The Sycamore Tree

Luke 19:1-10
8.4.24
Matt Goodale

Who here has been enjoying the Olympics?

I’ve noticed that with the Olympics and its emphasis on international unity and sportsmanship, there’s been a lot of talk about peace. We see athletes and people from across the world calling, hoping, dreaming for peace. Peace in Ukraine. Peace in Gaza. Peace in Myanmar. World peace.

Whether you’re an Olympic gymnast or just a regular person who watches from the comfort of your couch and thinks, “There’s no way I could ever get my body to bend like that!”… whether you have crazy athletic skills or wish you did…we all want peace. Whether you’re from Japan or Slovenia or America, we are all united by our longing for peace.

We all want peace. Whether it’s world peace or inner peace or just some peace and quiet at home. Peace is something that I think is built into the human psyche to desire, but it is oh so elusive, isn’t it?

The whole biblical story is basically about our desire for peace and its elusiveness. Remember last week we looked at the story of the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Life at its center. The tree of life represented the harmony and peace between all created things. Life flowed through everything. And we know this didn’t last for long, and the whole rest of the biblical story is one of people trying to get back to the garden, to find that harmony and peace with God, with creation, and with each other again.

Peace is a word then that shows up all over the Bible. As I’ve preached on before, the Hebrew word for peace is shalom.  

And when we think of peace, most of us think of the absence of conflict or war. And in the Bible, the word shalom can refer to the absence of conflict, but it also points to the presence of something better in its place—it’s not just the absence of something, it’s the fullness of something else. This is because the most basic meaning of shalom is completeness or wholeness. It means nothing missing, nothing broken.

“Shalom refers to something that’s complex with lots of pieces that’s in a state of wholeness.” It’s like when Job says his tents are in shalom because he is missing no flocks or animals. This is why shalom can refer to a person’s well-being. When David visits his brothers on the battlefield, he asks about their shalom (Bible Project).

The core idea throughout Scripture is that life is complex, full of moving parts and relationships and situations, and when any of these is out of alignment or missing, your shalom breaks down. Life is no longer whole; it needs to be restored” (Bible Project).

Think of a puzzle. Iona has these cute little wooden puzzles, and because she’s a toddler she likes to throw all of the pieces everywhere. Which means that when she wants to complete the puzzle, she can’t, because usually a piece or two is missing. Her puzzle is not in shalom because something is missing. So that usually also means her mood is not in shalom as she starts to throw a tantrum…which usually mean my shalom is also out of whack!

God’s desire is for us to live in shalom, a state of completeness or wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken. But for those who have read the Bible or have ever cracked open a newspaper, you know that this rarely happens.

Relationships break, inequalities and prejudice exist, wars are fought, nations rage and politics divide. Loved ones die, we are diagnosed with diseases. Grief, fear and anxiety creep in. If our life is a puzzle and shalom is the finished puzzle, then for many of us it feels like we are missing some of the pieces. We long for shalom, but for many of us it feels like a pipedream. God’s vision of wholeness for our individual lives and our world feels a long way off.

And in our story today we find someone who is looking for some shalom up in a tree. Most of you will know that this fellow, Zacchaeus, was not a very good guy. He was a tax collector who defrauded his neighbors to make a living. He was employed by the hated Roman Empire and was kind of like their mob guy in town. Everyone knew Zaccheaus was taking advantage of them and extorting them, but they didn’t have the power to do anything about it.

It must have been getting old being the most hated guy in town, because one day Zacchaeus decided to climb a sycamore tree. And it wasn’t just on any old day he decided to climb a tree. It was the day Jesus came to town.

Zacchaeus had probably heard about Jesus beforehand, otherwise why would he risk getting his hands all sappy for a look?

And we should ask ourselves, why did Zacchaeus climb a tree for a better look at Jesus? Who here loved climbing trees as a kid (or maybe you still do?) Why did you climb a tree?

We had a tree in our front yard that I had memorized the fastest route to the top. Up this branch, over to this branch, under that one. Sometimes I would climb it just to see how fast I could.

Why do you think Zacchaeus was climbing a tree that day? Because it probably wasn’t for the sheer fun of it.

I wonder if he was looking for something? Maybe Zaccheaus felt like his puzzle was missing a piece. Maybe he grew tired of defrauding his neighbors, and always getting side-eyed as he walked by them in the street. Maybe Zaccheaus wanted a little more shalom.

Because as soon as Jesus comes by, he calls to Zaccheaus and Zacchaeus hops right down, ready to host Jesus for a meal and give back everything he had stolen plus more.

Zacchaeus was ready to put some of the pieces of his puzzle back together. He was ready to make peace with his community. He was ready to repent and see himself as part of a whole, as part of the shalom of his whole community, and all it took was one tree climb and an invitation from Jesus.

Zaccheaus climbed up a sycamore tree a sinner and slid down a saint.

But I don’t want us to focus too much on Zacchaeus’ story this morning. It’s important, but perhaps more important for our purposes today: I want you to notice the tree he was climbing.

Have you ever noticed how many Bible stories have trees at the center of people’s peace-making missions?

Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to find more shalom with his community.

Moses was called by a burning bush (in Hebrew a tree) to bring peace and freedom to the Hebrews.

Noah received an olive branch letting him know that the flood was over.

Abraham met God and was told he would have a child while relaxing in the shade of a giant Oak tree.

Jonah sat under a plant as he contemplated why God would declare peace on Nineveh.

And of course, Jesus died on a tree to give us peace.

All of these stories harken back to that first picture of harmony and shalom in the garden…with the Tree of life at its center. Each of these stories show a return to the tree of life in some form, even as they show the missing puzzle pieces of shalom being put back together.

The trees at the center of all of these shalom stories are no doubt a literary device, used to remind us of that first tree of life and a return to it, but I think they are more than that too. I think it’s no accident that wherever shalom is sought and found, there is some sort of tree at its center. Trees seem to mark our way back to the garden and shalom.

Because just as Iona can’t put her puzzle back in shalom because she is missing some of the pieces, our society is missing a major piece to the shalom puzzle.

Have you ever noticed that the stories told by Jesus are primarily about creation and nature? When he was trying to point people to God and God’s ways, he almost always pointed to creation. Jesus spent most of his time speaking about birds, crops, fields, fruit, fish, water, light, livestock, relationships, trees. He asked us to notice the birds and consider the flowers. Jesus, being a carpenter by trade, could have just as easily spent his time reflecting on the importance of wheels, chariots, shields, how mills operate, how the legal system works and so on. But he didn’t. He always pointed to creation as an example of the divine mystery of who God is and how God is at work in our lives.

Jesus knew what we have forgotten: shalom means being at peace not only with your neighbors, yourself and God, but also with creation. If life is a puzzle and shalom is the finished puzzle we’re trying to get to, then we are missing one of the key pieces: shalom with creation.

I want you to pause for a minute and think about a time you were outside in nature and felt in same way that you were whole…that you felt like you were part of something much bigger, and all your anxieties and fears about life seemed to melt away and feel small?

For me it’s whenever we visit the Oregon coast and I just get to sit and watch the waves. There’s something about the ever-moving pace of the waves and the massive expansiveness of the ocean that puts me at peace and makes my problems feel small. The sounds of the crashing waves are usually enough to wash away whatever worries my brain can’t let go of.

There’s a political activist and journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been locked in an American prison for decades now. He has written a lot on his wrongful imprisonment and experience in the American justice system. But I’ll never forget something he wrote. He shared that one of his favorite things was thunderstorms. Because no matter how his prison bars separated him from the rest of life and the outside world, they couldn’t keep out the crackles of lightning and booms of thunder. He reflected that during a thunderstorm is when he feels most whole and at peace, when he is connected with the world outside in a way that his prison bars usually prevent him from being.

I’m sure every one of us could name a particular experience in nature or a place we return to again and again that is healing in some way.

It’s healing being in nature. It’s like a part of us that we didn’t know was out of whack is put back in place. There’s a part of us that knows deep down that we were created to be intimately connected to creation. We were made for more than our urban life surrounded by four walls, a pad of concrete under us. Our eyes were made to do more than gaze at screens for hours a day. Our feet were made to take us more places than asphalt and the bathroom down the hall. Our ears were made to hear more than the noisy sounds of cars and music. Our hearts were made to recognize beauty in more places than the small life we construct for our self.

Once upon a time in America, fishermen knew how to read the skies; sailors navigated by the stars; crops were planted and harvested according to the moon and upon naturally calculated estimations of rain and sun. Children used to spend most of their day outside digging holes and riding bikes. Once upon a time we passed our evenings by a fire telling stories, listening to crickets and the soft breeze moving through the trees. But most of us today live insulated from the conversation with creation that Jesus and many of our ancestors held daily. And I wonder if that doesn’t also insulate us from the shalom experienced by those first humans in the garden.

If the shalom that our Creator built into the very fabric of creation means nothing missing, nothing broken…then there is at least one major piece we are missing in our postmodern urban society. We can work all we want to mend our relationships to our neighbors and to God and to our own fragile selves—and this is important—it’s what I preach on most of the time! But one puzzle piece we’re missing, that I think actually helps us find shalom in all these other areas of life, is our relationship to creation.

What is your relationship to creation?

What if Jesus pointed to the birds and the trees not just because they made good analogies, but because they were integral to the abundant life he promised us?

As it’s written in the book of Job, maybe creation itself is witness to the Good news of what God is doing in our world, and maybe we can find a little more shalom by just slowing down to notice:

⁷ “But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
    or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
⁸ or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
    or let the fish in the sea inform you.
⁹ Which of all these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
¹⁰ In his hand is the life of every creature
    and the breath of all mankind.

If you are longing for the abundant life and shalom promised to you by Jesus, maybe we don’t need to return all the way to the garden of Eden. Maybe it’s as easy as following Zacchaeus’ lead and climbing a tree. And if not a tree, then perhaps you will find it in a thunderstorm or the ebb and flow of the waves of the ocean or by gazing up at the constellations at night or taking a walk in the woods.

Our God created all of these things and declared that they were “very good.” May we come to see them in the same way; our shalom may just depend on it. Amen.