Where is My Sycamore Tree?
Just following the release of his enclicycal “Laudato Si” Praised be to you Lord, God of Creation, in 2015, Pope Francis named September 1st a day of prayer in solidarity with care for creation. It seems he was following the lead of the Eastern Church who has kept this day for reflection and contemplation on the care of creation since 1989. Another movement, the “Season of Creation”, in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, uses September 1st through to October 4th as a time to celebrate, contemplate and act for the gift of creation. As I write this I am sitting in a rustic cabin, in solitude, on the shores of Meadow Lake at Northern Cross Resort in Saskatchewan. I am enjoying nature around me on this Labour day long weekend — a weekend that naturally marks the end of summer’s blessings of long days of sunshine, outdoor adventures into nature both on land and on water and the beginning of autumn’s harvest and winter’s wilderness. I am pondering the story of Zacchaeus and his journey from selfish corporate greed to opening his heart to grace and desire for an encounter with Jesus that leads to prodigal and generous justice for the poor.
Look up a sycamore fig tree online and you will see images of a large, wide based trunk, branching out with huge arms at the lower base of the tree, and spreading out tall and wide like a sure shelter on an arid landscape. In Hebrew, “Shikmoth or Shikmim” and in Greek, “sycomorous”, meaning a tree that resembles a fig tree and whose leaves resemble a mulberry tree, so it is called the fig-mulberry (ficus sycomorus), in distinction from the plane Sycamore tree of North America. How is this theologically or spiritually significant you might wonder? The tree plays a role, is necessary in Zacchaeus’ story of seeking and finding salvation in Christ. We give plants, animals and things names because they all belong in our wondrous story of salvation history.
Zacchaeus, as the story goes, is short in stature. He hears that Jesus is passing through Jericho, and somehow the grace of desire to encounter Jesus has overcome Zacchaeus to such a degree he finds himself eager and determined to see and hear Jesus. It’s not an insignificant detail that he cannot see over the crowds. The noisy, unthinking crowd does nothing to still our hearts to listen for Jesus in the silent landscape of a clear view. Zacchaeus seeks an ally to help him and finds a sycamore-fig tree with large low-lying branches on a wide sturdy trunk, easy going to climb to a place high enough to see and hear Jesus.
Not only has Zacchaeus found a way to see and hear Jesus, now Jesus sees Zacchaeus clearly above the crowd. What kind of person climbs a tree to see and hear Jesus? A man of wealth despised by his people for taking more than his share of the goods? Is it any wonder Jesus, seeing such eager openness to his message of justice, peace and joy, insists Zacchaeus hurry down, “…for I must stay at your house today.” Lk. 19:5. Jesus urgently seizes the moment and seeks time with him. We hear then how Zacchaeus, having heard the message of Jesus, acts on it generously. Dianne Bergant, in her commentary “Preaching the New Lectionary” tells how, “The sincerity of his transformation is seen in the extent of his restitution. The law prescribed the return of the money extorted along with twenty percent of the amount (Lev 6:5). Zacchaeus is extravagant in his compensation, repaying fourfold whatever he might owe, and he does this in addition to giving half his possessions to the poor. Such prodigality is his response to having been called by the Lord and honored with his presence.” (p. 406, year c)
And who are the poor we are called by the Lord to serve? As Pope Francis astutely observes “The earth herself, burdened and laid waist, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.” (Laudato Si’, 2,21)
We are created from the stuff of earth, surrounded, sheltered, mothered into life. We are fed and watered by our earth’s resources, but there can be a shortness of stature in us and a crowd of current opinion around us that prevent us seeing, hearing and following Jesus’ way of living in simple loving, just relationship with all things. The Word and creation are in intimate relationship. Like Zacchaeus we need our sycamore tree. We need trees, mountains and places set apart to climb and to see past the ‘crowd’ to the whole of creation groaning with us for redemption in Christ. Rom. 8:20. Where is my sycamore tree?
By Lucie Leduc
