Some stories in the Bible are so essentially visual that they almost demand that we act them out to understand them. Like the rest of the Bible, such stories are intended to be read and heard, of course, but they have the added quality of being vivid, pictorial, perhaps even theatrical, and they seem to release their full power only when they are seen in action. In order to grasp their truths, we are compelled to scramble up on a stage -- at least one constructed in our imagination -- to don a costume, to summon a cast of supporting actors, and to put the story into dramatic motion.

It is one thing, for example, to hear the story of Zacchaeus; it is quite another actually to see him -- this tiny man swallowed by the always-taller crowd; this lilliputian tax collector lost in a sea of NBA…