The Sycamore Tree

Tensed and one butt-cheek touching the pressure pad, I hung on every word.

            “Blessed are the meek…” he began.

            My cheek lifted off the seat and an electric impulse traveled through a chord to a bank of lights that sat in front of the quizmaster, who motioned for me to stand.

            “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” I answered.

            “Correct.”

            We memorized the gospel of Matthew during my sophomore year in the Northwest Baptist Bible Quiz League. I spent two hours nightly memorizing bible verses, yet the only passage I remember is the Beatitudes, which is odd because they contain no numbers.

            Numbers are supremely important -- Jesus was a carpenter but few know that he was also a statistician. The proof is in the gospels where he sows as many numbers as healings: there is the Parable of the Debtors, where one man owed fifty denari and the other five hundred; the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, where the servant owed ten thousand talents and his debtor five hundred denari; and, of course, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, where the vineyard owner employed different workers for different amounts of work and then paid them all equally. In spite of his egalitarian example, we of the quizzing league thought it only fair that God (and ourselves) honor those who studied more, and in the footsteps of Jesus used numbers make our point.

            The team and individual points were assiduously recorded, averaged, standard deviation-ed, run-through, and then churned out as a list, visible to all, that showed our stats, best to worst. At the top were those that racked up the talents, like me. Toward the bottom were the fifty denari folks and a few zero denari folks.          

            "Look at the birds of the air…”

            I walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone.         

            "Look at the birds of the air,” I said. “They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"   

“Correct.”

            The top quizzers were a motley crowd, but one thing colored them equal: None were successful at anything outside bible quizzing. Socially awkward, many walked the church halls with heads bowed. However, when they stood on the platform in front of the congregation reciting verse after verse, their heads were high.

            My friend Mary was a mediocre quizzer and perhaps that is why she bowed her head both in the halls and on the podium. Mary had the stature of Zacchaeus, the outcast Jewish tax collector who climbed the sycamore tree to see Jesus over the heads of the crowd. Jesus sought out Zacchaeus and ate dinner at his house, but no benevolent male presence would recognize Mary or enter her residence any time soon. She never knew her father. Her mother was a drug addict who smoked crack and performed sexual favors for strange men in front of her daughter. Mary told me this one night, quietly, as if praying in a cathedral where even whispers could travel along walls to unkind ears. By this time she had been taken by social services and lived as a foster child in the house of our pastor and his wife.

            “They don’t treat me well,” she confessed, fingering her Fred Meyer necklace like a rosary. “Last week he called me an ungrateful lazy little girl.” I nodded. She looked by turns left and right and shivered in her wool sweater though the night was warm.

Mary could say her verses by heart and was especially fond of the resurrection. “After he rose from the dead, Jesus appeared first to a woman,” she told me. “Jesus loved women.”

We had contrasting liturgical approaches: While I jumped quickly and reeled off parables like side effects in a drug commercial, Mary jumped slowly and recited them like a favorite poem. She would grasp the microphone in her tiny hands and turn it sharply downward, then close her eyes and in her prayerful whisper…

“Lord, if it’s you…”

I jumped and came to the podium.

“Lord, if it’s you tell me to come to you on the water.”

            It was November of 1998, our first regional quiz-meet, and I was doing remarkably well. So was Mary. In fact, we were tied for first place. However, Mary’s meet was over. Her team failed to advance to the finals, where I now squatted butt-cheek to pressure pad, hanging on every word. My breaths came in starts. For two months I had labored in the vineyard of the Word, fermenting verse after verse in my mind.  And now it was time to collect.

            Four correct answers and no incorrect answers would earn me ninety points and a solitary position at the head of the almighty list.  Four correct answers and one incorrect answer would earn eighty points and Mary and I would tie for first place.  Aware of this, Mary sought me in the hall before the quiz. Her eyes flitted along the ground and she moved from her left to right foot and then back again, reminding me of a small bird.

            “I know this may seem stupid,” she said, pawing the ground, “and I don’t really have any right to ask, but if you get three questions right would you miss one so that we can tie? You don’t have to. It’s just that I’ve worked so hard and need to show him... but you don’t have to. You know what, forget it. I’m sorry for asking.”

            “Let me think about it,” I said.          

             Now I needed only one more. I looked out over the pews.  Perhaps one hundred spectators sat reverently as if attending a Sunday service. Our pastor sat two rows back. He smiled.

            “Blessed are those who mourn…”

            I rose from my seat and headed to the podium. “Blessed are those who mourn,” I said. “Blessed are those who mourn,” My voice floated like smoke from a censer, “blessed are those who mourn.” Faces in the crowd prayed up at me and I saw the pastor’s briefly, but then looked away. “Blessed are those who mourn.” I wondered how Matthew could remember Jesus’ teachings when he wrote his gospel, decades after his master died -“blessed are those who mourn” – and the spectators still prayed up at me, like children waiting to be given their place in the world, a cold world, but I had no sermons left. I repeated the phrase two or three more times - “Blessed… blessed… blessed…” then walked back to my seat. My feat moved slowly as if wading in brine.

I met Mary in the hall.

            “Thank you,” she said. She reached high and wrapped small hands around my neck, pulling me close.

            “How do you know that I erred on purpose?” I said.

            “No one could forget that verse,” she said, “not that verse.” She tightening her grip and held me for a few long seconds, her hummingbird heart beating against my chest. Then she let go. For a few moments she hovered near, smiling but avoiding my eyes, then flew into the sanctuary.