What gets you up a tree?

What gets you up a tree? The Dover Church
Scripture: Luke 19: 1-10 November 10, 2013

What gets you up a tree? Gets you climbing up a tree to look over whatever is standing between you and life?
Our hero this morning, little Zaccheus, does just that to get a glimpse of Jesus. There’s a lot we don’t know about Zaccheus, but he is one of only two people who lived in Jericho in the thirty third year of our Lord whom people have been talking about by name for the last two thousand years, the other person being blind Bartimeus the beggar. Think of that. Of the several thousand souls who lived in Jericho when our Lord walked through this very important city, a city with a thriving market sitting on the road from the Jordan river valley 1,400 feet up to Jerusalem, a city where Herod had a palace, of all the important people living there, we know Bartimeus and Zaccheus by name, one, a blind beggar whose names means “son of the impure one,” the other, Zaccheus, whose name means “the pure or righteous one.”
Can you see the irony? Of all the people to be immortalized, a guy whose name means “the pure or righteous one” but who lived a very different life than his name, a guy whom all his neighbors detested as a scoundrel. I can hear their teeth grating from the grave, though our lesson tells us they grumbled mightily at the time. Of all the people to single out, Jesus picks this guy. That’s who made the Bible?
Sure, he’s a rich and important man, but everyone in town would have hated him for it. Not only was he a tax collector, which means he was an extortionist as tax collectors in the Roman Empire contracted to send a certain amount to the home office and got to keep whatever they collected over and above. In other words, the harder they squeezed, the more lucrative their position would be. The pips Zaccheus would have squeezed were his neighbors, who would have seen his extravagant wealth and thought, “that’s our money.”
But Zaccheus was also the chief tax collector, which means that he would have also been squeezing all the other tax collectors in Jericho, of whom there would have been many with the bustling market and the large, concentrated population. Zaccheus the pure or righteous one?!? Hardly. More like Zaccheus the wretch.
And then we have this almost comical opening scene in which see Zaccheus scurrying around trying to see something over the wall of turned backs. The wall of turned backs! That image is more than a metaphor or simile. Every day when Zaccheus stepped out the front door of his luxurious villa, a wall of his neighbors’ turned backs would be exactly what greeted him. It would take a hard man indeed to not wish he didn’t have to pay that price for his wealth.
And then there’s the tree, a sycamore fig tree to be specific, a large, spreading deciduous tree with branches starting low to the ground, which is how a man like Zaccheus, short of stature the lesson notes, could have climbed up in the first place.
Tell me. When was the last time any of you climbed a tree? Probably when you were a child? Can you imagine how silly Zaccheus must have looked up that tree? A grown man? A very wealthy, grown man? A very wealthy, grown, despised man? Not to be vulgar, but there’s a lot of comic potential in seeing a grown man up a tree wearing just a tunic without trousers, particularly when you’re down on the ground.
All of that comic potential, all of that scorn and resentment, all of that isolation, social, emotional and religious isolation, is catalyzed in the moment when Jesus draws everyone’s attention to Zaccheus in the tree, “hurry down here, Zaccheus. I’m going to stay at your house today.”
In the Bible, there are four accounts of the Jesus event, what we call the Gospels, the four takes on the Good News of God’s love. Each of the gospels has a slightly different emphasis, in the same way that any four people witnessing a memorable event would see it with different eyes. Obviously this is an oversimplification for the purpose of brevity, but Mark tells of the bursting of the Kingdom of God upon humanity in the person of Jesus. Matthew tells of the fulfillment of God’s promises in the person of Jesus. John tells of the dwelling of God among us in the person of Jesus. And Luke tells of the extravagant love of God in the person of Jesus, the relentless desire of God for us in the person of Jesus, and the relationship between generosity and salvation in the person of Jesus.
All of these Lukan insights shine out of the Zaccheus story. The extravagance of God’s love in the person of Jesus…you remember “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it”? Here’s a man whom no one loves, except Jesus. And it is not cheap love. Jesus takes him as he is and stays with him. Zaccheus doesn’t have to straighten up and fly right first.
God’s relentless desire for us in the person of Jesus. There is no place Zaccheus could have gone spiritually, no depth of depravity from which God would would not reach down and pluck him up. Jesus just happens to pluck him out of a tree.
And finally, the relationship between generosity and salvation in the person of Jesus. Jesus saved Zaccheus. He and only he loved Zaccheus. He came to be with him when no one else would have been caught dead sitting at Zaccheus’ table, let alone staying under his roof. Jesus loved him, called him by name, saw through everything that had everyone else turning their backs on him. That, my friends, is what salvation looks like. Love. Steadfast love. Merciful love. Unmerited love. Astounding love. Against all odds love. When you’re all alone and probably deserve to be all alone love. This is the kind of new life Jesus came to bring to everyone. This is the Good News.
And knowing that salvation, Zaccheus pours out his new love for life. He gives half his money to the poor and promises a fourfold restitution for any wrong he has done. Now that may sound impossible to you, unimaginable to you, insane to you, that that's way too high price to pay for salvation, but all Zaccheus is doing it putting back together everything his sinfulness had pulled apart. It’s not some sort of regretful duty Zaccheus performs. It’s not some sort of obligation fulfimment. No. Having known God reaching out to him from a million spiritual miles away, God putting together again what Zaccheus had broken, Zaccheus is only giving back to the poor the money he extorted from them in the first place. In giving back fourfold, he is admitting his wrong. He is essentially putting himself out of business, enacting justice by rebalancing his relationships with his neighbors, removing himself as an instrument of the system of injustice and oppression which had made him rich and his neighbors poor. Zaccheus has, quite simply, exchanged his role as an agent of Caesar’s will to that of an agent of God’s will. He has gone from being a personification of injustice to a fulfillment of God’s promises. He has gone from an object of hatred to an embodiment of God’s love. He has gone from a despicable wretch to the heart and hands of God. That is salvation. I was once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see, the grace that saved a wretch like me.
That is what got Zaccheus up that tree. That’s what he wanted to see. That’s what he wanted to be seen by. But what about us? So many of us live lives walled off from God’s grace, walled off by walls of our own making. We tell ourselves we don’t have the time or energy to see and be seen by God. We have so many lovely dreams we long to live if we didn’t have to do all the things we have to do. Oh how we wish the world were not the way it is, but how could we possibly make a difference? We’d have to give up so much. The whole ball of twine of our lives would unravel. Better not to mess with the beast.
So let me return to my earlier question, “when was the last time you climbed a tree?” For most of us it was when childhood. I have noticed something about childhood recently. A lot of people spend a lot of time romanticizing their childhood as they get older. For some, it’s just fond memories. For others, it’s longing for a time when life wasn’t so stuck, when they were young and life was an adventure and friends were a joy and anything was still possible and there was so much to look forward to, when snowstorms, hot days and piles of leaves were invitations to play, when it was hard to just sit still. When life was, well, new life, fullness of life. In a way, few of us lived exactly the ideals we remember, but all of us long for salvation in those memories. Maybe you’re not ready to climb a tree for Jesus. Maybe, sitting there in your box pews, you can’t see the point of climbing a tree for Jesus. Maybe seeing Jesus isn’t high on your priority list, high enough to get you up that tree. Maybe you think you're too old, that you'd look silly getting all Jesusy, that people would laugh at you, that you don't really need Jesus, that you're doing just fine on you're. That, give me a minute and I'll come up with another excuse. That you don't need Jesus like Zaccheus did, to which I would paraphrase John Calvin, "Don't kid yourself."

The tragedy for so many of us is that we don’t need to waste time sitting somewhere thinking about salvation, newness and fullness of life, of being a beloved child of God again after so many years of growing up,  we don’t need to waste time sitting somewhere thinking about salvation when it is right here in the person of Jesus and in the living of a Jesus life. That’s what gets me up a tree on a daily basis, looking over the walls I put in my life or allow others to put in my life. How about you?