Zach and Regenerating like a Fool
He just didn’t care about anything else. Not what he was wearing, or who he was, or where he was. He had one goal, one hope. He pushed and climbed above it all. When have you jostled with a crowd for love? Was it the grandchild’s performance? A home run ball in the stands? A concert? A big speech? What feelings made you want to see more, to get closer? Zaccheus – let’s call him Zach – was a person on a quest. He climbed over the crowd for love, for peace, for rescue, for a pearl greater than he could begin to comprehend. This is a swamped story, treading water and reaching for the side, stretching for the bottom of the pool, anything to bring rescue story. What is in your river of demand: doctors’ appointments, and the repairs that never cease, report cards, calls from school, aches and pains, the market news, the doom-scroll? And what about the river of delight: passions and joys, family friends, hobbies, entertainments? There is beauty and excitement all around, right in front of us, well within reach, and we miss so much we need for the flow and the prizes that can float through it.
I have friends, who are also colleagues, who had to search to find this tradition. They had to push aside family history and expectations to find a way to proclaim Jesus as Lord with integrity, with heart and soul, and mind. I recall journeying with them as they crossed this threshold, and their excitement at all that was new to them in what is my mundane. They said ‘ooooh ooh’, and I said with a shrug, ‘oh yeah, right’. The pearls of peace I seek are here, and sometimes I need the point of view of Zach to see it.
Rich and famous persons today are not expected to shop at thrift stores or ride scooters to the ballpark. Rich and notorious persons in Zach’s day did not run and they did not climb trees. There and then there was no power in looking like a fool and not caring that you do. Yet – he ran. He did not remain in the torrent of demands and delights that could hold him where he was. He climbed. This is rising out of injustice and callousness, even if you look like a fool. And he climbed a sycamore tree. Not the North American variety, but a fig tree. A fig tree prized for the strength of its wood, but its figs were meh – the bargain brand, the food of the poor. So not only did Zach run like a servant, and climb like a child, but this person of means climbed a tree whose food was for the last and least. Like a Ferrari at Grocery Outlet.
Yet this same sycamore tree was an ancient symbol of regeneration: of conversion, of restoration, of new life from old structures. You see, when the wind begins to blow away the soil around its roots, a process that eventually ends the life of that tree, it digs its roots deeper. And those roots become the start of new trees. Zach climbs a tree that doesn’t give up by remaining as it is but lives by digging into the nurture of deeper soil, and by letting go.
This episode calls to mind Francis of Assisi. Not the Winnie the Pooh version, but the child of privilege who lived through trauma, who shed all his clothes in protest of systemic corruption. The one who reminded us what it means to be the church, out in the world, learning from the stranger. There were people who thought that Francis was the second coming of Christ. To live in the way of Francis is to live in the way of Jesus. It is to defy convention, embrace holy foolishness, to trust that anything can be regenerated, and know that full barns can be a judgment against us in the end. The at peace beatific Francis is real, but he gets there by going with the flow of this lesson – by braving the changes with hope, instead of resisting them. Because – we can stand still forever, and never find the peace we seek.
Three years ago this was the first set of lessons we shared. So perhaps it is like the song we first danced to. I don’t care for making it all about me, but I do wonder about the connection between myself and a friend of Jesus who was petite and not afraid to climb to get what he needs. I wonder about the connection, however, I am also certain that the lesson is for us together. We are not where we were, we are not where we imagined we would be. We have braved the waves of heartache and changes, and we will keep on digging deep into the ancient practices of learning and serving and praying our way into the new life of Jesus.
Whatever calls you here this day, I am glad you are here. Maybe you have climbed a tree in search of peace: may you feed the hungry and feel full. Maybe you raise your voice to shed what swamps your neighbor: may you shelter the lost and least and feel secure. Maybe you are in the stream of the mundane, and don’t even know you are looking for: may you hear the good news and seek it wholeheartedly. Whoever, whyever, Jesus sees you, sits at table with you, interrupts the flow, and pushes you up and out and beyond the mundane. May we run like fools to see him, climb like children to hear him, and dig deep like sycamores to find the peace we seek.