I will tell you about an early memory that left quite an impression on me. It was the early 1970’s, so I must have been about five or six years old. We were living in Singapore. Ours was a spacious apartment on the third floor of a building that provided housing for faculty with families. Trinity College was a small campus on the top of a hill, in this way set apart from the rest of that bustling island city.
One afternoon an old man knocked on our door. My father was taken aback by this man’s appearance. Peering around my father’s legs, I beheld him, a wiry man with thin rubber sandals, a sarong, and threadbare ribbed undershirt – clothing that showed what even I, in my childish state, knew were the markers of extreme poverty. When we moved about the city, these men were everywhere you turned, but up here on the hill, they were a rare sight.
This man and my father conferred at the front door of the apartment. I could not tell what was being said, but eventually he turned and left, and, with a smile, my father went and stood on the veranda, looking out. He beckoned for me to join him.
Outside the building, the old man appeared. He came to the bottom of a tall coconut tree, and standing at its base, he took off his rubber slippers. My father and I watched as the skinny old man stepped up onto the limbless trunk of the coconut tree, and with great strength and grace, began climbing. In only a moment or two, the old man was at the top of the coconut tree, perched quite close to us, three flights up in the air. Holding on with one hand, and with his two feet pushed up against the trunk, he used a small machete in his other hand to cut the coconuts free, allowing them to plummet to the ground.
When all the coconuts had been picked, the old man scooted back down the tree and gathered them up. Before long he reappeared at our door. He’d made an arrangement with my father that, in exchange for letting him harvest the tree, he would supply us with a percentage of the coconuts.
Young and plump with privilege, I was still clumsy on my feet, and here was an impossibly old man, all wire and sinew and leather hard, making his way with steady assurance, up the long trunk of the coconut tree. I was wide eyed, but the old man,… he was almost bored, as if defying the natural law of gravity three flights up in the air was as normal as walking down the street.
I may be giving my 5-year-old-self too much credit, but I wonder? Might I have been dimly aware, in that moment, that this man, with his raw appearance and his uncanny power, was the emissary of a world unknown to me? Is it the older man looking back, or did I, as a child, begin to see into a distance – not one bounded by the horizon, but by the unknown mysteries of the human soul? Perhaps it is simpler just to say that this old man was glimpse beyond self – that in him was a raw ingenuity and strength that was beyond anything in my experience.
**
I am trying to remember the last time I climbed a tree and I am having trouble.
The process of climbing a tree, though, is familiar to me, so I know that there is, as our friend Qoheleth might say, a time to climb trees.
And when is that?
We all know the answer to that question, don’t we? The time for climbing trees is childhood.
That has certainly been true to my life experience.
I climbed enough trees in my youth to be able to look at a tree and quickly assess it for climb-ability.
If climbing is your object, there are good trees, really good trees, and bad trees and really bad trees. The coconut tree, which is very tall and is utterly devoid of branches, is pretty much the definition of a really bad climbing tree. This, of course, is why seeing the old man climb one with such ease was so stunning!
A good climbing tree has an abundance of good thick boughs that are not that far apart. There are not a lot of troublesome twiggy branches to poke you or jab you in the eye as you climb. You can clamber up such a tree and be sure of having good handholds and footholds. With luck the first strong boughs are low enough to clamber into without having to stand on your best friend’s shoulders. That last detail is what turns a good climbing tree into a really good climbing tree. If you can climb it without help, the really good climbing tree is a safe haven… a place of respite and discovery that is always there for you when you need it.
**
The tree is a symbol that appears throughout the Bible. The Tree of Fruit of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden where the serpent tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God, is perhaps the most well known. When Abraham, the first patriarch, offers hospitality to God, he does so under the blessed shade of the Oaks of Mamre. When King David’s son Absolom tries to usurp the throne, he perishes when he is caught in the low hanging boughs of an old oak tree. When the prophet Elijah gives himself up for dead in the wilderness, he finds refuge under a broom tree. The Psalmist repeatedly refers to the faithful as trees planted beside the river. And Jesus, of course, has a few uncoordinated run-ins with a fig tree.
I’m not 100 percent certain, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that the story from the 19th Gospel of Luke that Judith just read for us is the only Biblical reference to someone climbing a tree.
So what?
I was hoping you’d ask.
The tree is a most versatile symbol – it can represent many different things. The Bible makes ample use of them all. Roots represent our heritage, a solid foundation, and the blessing of finding nourishment where it is earnestly sought. Leaves offer shade, which represent comfort for the frightened and rest for the weary. Fruit are symbolic of abundance and the fulfillment of personal destiny. The tree is majestic. It is resilient, surviving in the harshest conditions.
In this story, the tree serves a narrative purpose. It offers Zacchaeus, who is short in stature, a high place from whence he can see Jesus passing in the crowd.
But when Zacchaeus climbs the Sycamore tree – the tree also changes. Zacchaeus and the tree collaborate to create a symbolic meaning that the tree would not have without Zacchaeus’ presence among its branches.
What symbolic meaning do they create?
They create risk.
There is a reason you don’t see very many middle-aged men sitting among the limbs of trees.
A child assesses a tree according to its climb-ability. A middle aged man – as Zacchaeus presumably is – looks at a tree in terms of its ability to do him harm.
A child sees adventure. Possibilities. A beautiful view.
After a few decades, that same child – now an adult – looks at a tree and sees risk. The very real danger of a fall – and the very real consequences of such a disaster.
But a fall from the Sycamore Tree – as bad as that might be, was not the only – or even the most immediate risk that threatened Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was not just a short man. He was also, as the text tells us, Jericho’s chief tax collector.
Jericho’s chief tax collector.
You may recall, from last Sunday, how tax collectors were viewed in Israel during the first century. Their job was to collect money from the poor and send it off to the voracious coffers of the Roman Empire – so they were universally hated.
Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in the region. So he was considered the worst of the worst.
So when Zacchaeus climbed the Sycamore Tree, there was a great deal more at risk for him than a broken leg.
Zacchaeus’ whole world was at risk.
The way of life that he had created for himself – all his wealth and success, depended upon a social structure that was unjust. Jesus’ teaching – the entire weight of his Galilean ministry – was in direct and outspoken opposition to the system of governance that made it possible for Zacchaeus to be Zacchaeus!
Even as he climbed that tree, Zacchaeus must have known this!
So, symbolically, then, climbing that tree was not, primarily a physical risk for Zacchaeus.
It was a spiritual risk.
The risk he took was the risk of complete transformation.
To live by the spirit, is to be open to transformation, and to contend with the possibilities it offers when it comes walking toward you.
As he walks by, the text tells us, Jesus sees Zacchaeus and calls him by name, telling him to come down from the Sycamore tree:
“Zacchaeus, he says, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”
This is what has become of the risk that Zacchaeus took. It took him. Not the physical risk, but the spiritual one.
At the end of the story, Zacchaeus, accepts the transformational challenge that has confronted him in the person of Jesus.
This person, who had been chief among those who, collecting taxes, took from the poor and gave to the rich, has promised to make a 180 degree reversal:
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”