Many Sparrows

Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 

These were Jesus’ words, according to Matthew.   Most folks have got a few things they would not like proclaimed from the housetops.  So these are scary words.

But  God who brought the whole creation out of darkness, has a few more things to uncover and reveal.  So these are imaginative words, living words, bold words, freedom words, truth’s noble words.  The power of life is in them.

Revelation is never a comfortable thing.  When what lives in the darkness comes out into the light, a public outcry usually follows.  Scandal sashays out of the shadows, and the din of chatter ensues.  Truth emerges from the shadows, and the spin meisters start calling it scandal, lies, sin, everything you don’t want, and the bearers of truth have to stagger on through those hurricane howls.

Perhaps that is why the next words in Jesus’ exhortation are:  Do not fear.  Bold steps require conquering fear.  Walking from darkness into light requires all the courage you can muster.  The angel said as much to Mary at the Annunciation, to Jonah outside Ninevah, to Gideon in the winepress, to Jacob at the Jabbok:  Do Not Be Afraid.

God’s good will, blessing, mercy, and truth seem always to be hidden and needing to be brought into the light.  Sometimes the shadows are inside us, sometimes in the world around us.  And fear can be everywhere.  But all things are possible with God, the angel and Jesus both promises that.

I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  Jesus’ words hammer on my heart like a smith at an anvil, molding steel.  Where is the Easter peace now?  And who is speaking here, where is Jesus?

The gun, drawn from hidden holsters, blazes death fire all across America.  Our children are no longer safe in their daylit classrooms.  There have been 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook CT, and each incident creates a spike in new gun sales.  Cries for background checks come to nothing, and I, for one, don’t believe the checks would stop any of these shootings – the student shooters have no prior record, buy their guns legally or take them from their parents.

In Gun We Trust seems to have become the national motto.  And perhaps it is our complacency about this that Jesus intends to disrupt with the sword he will bring.   His own time, and the time in which Matthew wrote his gospel, were governed by the merciless swords of Caesar’s army and roving bands of would-be revolutionaries.   Indeed there was no peace, as there is precious little now.

And then as now, shadows are cast by those who stand in the light.  Caesar’s shadow was long upon the earth.  It fell across the whole of the first century of the Common Era, and it fell over the refugee world in which Matthew ran his rabbinic Christian school.  Yet, in the midst of this sword-dominated  world, ordinary people were spreading the news of a new world, spreading a gospel that would outlast Caesar and bring new hope to the desperate.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Perhaps this image is so reassuring because sparrows are both fragile and beautiful.  As children also are.

And God, whose long list of creations in Genesis includes sparrows but does not include guns, understands how we’ve gotten it all wrong, in our world where sparrows have no value and children not very much.  Our world, where guns are protected in their own special Constitutional amendment, but children get no special mention.  Our world, where children are sometimes tried as adults so they can be punished as adults, but adults have gotten away without any punishment  for abusing children, in families, churches, and schools, and after a decade of outrage, mostly fines have been used to address the situation.

According to Jesus, harming a child is unforgiveable (Matthew 18:06 – it would be better for a man (who has harmed a child) to have a millstone hung round his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea), and, children are the icon for us to emulate in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But in our culture, no effective response to the deaths of so many children has been undertaken.  Matthew’s tense and wary Jesus, whose eye is ever on the struggle, nevertheless argues for mercy as the gift to be brought to it, and children as the model of trusting life to be sought in it.

In the end, we do have to choose where we place our trust:  in guns, or in God.   Those who live by the sword, said Jesus, will die by the sword.  In the end, taking up the cross means laying down the gun.

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Illustrations:

1.  House Sparrows,  from U2CU2.org, a Unitarian Universalist Church site.

2.  Mid-Air Feeding, barnswallows in flight.

3. Study of a Flying Sparrow, Giovanni Da Udine, 1415-1420, National Museum of Art Stockholm, Vanderbilt Divinity school Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.

6.  House Sparrow, feeding from woman’s hand.