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.
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