with my family when we eat breakfast together and talk about random teenage stuff, so going to the dog park in the morning was a stretch for me, but I justified it by knowing this was outside of my normal study sphere.

I commute to Luther so when I’m at home in Stillwater, I frequent all the coffee shops to sit and study so it felt a bit like cheating to set up exegesis shop in the local coffee joint where I’m recognized by face and sometimes by name. I would normally take Dreamer, my dog, to the dog park in the afternoons, which is my chatty time of day, because there are always chatty adults there that like to brag about their dogs. Today was no exception. I usually like the dogs better than the humans and today was no exception. A few weeks ago, my daughter jokingly said, “Dreamer is your favorite child,” and I jokingly answered, “Of course she is—she is always happy to see me, she loves and forgives me no matter what, AND she doesn’t yell at me and doesn’t ask me for money all the time.”

I read Luke 19: 1-10 several times in several translations before I intrepidly left the house and I took my Greek interlineal New Testament book with me to the dog park in the hopes that I would appear really busy and I didn’t have to listen to anyone talk about how their dog “Bob” could run faster than any other dog. The guise didn’t work and I talked to almost everyone who was there. I always make a point to talk to all the dogs so that wasn’t an issue. In between these conversations, I sat, I listened and I noticed what was taking place around me.

The passage in Luke is about Zacchaeus, who is desperate to see Jesus and climbs up a tree to get a view of him. Jesus immediately recognizes him and calls him by name and then Jesus does something really bold—he invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house to stay for the night, and since Jesus was there, I’m sure there was food and drink involved. I am fascinated by the idea of Jesus calling Zacchaeus and not just calling him, he didn’t call him by saying, “Hey you,” he named him and called him by his name.

In the Old Testament we hear God calling many people by name and even naming some of them like Abraham and Sarah. Jesus engages in this practice also because he is a Jew and because he is one with God.

As I sat in the dog park, I noticed the adults calling their dogs by name. I have to say that I really don’t like it when humans name their dogs people names. I’m not sure why this bothers me so much, but it does. So I listened to a human call Daisy, and another call Petey, and another call Max; and instead of trying to focus on the fact that they all had human names (Daisy is questionable), I tried to focus on the call and try to understand the importance of the call, and the significance of naming a dog in the first place. We don’t just call them, “dog,” we name them and those names mean something to the person doing the naming. Just like a baby doesn’t have a choice, a dog doesn’t have a choice.

I viewed this text differently because I focused on calling and naming instead of focusing on salvation, which is what I usually hear about this text. This is something that jumped out at me at home before I went to the dog park, but then it was reinforced once I got there and heard all the humans calling their dogs.   Now I ponder what is in that call? Not just for the dogs, but the calling of Jesus and Jesus’ calling us by name.   That is what I did at the dog park (along with throwing a ball, talking to Petey, and listening to the humans brag about their dogs).