Pastor Don Friesen tells a fascinating story about a sparrow that somehow got into the rafters of St. Helen’s Parish Church in the English town of Brant Broughton. At the time of the intrusion, they were recording a guitar recital for later broadcast on the radio. The chirping bird didn’t exactly chirp with the beat. So the pastor, Rev. Robin Clark (how’s that for the real name of the offending pastor in this story?) asked the congregation to leave and then asked a friend to bring his pellet gun over to the church to shoot the intruding sparrow. The killing of the sparrow became front page news in Great Britain. The London Daily Telegraph ran a clever headline that said, “Rev. Robin Orders Death of Sparrow.” Editorials and letters to the editor flowed, chastising the cruel and unusual punishment for this lowly bird. People who hadn’t darkened the door of a church in decades suddenly remembered Psalm 84 in which says that even sparrows are welcome in the house of the Lord (84:3) 1.
In our Gospel this Sunday, in the middle of conflict and danger, Jesus suddenly speaks of the smallest, most insignificant creatures, saying, “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.” In the marketplace, sparrows were the meat of the poor, the ground chuck of the first century. Yet their lives—their deaths—are not beneath God’s attention and care. The same applies to recognizing that others have the same value.
Knowing that God cares for us, Jesus says “So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Jeremiah, in our First Reading knew that, and put up with being beaten and placed in the stocks overnight and was even thrown into an open cistern and left for dead (Jer. 38), yet Jeremiah had the assurance of his faith, so he kept advising leaders and people to take the hard road of fidelity to God and the divine commands, to pay attention to what God wanted the nation to do. Persecutions are real—but so is God’s protective grace. Unfortunately, the nation ignored Jeremiah, and as he predicted, the nation was punished by God and banished into exile in Babylon.
Whether sparrows are falling or human hair is disappearing, God pays attention to everything within us, around us. However, Jesus then tells us that, "Don't fear people; fear God"-God is the one who can kill both body and soul and cast into hell those who in some way are choosing it by the way they are living.
One final sparrow story: In Granville, Ohio, there was a woman who was going through some difficult times. She thought that she would never experience joy in her life. However, one day when she was sitting in her kitchen crying, she noticed a small sparrow.
Somehow it had gotten into her kitchen. Anyhow she opened the door thinking the sparrow would just fly out.
There was a window above the door.
And instead of flying out through the open door, the sparrow kept trying to fly out through the closed window.
Several times the sparrow flew at the closed window and smacked itself into it, until it got so weak it could no longer fly; it could only walk.
But the story has a happy ending. When it could no longer fly, it simply walked out the door to freedom.
We fly into a closed window whenever we disconnect from lack of prayer and so lose our higher consciousness or awareness of the immense value of our immortal soul. God’s providence consists of leading things to their ends, including human beings to their proper end in heaven through the grace of Jesus Christ if we cooperate with God’s grace.
That woman in Granville, Ohio, who was crying when she was watching that sparrow trying to fly out of a closed window used that as a sign to snap out of her self-pity.
In a more difficult case, a rabbi shared, “When my wife and I returned from the hospital it was evening. Later that same evening a friend came to visit us. In his attempt to console us, he told us that earlier in his life he too had lost a child. Yet his words did not penetrate. I had no feelings left. I could not think straight. We just sat there, my wife and me, with only one thought: Why...? Why...?
In my mind, helplessly, I tried to turn the clock back. I would take care that he did not go outside. Then he would not be hit by that car. Then we would not ever have had to go to the hospital, and he would be snug asleep. But, it was no use. It just made no sense. Not long before I had tried to comfort a woman whose husband was killed in an accident. I had explained to her that she should not blame herself, as she probably did. She had sent her husband shopping, and on his way back he was run over. So she tended to dwell on the following regret: If only I had not sent him. If only I had asked someone else. Then... then... In this way, I thought, she was blaming herself. I had tried to argue her out of this reasoning. I explained to her that her husband would have died at that very same moment even if she had not sent him shopping. His time had come. Death is an event which G-d “does not leave to chance.” Everything is Divine Providence; everything is orchestrated by Him, down to the smallest detail. If we have any awareness of G-d’s reality, we understand that such a drastic event as dying cannot be a matter of chance. All this I explained to the woman and she was grateful. “You are the first one who has said something sensible,” she told me.
Should all this not apply to us as well?” the rabbi asked.2
If God takes care of even small birds, how much more will God care for a faithful disciple?
Amen.
1. King Duncan, Good News about Sparrows
2. Mendel Kalmenson, Eternity of the Soul
