Bird by Bird

It was late in the afternoon of a sunny fall day about 18 years ago, warm enough to have my window rolled down as I drove along the winding two-lane highway past the Trojan Nuclear Plant near the Columbia River in Oregon. I was on my way home from my job as coordinator of special education programs for five small school districts, shedding the details of the day with the help of a tape of John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing love songs... Just enjoying the time and space...sailing along...

Suddenly a little bird, perhaps also homeward bound, zigzagged in through the window of the car and collided with my cheek! I was driving about 55 miles an hour; I don't know how fast the bird was flying, but it was quite a smack!

The little bird fell into my lap. I was trying to stay on the road and get the bird off my lap at the same time... Quite an experience -- totally unexpected!

And not one I would care to repeat...

Perhaps Jesus' audience in today's Gospel story felt somewhat the same way... They were in a place they wanted to be in, crowding around this interesting teacher, curious, hopeful, having a good time... People had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. It was a good place to be that afternoon, just listening to the music of his voice...

He told them a series of blessings... for the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those hated because of their faith... Upside down from what the usual norms were, to be sure, but listen to the rewards he promised... the kingdom of God, the hungry filled, the tears turned to laughter, great rewards in heaven... Yes, this was good to hear, and they sailed on with him...

And then smack! Right into their faces -- a series of "Woes"! Not what they had expected -- not what they wanted... What's happening all of a sudden?

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you...

Our former bishop in the diocese of Olympia used to administer a small slap in the face during Confirmation, to remind us that we might face adversity as Christians... If you didn't know it was coming, it could be quite a surprise!

Jesus, too, reminds his listeners that what he asks of us as his followers is not the world's usual way of thinking or being. As is his habit, he turns their world-assumptions -- and ours -- upside down.

If we are rich, full of good food, laughing, well thought-of, we assume that's the best place to be -- and we hope (and tend to assume) that that's the way we will continue to live. Jesus promises many blessings -- but not necessarily the kind we think of as best. The dangers of complacency are several.

We can get too comfortable with our own situation to notice those who do not share it -- or we can assume that those who do not share our happiness have somehow not "deserved" it or are not as good as we are. And then we may forget, or choose to overlook, our common humanity.

We can succumb to the competitive mentality of our culture and try to hoard what we have, to store up treasures on earth, to the extent that we forget to be in awe of and thankful to the Source and Giver of all our blessings.

Is Jesus telling us to quit being happy, to throw everything away, to go on that megadiet we've been avoiding since our last New Year's resolution, only more so? Is that the point?

Or is the point to be unbound from the usual expectations, the spiritual consumer mentality, so that we are freer to see and wonder at God's presence and grace? Free to see that bread alone -- even if it has a fine steak next to it -- is really an impoverished way of being nourished. Free to see that hungering for and seeking God is the way to true fullness of being, that it is at God's table that we receive, not from our own labor but as God's own free gift, the Bread of Heaven.

Free to laugh, not at, but with those around us. Free to delight in God's gifts -- and God's sometimes improbable sense of humor. (I think it was Robin Williams who did the skit about God's creation of the duck-billed platypus...) Free to see the divine funniness, as well as the challenge, of our cherished rules being turned upside down. If we miss the chance to share in God's own delight in creation -- and in us -- we are indeed left with mourning -- and miss the point of the Resurrection.

If we accept Jesus' challenge, we are free to speak out on behalf of God and of the good of humanity and all of creation, when that is necessary and unpopular, rather than to depend on being spoken well of by our peers. Up in my home diocese, on Whidbey Island, there is a wonderful enterprise called the Giraffe Project, designed to honor community volunteers who have "stuck their necks out" for the benefit of their communities and to teach children and adults the importance of doing just that, whether it is popular or not (and it is often not). If we follow, the best we can and with God's help, in Jesus' footsteps, we too may run afoul of conventional expectations, as he often did. We may be excluded, reviled, defamed as he was. And what does Jesus say about that? Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.

Jesus' challenges fly into our faces with a resounding smack in this passage. They fall right into our laps, and we may want to get them out of the way in a hurry. But they are worth pausing with.

When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he tells the people who stare at the emerging ex-corpse, Unbind him. He wants that for all of us -- to be loosed from whatever binds us, whatever keeps us from the blessings that he promises along with the challenges. To be filled, to laugh, to leap for joy, to know our reward in heaven.

We all need to be challenged from time to time. In our baptismal promises, we are asked, Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? Whenever, not if. The writers of the service were wise in putting it that way. But what will be our answer? I will, with God's help.

And that help, and its attendant blessings, are always and everywhere available to us, abundantly given.

Two weeks from now we will be beginning the season of Lent, a time of reflection, a time of challenge to be freed of whatever binds us and keeps us from the full enjoyment and sharing of the promised blessings of God. It is not meant to be a time of dutiful dolefulness, but rather an invitation to the unbinding that gives us the fullest joy in the Resurrection. Sometimes the challenge seems huge, or we try to fix everything at once, in a variation on all those not-very-doable New Year's resolutions, and then it can be a temptation to give up, to dump that challenge off our laps as fast as possible. Then we can fall back on that baptismal promise, I will, with God's help. And we start from wherever we are, and with God's help, we do what we can do, together.

Perhaps one more short bird story will help. I have been reading a delightful book called Bird by Bird, by a writer named Anne Lamott. The title of the book comes from this story:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

So too our heavenly father sits down with us, puts his Spirit around our shoulders, and tenderly invites us to be unbound -- challenge by challenge -- to live into the fullness of his love and his kingdom. Where we will be filled, where we will laugh, where we will leap for joy. And as we look for his coming again, we gather here today around his table in a foretaste of that ultimate feast.

The Rev. Lois Hart
15 February 98