Pilgrim’s Notes #5: The Sycamore Tree

After a stressful time crossing the border from Jordan to Israel via Allenby, we were finally in Jericho.  The very first Biblically-significant place I saw in the Holy Lands was the Sycamore tree near the former house of Zaccheus… the one he climbed on to see Jesus.  As it turns out, the gospel reading for the last mass we celebrated in Egypt before heading home to the Philippines, was just about that — the Sycamore tree.

To refresh your memory, here is the passage from Luke Chapter 19:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

I wanted to climb the tree too, but our bus did not stop. We just ‘passed by’ the house and all I could do was manage to snag a photo of the more than 2,000 year old tree.

 

Our Pilgrim Chaplain said that the Sycamore Tree is a ‘Tree of Pretention’ = it is the place we go when we want to appear taller than we are.  But Jesus invited Zaccheus to ‘come down’ from the tree so they could converse and spend some time together.    We all have our Sycamore Trees in our lives => our looks, our wealth, our careers => the very things we attach ourselves to to make us appear taller than we are.  But unless we come down and face God with who we really are, we will never encounter Him on a personal level.

Why did Zaccheus want to see Jesus?  Perhaps curiousity came into play — Zaccheus heard about this man and he wanted to see this Jesus to check out what the fuzz was about. But once he was face to face with Christ, there was no turning back for Zaccheus.  He was so moved that he resolved to transform his life to follow Christ.

Like Zaccheus, people had various reasons to go on a pilgrimage.  For me, it was always something I wanted to do while I was young.  As a Catholic, I thought it was something I needed to do before I die.  Just before my elder sister passed the bar, I was already thinking of asking her, my other sister and my mom to visit the Holy Lands.  But there was so much conflict in Israel at that time, with bombings happening here and there and so I did not pursue it.  So much has happened since then (aka my sister already converted to Islam).  My dream of having the 4 of us visitng the Holy Places for Catholics may not be feasible.  I thought about taking my mom and my sisters, but somehow the call for me was to travel alone.   Much of why I wanted to go was out of curiosity — how do these historical places in the Bible look like?

But like Zaccheus, once you encounter Jesus, even just the historical places, you will be compelled to transform.  You will desire to follow.