Don Friesen
Some years ago (1979) a chirpy sparrow got trapped in the rafters of St. Helen's Parish Church in the central English village of Brant Broughton. Unfortunately, it broke into song during a guitar recital being recorded for a radio broadcast. Reverend Robin Clark, the church rector, asked the congregation to leave, summoned a marksman with an air gun, and had the offending sparrow shot! The killing of this sparrow became big news in England, in North America, and all over the world! The front page of the London Daily Telegraph announced, "Rev. Robin orders death of sparrow," followed by editorials and public opinion pieces condemning the Reverend Robin's beastly act. Journalists who had not cracked a Bible in years suddenly remembered a psalm (Psalm 84:3) that declares that sparrows are welcome in the House of the Lord! (cited in "God's Eye is on the Sparrow," by Leo Hartshorn, Minister of Peace and Justice, Mennonite Mission Network)
When in Trouble, Remember the Sparrow!
I'm glad that Jesus' first disciples didn't hear the story of the Reverend Robin, because they found great comfort in God's care for the sparrow. The context of our gospel reading is a dark one. Earlier in Matthew, chapter 10, Jesus warns of the persecution that awaits the community of believers. (Matthew 10:16-23) Today's Gospel reading continues the theme. Knowing the fear this may instill in the disciples, Jesus addresses their fears (10:26, 28), warning them that like their master, the disciples can expect to be maligned (10:24-25) and opposed, even by members of their own families! (10:34-36)
In the middle of this dark passage is a nugget of comfort and encouragement, when Jesus asks his disciples, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ...even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:29-31) In Luke's variation of this saying, the question is, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?" Maybe there was a discount on sparrows the day Luke wrote this down or maybe he got a package deal but the point is still the same: God cares even about a bird that is worth nothing in the human economy of things.
So this is Jesus' assuring argument: If God notices, values, and cares about a tiny sparrow, then how much more must God notice, value, and care about us! If the life of even the teeniest bird is enfolded by the providence of God, how much more are we enfolded by God's love and care. Why, even the hairs of our head our numbered! I myself lost numbers 882 through 912 yesterday! And some of you have lost a lot more!
One Dead Bird after Another!
Jesus' sparrow-and-head-hairs saying is a lovely saying, but I am reminded of Garrison's Keillor's story about Lake Wobegon's Lutheran pastor, Pastor Ingqvist, who was in a morose mood one day and quite upset when the choir sang, as an offertory:
(I Believe," by Leann Rimes)
Similarly, we do Jesus an injustice by isolating his lovely, inspirational sparrow-and-head-hairs saying from its context. The truth of the matter is that sparrows do fall to the ground. Doris Betts, a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina, writes, in one of her own books, "God knows the sparrows fall, but they keep falling. Ain't creation just one dead bird after another?" (The Scarlet Thread)
There are no easy promises of protection attached to Jesus' words of comfort. The fact that God's eye is on the sparrow has not kept many of them from falling, or from crashing into windows, or from being shot by air guns ordered in by impulsive members of the clergy! And the fact that God has numbered the hairs on our head has also not kept some of us from growing bald!
I'm with Pastor Ingqvist! There's more at play here than a one-drop, one-flower' theology or even a two-sparrows, one-penny, every hair' theology. There is comfort in knowing that when a sparrow falls God knows about it, but there is also condemnation in the fact that while God's eye is on the sparrow, our eyes are elsewhere. When the birds gather in my backyard, my eye is often on the colourful finch or the brilliantly-coloured cardinal or the squirrel trying to scare them away, but my eye is seldom on the ha'penny sparrow!
There is more than comfort in these words, for the human eye is in need of corrective lenses with respect to the value of things. Our de-valuation of sparrows and other animal life has led to the extinction of whole species. Someone has suggested that we update Jesus' saying about sparrows, asking, "Are not monkeys sold for a few dollars and often subjected to cruel experimentation? Are not elephants considered of no value when they are slaughtered just for their ivory tusks? Are not whales considered of little human value, when they fall victim to human over-consumption? Are not birds worth very little because we don't consider their cost when they are destroyed by our oil spills?" (Leo Hartshorn) According to the eye of human values, two sparrows are indeed sold for a penny and we don't blink an eye!
God looks at sparrows and the whole created order with a different eye than we do. God cherishes the world He created. God values it. It wasn't God who placed the value of sparrows at half-a-cent. It wasn't God who placed the value of a camel in Jesus day at a much greater value because of its benefit to human travel. It wasn't God who placed the value of sheep at greater value because its wool was needed for human clothing. Then, as now, the value placed upon certain parts of creation depended upon their benefit to human beings. That may be just the way things are, but if we fail to notice when a sparrow falls to the ground or when toxins cause birds to have thin-shelled eggs that crack too soon, it may be that our values need to be re-calibrated and our eyesight corrected.
Our human economies may determine that some species are much more insignificant than others perhaps even some humans more insignificant than others but Jesus reminds us that in God's eyes all elements of His created order are significant. The Creator of the cosmos has His eye on each part. The Creator of billions of spinning stars, planets, and galaxies has an eye on the tiny sparrow.
There's a Divinity that Shapes us
Jesus' words to his disciples are simple, and perhaps they sound innocuous, but they have profound implications for a Christian understanding of ecological and human value. And simple though they are, they have shaped Christian memory. Why else does St. Francis stick in our memory? Francis, the patron saint of birds in particular, but also the patron saint of animal welfare societies; animals, in general; and zoos. Stories of St. Francis captivated us as children; he spoke with "Brother Wolf" and "Sister Eagle". While others saw in water a commodity something to drink and to wash in St. Francis praised "Sister Water".
St. Francis was part of an ideal world that we left behind when it was time to go on with the real business of living. We went on to study, to get our degrees, and to build our careers, but you know, those stories never really left us. They're too deeply embedded in our culture and memory. Shakespeare remembered; he wrote that "there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." (Hamlet)
Or consider William Blake's (1757-1827) Auguries of Innocence when he expresses the inestimable value of each speck of creation:
The psalmist wrote, "Even the sparrow finds a home ...at thy altars, O Lord of hosts...." (Psalm 84:3, RSV) Jesus pointed to birds more than once to comfort his followers; he said, "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ... Therefore do not worry... do not worry about tomorrow...." (Matthew 6:26-27, 31, 34)
I've been looking at the robin in the church courtyard every other day. You may have noticed; a robin built a nest in the evergreen tree that we stuck in the courtyard at Christmas. The robin has not had an easy time of it. No gun-toting clerics have taken a shot at it, but it's not been easy to tend a nest while living in a virtual fish bowl. God may have had His eye on the robin, but the robin didn't have a very good eye for the tree, for after the nest was built the tree suddenly shed all of its needles. An early casualty was an egg. Later a baby robin fell to the ground. There are only two robins left the mother and one child, now almost a toddler, or whatever it is when a baby bird is on the verge of flight. The red-breasted guest in our church courtyard is a sermon all of its own: new life emerging in the midst of aridity, tragedy and death.
Madeleine L'Engle, in her writing and speaking refers to "the butterfly effect." If a butterfly winging over the mountains in Arizona should be hurt, the effect would be felt in galaxies thousands of light years away. The interrelationship of all of God's good Creation is sensitive in a way we are just beginning to understand. If a butterfly is hurt, we are hurt. No wonder Jesus noted that God is a most skilled bird-watcher. The fall of every sparrow is noted.
The psalmist wrote that God "counts the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by name." (Psalm 147:4, NASB) The Gospel of John tells us that the true shepherd "calls his ...sheep by name." (John 10:3) The prophet Isaiah left us with God's words:
(Isaiah 43:1)
(A Wind in the Door)
God's Eye Is on the Sparrow
In 1905, the year the province of Saskatchewan was founded someone recently expressed disappointment that this has heretofore received no mention from the pulpit other things were happening in other parts of the continent. Civilla Martin and her husband were visiting in New York state. They visited a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle whom they regarded true saints of God. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for twenty years and her husband had to propel himself to and from his business in a wheelchair. Despite their afflictions, they brought inspiration and comfort to all who knew them. On one visit they were asked the secret of their hopeful living. Mrs. Doolittle's reply was simple: "God's eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me." It ignited Civilla Martin's imagination and she went hope and wrote the hymn, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". The next day she mailed the poem to Charles Gabriel, who supplied the music, and in the century since many artists have recorded it, including jazz singer Ethel Waters (1896-1977), who used its name as the title for her autobiography. (1950)
A few years ago a few musicians were playing inside a Starbucks shop in Manhattan. It's a lucrative location to play and one night their basket was overflowing. John Thomas Oaks, one of the musicians, said it was a fun, low-pressure gig and during one of the many pop songs they played he noticed a woman sitting across from him swaying to the beat and singing along. When the tune was over, she approached Oakes and apologized for singing along. No apology was necessary and Oakes, in fact, asked her if she would like to sing up front on the next tune. She accepted the invitation and when Oakes asked her to name a tune, she replied "Well, do you know any hymns?"
Oakes had cut his teeth on hymns, but when the woman couldn't think of one immediately he chose the song, "His Eye is on the Sparrow". The woman became silent, her eyes averted, then muttered, "Yeah. Let's do that one." She began to sing, and the audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed. Even the gurgling noises of the cappuccino machine seemed to quiet down as the song rose to its conclusion:
Oakes gave her a hug and said, "You, my dear, have made my whole year! That was beautiful!"
"Well, it's funny that you picked that particular hymn," said the woman.
"Why is that?" asked Oakes.
"Well," she hesitated again, "that was my daughter's favourite song."
"Really!"
"Yes," she said. "She was 16. She died of a brain tumour last week."
Oakes asked her if she was going to be okay?
Smiling through tear-filled eyes, the woman squeezed his hands and said, "I'm gonna be okay. I've just got to keep trusting the Lord and singing his songs, and everything's gonna be just fine." Whereupon she picked up her bag and left. ("The Sparrow at Starbucks; The song that silenced the cappuccino machine" by John Thomas Oaks, Today's Christian [Christianity Today magazine], November/December 2001)
It's a story that may sound sappy to some, but I believe that the same God who keeps His eye on something as humanly insignificant as a colourless, ha'penny sparrow is not above arranging the odd encounter that reassures us that in the divine providence of things God looks after us.
I believe for every drop of rain that falls
Pastor Ingqvist thought, Well, that's fine, but given the rigours and rudiments of Lutheran theology, this so-called "one-drop, one-flower" theology does not hold a lot of water! This "one-drop, one-flower" theology is not why Martin Luther left the Catholic Church! That's what the morose Pastor Ingqvist thought about this "one-drop, one-flower" theology!
A flower grows,
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night
A candle glows.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And then, in words apropos to our red-breasted guest in the courtyard:
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
While our economies shape us, prompting much more road rage than robin rage, we can not altogether forget another constellation of values. John Hay's friend, Bob Wallace, tells the story of a sparrow that took up residence in a prairie church he served. The sparrow was looking for a place to build its nest and found an ideal spot on the cross-bar of the massive white cross that stood out from the brick wall of the church. Church members were not willing to let the little thing defile their cross or their church! It was one thing for the sparrow to fly about, but with the prospect of a noisy family to come, the parishioners decided to terminate the sparrow's lease. Ladders were taken out, and the deed was about to be done when their resolve was dissolved by the remark of a twelve-year-old. Unaware of the purpose of the ladders, he looked up at the cross and said, "God must really like sparrows. He made so many." (Robert A. Wallace, "Who Needs Sparrows?" A Time to Gather, page 84)
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
In her book, A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle plays with the notion of naming as an act of love, the opposite of x-ing dissing or destroying a living thing. It is an act of love and hope, and so in her book the poem:
I have called you by name, you are mine.
I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
In one of Emily Dickinson's poems she writes of a dead aunt as an omniscient viewer of the moral life of her children:
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Name you Proginoskes.
I fill you with Naming.
Be!
Be, butterfly and behemoth,
be galaxy and grasshopper,
star and sparrow,
you matter,
you are,
be!
Be caterpillar and comet,
Be porcupine and planet,
sea sand and solar system,
sing with us,
dance with us,
rejoice with us,
for the glory of creation....
Mama never forgets her birds,
I like that. God keeps His eye on us, noticing "with cunning care" our comings and goings.
Though in another tree
She looks down just as often
And just as tenderly
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove
If either of her "sparrows fall,"
She "notices," above.
I sing because I'm happy;
The applause was deafening. Embarrassed, the woman tried to shout over the din, "Oh, y'all go back to your coffee! I didn't come in here to do a concert!"
I sing because I'm free.
For His eye is on the sparrow
And I know He watches me.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.