He Raised Us Up With Him

Imagine with me a young boy spending the summer on his grandfather’s farm. He has chores to do, but as soon as they are done he loves to roam in the woods and hills nearby. He spots an eagle soaring in the sky, follows it to its nest on the edge of a cliff and sees its mate sitting on the nest. And it’s the highlight of his day to watch the eagle soaring. He hoped the egg would hatch in time for him to see the baby before he has to go back to the city.

One day he finds the eagle dead on the ground, shot by a foolish hunter. It breaks his heart. He goes to the cliff where the nest was, and it’s empty. He waits for the mate to return, but something has happened and she doesn’t return.

He climbs up to the nest and finds a single, large, eagle egg. Very carefully he takes it down. He has no idea how to care for it, so he carries it very carefully to his grandfather’s hen house and quietly slips it into one of the nests beside the chicken eggs. The hen just accepts it as her own, even though it is quite a bit larger.

The boy had to return to school before it hatched, but the old hen did her job and hatch it did. And so the great eagle was born into a chicken coop and didn’t know who it really was.

It was hard for an eagle to live like a chicken. The chickens had beaks that worked great for pecking bits of grain off of the ground or out of a feed tray. But his big eagle’s beak, with the upper part curling over the bottom part, just couldn’t pick up single grains very well.

The chickens, on their long, skinny legs, could chase a grasshopper across the yard and catch it for a tasty meal. But the eagle’s legs were short and it couldn’t keep up. And it didn’t really like grasshoppers anyway, or the grain that the chickens liked so much, either.

Before long he was getting too big for the door in and out of the hen house and too big for the nesting boxes. And life was miserable.

But one day a great eagle spotted him from high in the sky. It came down and perched on a tree top nearby and called out to him. The sound of the eagle’s cry struck something in his heart. But it took him a while to figure out where it came from because all his focus had been on the ground before. Chickens don’t look up.

The visiting eagle swooped lower, perched on the fence and called out again. Then it even landed on the ground right in front of the first eagle. The real chickens scattered in fear, but our eagle’s head was spinning to see this great bird that was so different, yet so much like him. The visiting eagle squawked again and took off. And without even thinking our eagle flapped its wings and entered into a whole new dimension of life. Soon it was soaring in the sky. Soon it was catching fish in the river. His beak was just right for tearing the fish into pieces, the fish tasted so good to him and his wings were perfect for soaring. And soon he was building a nest high in a tree that was the right size for him. This was where he belonged. He had come home.

And I announce to you that nobody in this room has to live like a chicken anymore. Our horizons can be much broader than the limits of the chicken yard. We were created to soar to the heights. And Jesus Christ came down into our narrow, unfulfilling world and raised us up with him to new life.

Our scripture for this Easter comes from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus, Ephesians 2:1-7.

1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.