Meditation on Luke 19:1-10
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford
Nov. 2, 2025
All Saints Sunday
“Call me Sis,” said Julia Beckman, when I first met her. “My friends call me Sis.”
So, we were to be friends, from the first moment, though I was also her pastor. Sis was a member of Merritt Island Presbyterian Church. She was 88 when we met.
The tall woman with long legs, naturally blond curly hair going grey and twinkling blue eyes, had many hobbies since she retired from teaching and coaching in 1989, including golf. Nothing stopped her from doing them until her body started catching up to her age; she had chronic back pain but seldom complained. When I asked how she was, she would say, “Same old, same old.” She had never married, never had children. It was a choice, she said, shaking off any regrets. “I’ve had a good life.”
She was still driving a car she called Big Red when we met. She drove me around town in it, and we went to lunch. Big Red had taken her frequently to Panama City to see family 7 hours away or to Daytona or New Smyrna to spend a week or weekend with a friend.
Julia was born on rural Merritt Island, when it was sand, palm trees, mosquitos, snakes, and bungalows without a/c. This was decades before the space race and the Kennedy Space Center, long before the causeway was built. Julia had to rely on her long legs to carry her over a wooden bridge to high school on the mainland each day. For there was no high school on Merritt Island until the 1960s. And her family didn’t have a car.
Her mother raised Sis and her 4 older brothers on her own. Her father had left the family soon after Sis was born. This was in March 1927—when the Great Florida Land Boon of the 1920s had crashed and the area had sunk into a deep economic depression.[1] Her mother gave birth at home as there was no hospital on Merritt Island and no money for a hospital birth, if there was. The doctor made house calls, but he didn’t get around to recording her birth until days later and then forgot which day she was born. Her mother always said that her birth certificate was wrong. Birthdays were not big celebrations when she was growing up, anyway.
Sis overcame many obstacles in her life to achieve what she could dream. She graduated high school, went on to earn a bachelor’s from Florida State in 1949 and then a master’s from Vanderbilt. She taught physical education in Miami, then as an assistant professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She often wished she had finished her Ph.D., but she didn’t need it to teach or coach, she said, which she went on to do for 35 years, most of it at the high school from which she graduated.
After I had moved to Ohio, I received a call from her nephew, Roy. I feared he would be telling me that she had passed. But he shared happy news; she was being inducted into the Space Coast Hall of Fame. She was 95. The Space Coast Daily told how her female players, with no varsity opportunities, sought her help to offer them wider-ranging opportunities for play. The result was her creation of the Girls’ Athletic Association. This allowed players to compete with other teams in basketball, volleyball, softball, track and field, gymnastics, cheerleading, tennis and golf.[2] She shared how she had played women’s softball and basketball in WWII, and how it was for girls in what she called the “Dark Ages,” when women were considered “too delicate to play full-court basketball.” “Glad that changed,” she said. [3]
Sis was always an encouragement for me. I hope you have people like Sis in your life! She urged me to pursue a doctorate before I was seriously thinking about it. She continued to encourage me years later when we talked by phone, even after she had to give up her house on Banana River Blvd and move to a nursing home. Sadly, the once athletic and energetic woman was wheelchair bound for the last months of her life.
She worried that I would forget about her. I assured her that we would always be friends.
On All Saints Sunday, we encounter Zacchaeus, someone we know from Sunday School and that wonderful song. His story has always connected well with children because he was small and had no friends. So eager was he to see Jesus, he climbed a sycamore tree. Doesn’t every child want to climb a tree?
If you picture Zacchaeus in one of our massive American sycamores, with the peeling bark, you’ve got the wrong tree. It was a sycamore fig tree, cultivated since ancient times, native to Egypt, and brought to Israel by the Philistines in the Iron Age.[4] The sycamore fig tree is mentioned 8 times in the Bible, but only once in the New Testament—right here with the story of Zacchaeus, found only in Luke. “Its figs, although inferior in taste and sugar content to a true fig, were in ancient times widely consumed by the poor. Its wood was also important and was used as building timber for homes and ancient Egyptian coffins.[5]
This was a popular and valuable fruit tree in Jericho during the time of Christ. And there are other stories, outside the Bible, about Jesus and sycamore fig trees. One says that the Holy Family took refuge in this tree when they fled to Egypt after Jesus was born. The Coptic pope Theophilus of Alexandria, who lived until the early 5th century, tells the story that Joseph had a walking stick, which Jesus broke as an infant. When Joseph buried the pieces of the stick, a sycamore fig grew forth and provided shelter. [6]
Zacchaeus is the chief toll collector. And he is rich. Jericho is an important customs station for the major trade route between Judea and lands east of the Jordan.[7] His fellow townspeople see him as a sinner and corrupt because he is a Jewish man working for the Romans, collecting tolls from his own people. [8] Jesus sees Zacchaeus and calls to him by name, looking up and saying, “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” The small man hurries down and is “happy to welcome him.” But the crowd grumbles about Jesus going to the home of a sinner. Both Jesus and Zacchaeus ignore the complaints.
Arriving at the small man’s home, Jesus declares that salvation has come. For this is a conversion story. Zacchaeus won’t look back. He already had the right attitude toward wealth. The text never says that he intentionally cheated anyone. In fact, he is revealed to be more generous with his money and possessions than is required by Mosaic law.
We don’t run into Zacchaeus again in the Bible after this passage in Luke. But we know that he remained faithful to Christ’s call. Early Christian literature identifies “Zacchaeus the Publican” as the first bishop of Caesarea, a port city on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean.
We come to the end of our passage, overjoyed with the choices that Zaccheaus has made to look for Jesus, look to be seen by him, and welcome him into his home and heart. But then we realize that all along, when we thought that Zacchaeus was the one looking for Jesus, Jesus was the one looking for him. He says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
Today, on All Saints, we remember and give thanks for the people whose lives touched ours in countless ways and helped to make us who we are and who we will become. We give thanks for the gift of loving them and being loved by them. People like my dear friend Sis, who drove me around in Big Red and threw her curly blond head back whenever she laughed. Who remembered to send cards on my birthday and call on Christmas Eve. And how we cried and cried when I moved away.
Sis went home to be with the Lord in March. She was 98.
As we continue our worship and after you leave the building today, may you remember the one who called to Zacchaeus, “Hurry and come down,” and feel the loving presence of the Spirit. And if you ever feel lost, may you see a tree that reminds you of the story of the chief toll collector who became a bishop. And that the One who sought out Zacchaeus is looking for you, too.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, thank you for the gift of our salvation through the sacrifice of your Son and that we can always come to you and seek your face. Thank you that we are no longer lost, but that we have been found by you. That in your Kingdom, we are not defined or judged by our bank accounts, geography, or occupation. We have new identities that will never be taken away from us; we are all beloved Children of God. Thank you for the gift of family and friends to love and for the love they offer us. Thank you for the faithfulness of all the saints, the Body of Christ in every time and place. Dear Lord, strengthen and comfort those who are grieving the loss of loved ones today. Lighten the burden that they are carrying. Grant them your peace and healing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
[1] Historic Brevard (2016) at https://brevardfl.gov/docs/default-source/historical-commission-docs/not-508-historical-landmarks/2016-brevard-county-landmark-guide.pdf?sfvrsn=8b794af4_6
[2] https://spacecoastdaily.com/2025/04/obituary-brevard-sports-pioneer-and-educator-julia-beckman-98-passes-away-peacefully-march-18-of-natural-causes/
[3] https://spacecoastdaily.com/2025/04/obituary-brevard-sports-pioneer-and-educator-julia-beckman-98-passes-away-peacefully-march-18-of-natural-causes/
[4] Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1032.
[5] Michael Zohary, Plants of the Bible (1982), 68.
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_sycomorus
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