A friend told me of the hours he spent as a child in a large cherry tree in his grandmother's backyard. The tree was very large and high, at least as he remembered it. He remembered the very first time he climbed it. He had to jump to catch hold of the lowest branch, and then pull himself by sheer muscle power up onto it. Then he could work his way up the tree. The tree seemed so high, that he got dizzy looking down, and yet, scary as it was, he couldn't resist climbing higher and higher. Finally he got very close to the top where the branches were thinner, and he could climb no higher. He stayed there, straddling a limb and holding tightly to one above it, swaying in the breeze with the leaves fluttering around him. It was an exhilarating moment for a seven-year-old. He was on top of the world.

But when the time came to climb back down, he was terrified. As long as he was on his way up, his vision and his focus was on the branch above him. But on the way down, all he could see was how far below the ground was and how many protruding limbs there were between him and the ground. Very gingerly, he made his way down, branch by branch, and when he finally got on the ground, he discovered his knees were trembling with the excitement and fear of the whole experience. Like a typical small boy, however, once he knew he could conquer the tree, he couldn't stay out of it, and before long, he went up and down it like a monkey. Somehow, the risk of being out on a limb high in the tree became as routine as brushing one's teeth.

Years later, long after he had grown out of his tree-climbing days, he was visiting his grandparents and happened to notice the old cherry tree. The lower limb that had been his first step up into the tree, the limb that he had had to leap to catch hold of, now was at shoulder height. The whole tree seemed somehow shrunken and unprepossessing. It wasn't nearly as large as he remembered it. The thin branches near the top, where he had spent many a summer hour swaying in the breezes and feeling himself to be on top of the world, were no more than 20 feet from the ground. He laughed as he saw the tree through the adult eyes, but he remembered and relived for a few moments, his feelings as that seven-year-old boy with trembling knees taking a daring risk to climb up among the clouds.

The gospel lesson for today is about another tree-climber whose name was Zacchaeus. He too experienced the risk and exhilaration of being "out on a limb." Zacchaeus' life was transformed as he sat on his tree limb, and at the time, it must have been a thoroughly scary experience, though perhaps later, as a mature disciple, he may have wondered why it ever seemed risky or frightening at all.