The Brown Birds

Matthew 10:24-39

It’s rare that I get to see a goldfinch. When I do, it’s sort of magical; they look almost unreal. Their golden heads are just so, so, golden. They’re gorgeous, and it’s such a treat when one lands on the feeder. It’s so great. They’re so…obvious. I know one when I’ve seen one. It’s like God shouting out to me, “pay attention! There is beauty here!”

I’ve got this whole setup in my front yard. I’ve got six feeders hanging from metal poles, and one suet cage, all the in the hopes that a little bit of nature might grace my urban landscape. 

Most of the time, though, I get some variation of brown bird. Some are easy to differentiate. They’re bigger - the female cardinal. Or they have a black mask on their faces - the male house swallow. But things get trickier for me when I’m trying to discover the differences between the female house swallow from the female house finch. Or the house finch from the purple finch. Or trying to figure out which one is a song sparrow, an American tree sparrow, a female white-throated sparrow, or a fox sparrow. All these sparrows. They have tiny differences that somewhere, somehow, some ornithologist has determined to be significant enough to pay attention to, significant enough to label them as an entirely different species of bird. So, in what is either a grand waste of my time, or the only acceptable way to spend my time, I sit in my sunroom and watch the birds. It’s meditative. It’s soothing. Sometimes, when some other color besides brown comes twittering along, it can even be a little bit thrilling. But I’m also trying to find the thrill in the brown. In its different shades and patterns, songs, flights, twitches of their heads. And there’s no short supply of brown to study. The sparrows are everywhere. They’re flitting and fighting, hopping and perching, rubbing their beaks and bickering everywhere.

They were everywhere in the Ancient Near East as well. In Jesus’s time, they were considered a quick snack, caught, plucked, grilled and eaten off of skewers like shish kabobs. I can picture a young boy after school with his penny in his pocket, stopping at the local market, and grabbing a pair for a quick nibble on his way home. In that time, brown birds were just brown birds; they didn’t differentiate the species like ornithologists do now. They were all sparrows. All the same. Small. Brown. Scavenging. Ubiquitous.

And this is what we are to God.

Well.

Sort of.

Like every part of our reading today, Jesus is turning this idea of sparrows on its head. He’s transforming what these birds mean. He’s transforming how we see.

They’re standing in the marketplace and Jesus is giving the disciples this terrifying lecture. “You’re going to have the same reputation as I have,” Jesus says. “They’ll think you’re too much. Too emotional. Too radical. They’ll think you’re ridiculous. A dreamer. A dismantler of society. The call to discipleship is drastic, it’s life-changing and world-altering. But don’t worry. (Ha! Yeah right…) It’ll all come to light.” Jesus is looking all around him and he sees the young boy with his shish kabob of sparrows and he says, “You are a sparrow. You’re lots of sparrows. You’re more than lots of sparrows.” 

I mean, can you picture it, the little boy is about to take a big bite of his juicy sparrow and Jesus begins using his snack as an object lesson? “Don’t worry,” Jesus says, “you’re worth more than many sparrows.” Uh, thanks, Jesus? So like, how many sparrows are we worth? 10 pennies’ worth? 50 cents worth? A thousand sparrows? That’d be what, a whole five bucks…

But Jesus wants us to look closer. To look deeper. To turn the world upside down. These sparrows on a stick, these brown birds hopping around at their feet, these scavengers and nuisances that clutter the markets and live off of French fries and hot dog buns, God knows them intimately. God loves them fiercely. God is with them completely. Look closer. Look deeper. Once you can see the differences even in the tiny sparrows, you’ll start to see the world the way God sees it.

 

You’ll start to care about all those things the world has said isn’t worth a penny. You’ll start paying attention to differences, rather than lumping things all together as nuisance or a stereotype. You’ll start to see the varied and heart-breaking stories behind each brown bird. 

But to do this, you have to watch closely. You’ll have to pay attention. You’ll have to listen to the differences and point out all the variations. You’ll have to get close. And getting close means getting messy. It means conflict and frustration and misunderstandings. The sparrows don’t always get along. Once we hear one another’s stories, things will get complicated. We’ll start to have feelings. We’ll want to make judgments. We’ll want to cast out. We’ll want to draw lines. 

This brown bird, with the white above its eyes, they should live here. This brown bird, with the pattern on its wings, they don’t belong there. That brown bird with the yellow beak, they’re the selfish ones. And on and on it goes.

But Jesus doesn’t say, “back up.” He doesn’t say, “we’re all just birds, why can’t we get along?” Jesus says, “get even closer.” Cozy up to them. Get near.

This will cause conflict. We’ll have stuff we have to work out. We will have conflicting stories that we will have to tell and retell and come to understand. A son is going to have a different story than his father. A daughter will have a different perspective from her mother. A daughter-in-law will have conflict with her mother-in-law. You’ll start to see the terrifying and beautiful differences between each other, and you won’t know what to do with them. You’ll want to reject the differences. You’ll want to step away. You’ll want to avoid going near because there will be conflict and confusion and difference.

But be like God. Watch the brown birds. See their differences. Find their uniqueness. Lean in to the conflict. 

It will be hard. It will hurt. You’ll think you’ll never be able to find common ground again. There will be frenzied flitting and angry squawking and things we’re going to have to work out.

Don’t stray from the conflict. Step in to it. Watch and wait and pay attention. Don’t plow through will your supposed “rightness,” but listen. If you rush forward with all your one-sided answers, you’ll scare them from the feeders. Instead, lean in to the conflict with a gentle curiosity. What makes this one tick? What makes that one thrive? Which seed do they prefer? And then wonder why all this is. 

This will bring out all kinds of judgments in us. They take all the food. They make a mess. They’re inefficient. They waste. But if you hold on to these judgments tighter than you hold on to the beauty of the differences, you’re going to miss it. You’re not going to see the world the way God’s sees it. You’ll deny Jesus, who saw everything the way God sees it. You’ll lose your life. 

But if you hold on to the beauty of the differences, you’ll start to see the world the way Jesus sees it - not as a mass of generic brown birds, but as a mosaic of difference, creativity, life. But we have to step in to the difference, we have to brave the rupture, we have to be curious through the conflict, or we’ll never get to the repair. The resurrection isn’t about making things easy. It’s about living through the conflict to greater life and beauty on the other side. 

When we start to look at the world with a concern for all the brown birds, one day, we’ll start to see all the beauty. We’ll start to see that the chipping sparrows wear a rusty orange crown. We’ll notice that the female house finch has an elegant thin neck. The song sparrow has a dark spot on its chest, right where its heart should be. The American tree sparrow has this curious bill - it’s black on top and yellow below. And the house sparrow is small and feisty, the first ones to the feeder in the morning. God knows and loves them all. Not because they’re all the same. Not because they get along.  But because they are God’s. They belong to God in all their beautiful difference. Pay attention. Even when it’s hard. Step in. There is beauty here. 

Thanks be to God. 

In Medias Res -- To Save the World Entire

 

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Goodness. If this isn’t a…”Squirrel!” Passage, I don’t know what is. There’s so much going on here. One thing after another. We barely catch our breath from the first miracle and we’ve already moved on to the next. So much is happening here that it’s hard to get our bearings. 

There’s this literary device I learned about in my English classes. It’s Latin, of course because it has to sound fancy: “in medias res”. Which really just literally means, “in the middle of things.” It’s when you begin a story in the middle of something else that’s already going on. You start the story in the middle of the action. This happens all the time in storytelling. The king has already died, and Hamlet must take revenge. Achilles is filled with rage right at the beginning and we have no idea why. Odysseus is imprisoned while everyone else is going home after the war. Before the opening credits, Walter White is racing through the New Mexico desert in his RV. The Montagues and the Capulets have been fighting for years before Romeo meets Juliet. It’s great for storytelling. It draws us into the action. It gives us questions that we can’t wait to have answered. We stick with the details because we want to find out more, not just to find out what’s happening right now, but to discover what’s got us into this mess in the first place, and maybe even find some clues as to what will happen next. History tends to repeat itself, after all. Sometimes telling the story, not from the beginning, but from “in medias res,” is the best way to grab folks’ attention and then keep it. It’s sort of a storyteller’s fancy way of multitasking.

And our reading today is a whole lot of Jesus multitasking. He’s being interrupted in every moment. We are shoved into the middle of his action, and it seems like the poor guy doesn’t get to focus on a single thing, His attention is constantly drawn to something new. Over and over again this happens. First, while Jesus is just walking along, he sees a random tax collector, and calls to follow him. Then, while Jesus is sitting at dinner with a whole bunch of sinners, the Pharisees interrupt to criticize him. While Jesus overhears them talking to the disciples, he sets them straight. But even before he’s done saying these things, a leader of the synagogue interrupts his dinner to tell him about his dead daughter. Then, on his way to see this girl, he’s interrupted by a woman who’s been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Jesus sets his mind to do one thing, and then the “tyranny of the present” interrupts him and he must divert his attention. 

This, psychologists say, is terrible for our mental health. And, in addition, multitasking is ineffective. You can do one thing at a time much more quickly and efficiently than if you tried to do all the things all at the same time. But doesn’t it feel like our whole lives are happening “in medias res” - in the middle of the action? The world never stops. Joy insists on invading when we’re grieving. Sorrow floods in when we’re celebrating. Work still needs to be done even as we’re resting. Two kids fall in love while their families are feuding. Flowers bloom while cannons are blasting.  The world keeps spinning, and Jesus, in our reading today, gets a full blown serving of it. Everybody wants a piece of Jesus. And somehow, in medias res, he gives it to them.

So what’s our gospel writer trying to tell us about who Jesus is in the midst of all this middle of things? Is Jesus like The Flash or Sonic the Hedgehog, he’s so fast that time literally slows down, objects move in slow motion, and he can attend to everything, seemingly all at once? Or is he like the perfect soccer mom, who can tie shoes, drive the carpool, serve the snacks, and order the triple latte all at the same time? Is this passage meant to separate us from our likeness to Jesus? Remind us how very far we are from being the Son of God? Maybe. Maybe Jesus is the superhero that we can never live up to, the ideal we’ll never reach, the God who is far away from anything we can ever be.

I know that when I get overwhelmed with all the things going on in the world, in my life, I just want to shut down. Go back under the covers. Close my eyes until the world rights itself again. When I’m in the middle of the mess and I can’t juggle one more thing, I want to drop it all, let it go, burn it down, give it up. Maybe if I hide from the dishes long enough, they’ll do themselves. Or maybe if I ignore the injustices in my own country and others, they’ll eventually resolve themselves, right? Right? And since there’s no possible way that I can feed all the millions of hungry people in the world, there’s no point in sharing my lunch, right? Right?

Since there’s so much going on in the world, all I can do is keep my head down and focus on myself and my needs, right? Right? Since I can’t solve the war, or fix the crisis, or heal the sick, all I can do is just tuck my head between my knees or under my shell and not enter the story at all?

Sometimes, that is definitely, exactly, what I want to do. Don’t put me in the middle of the action. Let me out. Help me escape. My work doesn’t make a dent in anything anyway. The war goes on. The families keep feuding. What difference does one person, one love story, one adventure, one discovery, one person’s narrative in the midst of it all, make anyway? 

Our poets, our storytellers, our heroes, and our Jesus, say it makes all the difference in the world. The Talmud has a saying, “Man was created alone to teach you that whoever kills one life, kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire. That’s why we’re in the middle of the action. Not so that we can fix it all, but so that we can help one, and in that way, fix the world entire. 

This is how Jesus works.

Don’t you think, if Jesus wanted to, if God wanted to, he could snap his fingers and just like that, fix it all? Couldn’t Jesus have reclined at the table, used some Jedi mind trick and called Matthew, taught the Pharisees, healed the hemorrhaging woman, and raised the girl from the dead while knit an afghan, updated his Facebook status, and ate lunch? Couldn’t God simply solve the hunger and end the wars and heal the earth in one fell swoop, leaning back in “his” lazyboy, dozing off while the infomercials come on? Couldn’t God fix this all, so so easily? 

If God can, why does God choose not to? 

Maybe God’s a jerk? 

Or maybe God can’t? 

Or maybe God knows and understands something that we don’t. But for whatever reason, God doesn’t work this way. Jesus steps into our worlds, in the middle of all the action, and he shows up for one, one alone, and then another, and another, and another. 

God shows up for us in medias res. While the wars are raging, while the families are fighting, while the crisis has been going on and on for centuries. Jesus enters people’s lives while he’s walking along the road, while he’s sitting for dinner, while he’s listening to the conflict, while he’s teaching the lesson, and while he’s walking to raise the dead. Jesus comes in the middle of all this messy, juggling, confusing, frightening world, in the middle of it all, and he calls one. He eats with one. He teaches one. He heals one. And then another. And in that way, the whole world. 

We don’t have to start from the beginning. And we don’t have to fix it all. We just have to enter in to what is already happening, and keep going. Keep showing up. Let the story grab our attention, and then keep it. As we’re walking. As we’re eating. As we’re listening and teaching and walking some more. We get to start, right here, right now, in the middle of all this action, in the middle of our mess and our imperfections and our failures.  We don’t have to be fixed or our “best” or finished in order to save the world. We just get to enter in to the stories that are already happening, enter in, show up, and say, “I’m here. What do you need?” This is how God works. This is how the best stories begin. This is how we save the world.

Thanks be to God.