{"id":2409,"date":"2019-11-17T11:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2409"},"modified":"2019-12-03T11:49:04","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T16:49:04","slug":"the-view-from-the-sycamore-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/11\/17\/the-view-from-the-sycamore-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Sycamore Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Isaiah 65:17-25<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 19:1-10<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is hard for me to tell, from this angle, which tree you are in.\u00a0 Given the troubles of this autumn, it is hard for me to tell which tree I am in myself, day to day.\u00a0 Has life chased you up the tree of doubt?\u00a0 Or are you treed in the branches of idolatry\u2014idol-a-tree? Or are we shaking or shaking in the money tree? Or stuck without faith in the religion tree?\u00a0 \u00a0Jesus calls us today, to come down out of the tree forts of our own making, and embrace a loving relationship with Him.\u00a0 May we measure all with a measure of love.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <\/em><\/strong>Doubting Zacchaeus<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Perhaps the presence of unexplained wrong provokes you to doubt the benevolence in life or the goodness in God.\u00a0\u00a0 To doubt that \u2018God is at work in the world to make and to keep human life human\u2019 (<\/em>John Bennett).\u00a0 Randomness may have treed you.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>No one can explain why terrible things happen, as they do.\u00a0 But if you will come down a limb or two from your philosophical tree of doubt, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you may hear faith.\u00a0 God can bring good out of evil, and make bad things work to good. This is not a theological declamation, and certainly not a paean to providence.\u00a0 It is just something we can notice together.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>One Sunday, years ago, I drove late to church.\u00a0 I used to run early Sunday and finish memorizing the sermon along the way, as I did on that Lord\u2019s Day.\u00a0 I just forgot the time.\u00a0 We raced to church, and in so doing I cut a corner, literally, and so popped a car tire.\u00a0 I was not happy to hear my son say, \u201chaste makes waste\u201d.\u00a0 You know, though, both rear tires were thin.\u00a0 I had replaced the front two months earlier, and forgot about the rear ones.\u00a0 I have to admit, it was good that I had reason to replace them, before I had a blowout, on the highway.\u00a0 Sometimes it happens that a bad thing prevents a really terrible thing from happening.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Joseph was thrown into a pit, and sold into slavery.\u00a0 He had to find his way, as a Jew, in the service of the mighty Pharaoh.\u00a0 He did so with skill, and rose to a position of influence, even with Potiphar\u2019s wife chasing him around in his underwear.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, a full generation later, a great famine came upon those brothers who had earlier sold Joseph down the river.\u00a0 They went to Pharaoh, looking for food.\u00a0 And who met them, as they came to plead?\u00a0 There was Joseph.\u00a0 He so memorably said, as written in Genesis 50: \u201cYou meant this for evil, but God meant it for good, that many might be saved.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it happens that a bad thing in one generation prevents starvation in the next.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>So, in Jericho, as Jesus found the little man up in the tree, his fellows grumbled (vs. 8).\u00a0 Why would he take time with such a greedy, selfish person who makes his living off the sweat of others\u2019 brows?\u00a0 That hurts, to see divine attention given to those who have harmed you.\u00a0 Why would he have a meal with someone who takes no thought for the hurt of God\u2019s people?\u00a0 This is bad!\u00a0 And it is.\u00a0 We miss the power of the parable if we do not see this.\u00a0 This is Jesus taking up with those who have wished the church ill, who have used the church for their own very well intended but nonetheless self-centered reasons.\u00a0 This is Jesus consorting with sinners.\u00a0 But sometimes a bad thing in the little brings a good thing in the large.\u00a0 Zacchaeus changes, and in so doing provides great wealth for others\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Come down from this one tree, doubting Zacchaeus.\u00a0 I know that bad things happen to good people, and as a pastor hardly anything troubles me more.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, sometimes\u2014not always, just sometimes–a bad thing early averts a really bad thing late.\u00a0 I have seen it, and you have too.\u00a0 It is enough to give someone up the doubting tree a reason to come down at least a branch.\u00a0 Think of it as existential vaccination.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It is the labor of faith to trust that where sin abounds, grace over-abounds.\u00a0 Even in this autumn of anxiety and depression. But one of the redeeming possibilities in this season of cultural demise is the chance that as a result, enough of us, now, will become enough committed to the realization of a just, participatory and sustainable world, that these darker days will move us toward a fuller light. Sometimes a bad thing in one part of history protects us from a worse thing in another part.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Let us not lose sight of the horizons of biblical hope, as improbable as they can seem.\u00a0 The lion and the lamb.\u00a0 No crying or thirst.\u00a0 The crooked straight.\u00a0 All flesh.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The divine delight comes still from saving the lost, including the forgotten, seeking the outcast, retrieving the wayward sons and daughters of Abraham.\u00a0 God wants your health, your salvation.\u00a0 God wants your healthy prudence. Your salvation \u201chas personal, domestic, social, and economic consequences\u201d (Craddock).\u00a0 Jesus Christ saves us from doubt.\u00a0 Those who have seen this fall the magnificent musical, \u2018Come From Away\u2019, and its evocation of 9\/11, with its recollection of St. Francis, \u2018make me an instrument of thy peace\u2019, and its recitation of Philippians 4:6, \u2018Have no anxiety about anything,\u2019 may just have caught a glimpse, heard a hint of the divine delight in saving the lost.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So come down Zacchaeus, come down from your perch in that comfortable sycamore tree, that comfortable pew, that skeptical reserve, that doubt.\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus!\u00a0 The Lord Jesus Christ has need of your household and your money, and He responds to your doubt.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. <\/em><\/strong>Idolatrous Zacchaeus<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, down from your overly zealous leanings, hanging out on the branch of life.\u00a0 Idolatry comes when we make one or more of the lesser, though significant, loyalties in life to shadow the one great loyalty, that which the heart owes alone to God.\u00a0 Zacchaeus had governmental responsibility, community status, a welcoming home, a fine family, and we can suspect he was loyal in these regards.\u00a0 Curious as he was, up on his branch, he had no relationship with the divine.\u00a0 Into this relationship, Jesus invites him.\u00a0 More precisely, Jesus invites himself into relationship with a man up a tree.\u00a0 He is invited into a whole new life, a new world of loving and faithful relationships, that stem from the one great loyalty.<\/p>\n

      \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We need to be careful about lesser loyalties this fall.\u00a0 We need to. Be prudent about the lesser loyalties than the one owed to God.\u00a0\u00a0 We can forget whose water we were baptized into, if we are not careful.\u00a0 Rather, let us remember the student of Paul who wrote 2 Thessalonians: your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing (2 Thess. 1: 4).<\/em><\/p>\n

      \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you see the danger?\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, come down, before it is too late.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Make sure your lesser loyalties\u2014to government, career, friends, family, home, all—do not cover over, do not shadow the one great loyalty, that all of your daily tasks do not eclipse a living memory of a healthy future, a common dream.<\/p>\n

      \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So yes, we harbor a common dream, a dream for instance that women\u2014our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, all\u2014granted suffrage a mere 100 years ago, will be spared any and all forms of harassment and abuse, verbal or physical, on college campuses, in homes and families, in offices and bars, in life and work, and long having suffered and now having suffrage, will in our time rise up to be honored, revered, and compensated, without reserve, but with justice and mercy.<\/p>\n

      \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet yours finally is a dream not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. <\/em><\/strong>Wealthy Zacchaeus<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Come down Zacchaeus, come down, at last.\u00a0 Impediments to faith come through doubt and idolatry, through resentment and religion, but none of these holds a candle to the harm that wealth can bring.\u00a0 In global terms and in historical terms, every one of us in this room is wealthy.\u00a0 Ours are first world problems.\u00a0 Luke\u2019s entire gospel, especially its central chapters, 9-19, are aimed at this point.\u00a0 For Luke\u2019s community, the remembered teachings of Jesus about wealth were most important.\u00a0 That tells me that the Lukan church had money, and so do we.\u00a0 This is what makes the account of Zacchaeus, \u201cone who lined his own pockets at other people\u2019s expense\u201d, so dramatic for Luke, and so Luke concludes his travel narrative with this clarion call:\u00a0 come down.\u00a0 Be careful as you do not to trip over wealth, power or status.\u00a0 We lose them all, give them all away, over time.\u00a0 They are impermanences.\u00a0 They go.\u00a0 Better that we see so early.\u00a0 Time flies\u2014ah no.\u00a0 Time stays\u2014we go.<\/em><\/p>\n

        \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t you love to know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus that caused him to give away half of what he had?\u00a0 I would.<\/p>\n

        \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is a western, white, male, educated, wealthy, healthy, heterosexual, middle class, two handed world.\u00a0 I need to be reminded of that.\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, and feel the pain of others.\u00a0 Come down and remember: \u00a0soon we will all be dead.\u00a0 Maybe we could find ways to use whatever power we have now to honor God, love our neighbor, reflect our mortality, and affirm the powerless.\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, come down!<\/p>\n

        \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We will need to remember our forebears. Harriet Tubman lived her later life in Auburn, NY, dying in 1913, just 15 years before my mother was born a few miles away.\u00a0 But as you remember she spent her earlier life freeing her people from slavery, 13 perilous journeys back south.\u00a0 One wrote this week, Tubman\u2019s story is an example of courage combined with practicality\u2026She marched at night, communed with God, drugged crying babies and even held a gun to the heads of those who grew weary or turned back.<\/em> (New York Review 12\/12).\u00a0 Those who have seen the most recent film \u2018Harriet\u2019 have seen again that remarkable combination of courage and practicality.<\/p>\n

        \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Before we left seminary, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1978, an odd event befell us.\u00a0 I worked nights as a security guard in those years and would come home to sleep at 7am.\u00a0 Jan had the day off, and left to shop, but left the door to our little apartment ajar, by accident.\u00a0 About noon a street woman found her way into the building and up onto our floor, and then into our room.\u00a0 I woke up to see a very poor, deranged woman, fingering rosary beads, and mumbling just over my head.\u00a0 Boy did I shout.\u00a0 She ran into the next room and I stumbled downstairs to call the police.\u00a0 By the time three of New York\u2019s finest and I returned to the apartment, the poor lady was in the bathtub, singing and washing.\u00a0 They took her away.\u00a0 Jan came back at 3 and asked how I had slept.\u00a0 That moment has stayed in the memory, though, as an omen.\u00a0 Our wealth is meant for the cleansing of the poor of the earth.\u00a0 Perhaps the Lord wanted me to remember that in ministry, so I have tried to remember that, in ministry.\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, and use your wealth for the poor.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Religious Zacchaeus<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let\u2019s talk for a moment about religion, shall we?\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus, come down!\u00a0 No amount of religious apparatus can ever substitute for what Jesus is offering you today, and that is loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of theological astuteness can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of sturdy churchmanship can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of righteous indignation can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of beautiful music, instrumental or vocal, can ever substitute for loving relationship.\u00a0 No amount of formal religion can ever substitute for the power of loving relationship.\u00a0 Jesus invites us into loving relationship with him, and so with each other.\u00a0 That is health, that is salvation.\u00a0 Are we lovers anymore?<\/p>\n

          \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like Zacchaeus in the tree, religion can dwell above Jesus, high and aloof.\u00a0 Is it good to be above Jesus?<\/p>\n

          \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was the German monk Martin Luther who, in 1517, went alone and nailed his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, and thereby splintered inherited religion to bits.\u00a0 The words of this same Luther were read, as interpretation of Romans 8, on the rainy night in London, 1738, along Aldersgate Street, as John Wesley\u2019s heart, at long last, was strangely warmed, and he came down from the tree of religion, to sit at table with the Faith of Christ.\u00a0 On a November Sunday in 2019, hic et nunc,<\/em> both are recalled, in invitation to loving relationship with God and neighbor.\u00a0 We pointedly remember that we are saved by faith, by faith alone, by grace we are saved by faith, and not by any or all the works of the law.\u00a0 You know, in college, just a steady participation in a loving group, like the one Dr. Herbert Jones has led here for many years, can make all the difference.<\/p>\n

          \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Come down Zacchaeus!\u00a0 Come down from the doubting tree, the tree of idolatry, the wealth tree, the tree of religion.\u00a0 Come down and receive the Gospel:\u00a0 Jesus invites us into loving relationship with himself, and thereby into loving relationship with our neighbors.<\/p>\n

          Are we lovers anymore?<\/p>\n

          Are we lovers anymore?<\/p>\n

          Are we lovers anymore?<\/p>\n

          –The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Click here to hear the full service Isaiah 65:17-25 Luke 19:1-10 Click here to hear just the sermon \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is hard for me to tell, from this angle, which tree you are in.\u00a0 Given the troubles of this autumn, it is hard for me to tell which tree I am in myself, day to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}