Sermon from 10/25/2026 Morgan Park United Protestant Church Luke 19: 1- 10

There is a nakedness in the trees in this season, a transparency with all the leaves stripped away. You can see further, a little deeper into the forest.    We returned Monday from a trip to the Olympic National Peninsula. We walked many miles through the rainforests with their gigantic trees. There were Douglas Firs, Western Hemlocks, Sitka Spruce and Broad Leaf Maples.

Even though it was Fall the forests there were still lush. The maples had lost their leaves but still were covered with mosses. We learned that sometimes the moss creates up to six inches of soil on the trees. The trees grow roots into the soil produced by the moss.  Moss and trees need each other to survive.  We also learned that the fungi, mushrooms help the trees communicate with one another.  The whole eco system is deeply connected and dependent on one another for survival. 

The forests have so much to teach us about mutual interdependence.  I found it interesting too to think about Zaccheaus sitting in a tree.  What season was it for him? Perhaps it was Autumn, that time of shedding, of letting go .   He certainly was transparent to Jesus.  Jesus knew his story and  more importantly invited him into a new one. A one that recognized how connected he was to those around him.

We went out to Washington so that I could officiate at a long-time friend’s daughter’s wedding. The wedding was in a beautiful garden on Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound. I had known Niamh the bride her whole life, as she was only 2 days younger than our daughter Hannah. Niamh’s fiancé is a Marine who specializes in Cyber Intelligence. His new assignment is Japan and for Niamh to go with they needed to be married.  And so we made it happen.   

I did have them do premarital counseling with me. As I do with all couples preparing for marriage, I had them tell me about one another’s family. I draw genograms, family trees.  It’s fun to see who they know about, what stories they’ve been told. The stories make us family and we need to know who is sitting in our family trees like Zaccheaus sitting in the sycamore tree.

Who sits with you in your family tree? Are they transparent to you? How have they shaped you?  Do you remember them?  I remember many summer’s back sitting out in my aunt’s back yard. We had all gathered for a family picnic on memorial day and my Aunt Loie began to stories of our family tree. We drank ice tea and listened as the tales grew as long as the ashes of her untouched cigarette. It was that afternoon though that I learned that I had not been as I thought the first preacher in the family.   She told of our great uncle Henry. He  rode the trains, a hobo of sorts, an alcoholic , not the first one of those either, and a street preacher. He had traveled all over the country back when it was easy to catch a freight train to anywhere you might want to go.       

He spread the Good News  using the rails.  No one knew where he ended up or even how he had died. He vanished but he left some stories for our family tree.  Ah yes, there are some rascals up in branches of my family tree , perhaps in yours too

The story of Zacchaeus reminds us there are some weird ones, some scoundrels  tucked into the branches of all our family trees, even or perhaps especially in the  family of faith’s tree.    Zaccheaus is one such character.   Rev. Paul Duke, an author and Baptist pastor, describes Zacchaeus in this way, “Clearly, Luke wants us to like Zacchaeus and we do. Initially we think we’re not supposed to like him; he is rich and Luke’s news about the rich is consistently bleak. They are the ones sent away empty, the doomed, the fools, the heartless, the ones less likely to enter God’s kingdom than a camel is likely to squeeze through a needles eye.   Though by now we know that tax collectors are welcomed by Jesus.  Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector, a godfather in the toll taker mafia, a powerful, filthy rich parasite. We should recoil, but Luke won’t let us.  He makes us see Zacchaeus as an individual– gives us his name, shows us that he is short, shows him so eager to see Jesus that he clambers up a tree. “

Jesus sees Zacchaeus for all he is and all he can be, even while he is hiding. He stops on his walk into Jericho and peers up into the branches.  He looked up to Zaccheaus, perhaps the first time anyone ever had.     

“Oh , Zacchaeus, hurry down.  Hurry down, for I must stay at your house today. ” And Zacchaeus clambers down, joyfully drops from his hiding place in the tree, to entertain the one who has invited himself over to his home. And so the Christ and a crook stroll off to dinner.   Grace has truly come to Zacchaeus home and heart.The crowd around grumbles, “What, he’s eating with him. Why him?” Grumbling abounds.  In Jesus all are welcome to eat—the prodigal and his elder brother, the one’s first invited but who make excuses and the lame, the blind the weak.  All are welcome at the table, but will we go in sit and eat together? Will we be family together or will we stand outside and mumble?

Far too often we are the crowd—grumbling, grumbling but no action.   What does Jesus do? He calls this Zaccheus guy down from his tree.  He brings him into relationship. The story is a transformative word for the early followers of Jesus. It is a reforming story for us as we celebrate Reformation Sunday.   Stop mumbling and make changes. The grace of God stretches Zacchaeus.  From the tree to table there is amazing grace.   Zachaeus rises uncoerced, unadmonished, and unprompted and commits himself to doing justice        

The view from the tree and the free grace of God gave Zacchaeus the opportunity to see how he had participated in two forms of injustice.  First he was part of a systematic injustice.   As the chief tax collector, he was deeply a part of the corrupt tax system of the Roman government. He was personally profiting from a unjust program that oppressed other people.  

Second, he had also made dishonest choices and intentionally defrauded people to the benefit of himself. These injustices overlap and Zacchaeus response to Jesus shows his intent to make restitution on both accounts. He moves to systematic justice, to the sharing of his wealth with the poor.  And he will no longer be part of a system that hurts the poor and oppressed.  

Zaccheaus is transformed,  he is joyfully reformed. He scrambles down from the tree and walks home with Christ. They eat together which is something he probably hadn’t done with anyone for a long time. Zaccheaus is restored to his community.  Jesus calls him son of Abraham. He is part of the family tree, the historic lineage, but a righteous part now. Even Zaccheus’ name means righteous one.

Together, as the one family of Abraham we too have reparation work to do. Reformation work like Zaccheeaus. Reformation work like Martin Luther who transformed the church by nailing his 95 theses on the wooden door at Wittenburg Church on October 31, 1517. Luther was knocking on some very heavy wood. Luther knew the church too was taking advantage of the most vulnerable and things needed to change. Martin Luther declared that the selling of indulgences, which was a way of getting a loved one out of purgatory, was wrong. You could not buy God’s love. We follow in the way of Jesus, a way of love that comes with a different kind of cost. Salvation is not something you can buy from a priest or preacher.

 Zaccheaus did the work of repairing those he hurt. And he came into a deep joy. We live in a time when there is much restoration and reformation work to do.  We are as connected to one another as the trees. We each have our own part to play, perhaps most importantly making sure we vote.

Today marks 24 years since the death of Senator Paul Wellstone in that tragic airplane crash near Hibbing. Paul, another small Jewish man, knew the importance of making reparation, restoring justice.  He would often say, “I don’t work for the Rockfellers but the little fellas.”  And his most famous quote of all printed on his green bus, “We all do better when we all do better.”

We need more of this kind of thinking, even in our churches. During the past week, Public Religion Research Institute released a poll showing that a large empathy gap has opened up between white evangelicals and other Americas. Indeed 54% of white evangelicals say empathy can be dangerous.”

After retiring from Peace Church after 30 years as their pastor I now work at Myers Wilkins Elementary School as a para professional with Emotionally Behaviorally challenged kids. We are the wolves at Myers and we Howl.  Our first core value H of the Howl is to have empathy.  Empathy, to know that we are connected and what hurts you also hurts me.  We need each other. Our kids need us this November 3. If the school referendum fails the district will likely be forced to close schools and lay off at least 50 teachers.   I see every day how hard the staff work to be there for the kids of our community, it’s our turn to be there for them.

We are all part of the family of faith generational tree. We belong to one another, we are deeply connected. Children of Abraham each and everyone.  Amen.