Vulture Christians Series

Vulture Christians

Scripture: Matthew 8:21-22; 10:33; James 2:17; Psalm 121:1-2

The title of my message this morning is “Vulture Christians.”

Have you considered how often we compare people to members of the animal kingdom? At some point, most of us have compared people we know, and even some we don’t know, to animals. We contrast a person’s physical features and how they act in situations to those of animals. For example, we may find ourselves referring to a man with little moral fiber as a dog. We might look at someone’s nose and say they have a nose like a hawk. When our kids make a mess at the table, we sometimes say they eat like pigs. We also compare them to pigs when we look at their cluttered bedrooms and tell them they are living in a pigsty. Likewise, when we see someone who cannot be trusted, we call them a snake. And then there is the name for those who constantly “mooch” off someone else – we call them a leech or tick. Finally, there is the most famous reference of all – the chicken. When we are baiting someone to do something that they are afraid of doing we tell them that they are a “chicken.” These are just a few of the examples of how we compare one another to animals or insects in the world around us. This morning, I want to examine the vulture and some of its traits that, when you look closely, are evident in how some Christians live. As I go through this message this morning, I want you to ask yourself, “Am I living like a vulture?”

First, let’s talk about vultures and what they do. A vulture is a large bird of prey with a head and neck bare of feathers. In different parts of the world, and depending on the species, vultures may also be called buzzards or condors. Vultures have an excellent sense of sight and smell to help them locate food, so much so that they can find a dead animal from a mile or more away. Because of this, vultures often have large territories and spend a lot of time soaring in the air to locate their next meal. It is a myth that vultures circle dying animals waiting to feed. These birds are powerful fliers and soar on thermals (columns of rising air) while they look for food, but they cannot sense when an animal is dying. When they locate a carcass by smell, sight, or the sound of other smaller birds feeding, they approach it quickly before other predators find it. While vultures eat mostly dead animals, they are capable of attacking and will often prey on extremely sick, wounded, or infirm prey. This is more common if food has been scarce and there are no carcasses nearby. When threatened, vultures vomit to lighten their body weight, so that they can escape more easily into flight. Vomiting also serves as a defense mechanism to deter predators that may be threatening them. Now, with this background in mind, let’s discuss some of the traits in more detail.

The first trait I am going to examine is: Vultures love the dead. Unlike other animals that hunt their food, kill it and eat it, most of the time, vultures eat what has been killed by something else. They are not as equipped to be hunters like other birds of prey. But, if food is scarce, they can hunt small animals like rabbits, etc. Vultures can fly around for hours, without even moving their wings, just floating on the air, searching for something dead to eat. Vultures prefer others to do the work of killing the prey and then they come along and help finish the job by eating the leftovers.

How does this trait relate to us as Christians? How does it identify a Vulture Christian? Vultures love the dead; they feed on the dead. We have established this. Now you might be thinking, all of us, when we eat, we often feed on food from animals or fish that at one time were alive but are now dead. Well, that is true physically. But I want us to look at this from a spiritual perspective. There are Christians who are spiritually feeding on the dead – dead works, dead faith and dead actions. Do you remember the story about the young man who had the opportunity to follow Jesus but requested to remain behind to bury his father? Turn to Matthew 8:21-22. It states “(21) Then another of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ (22) But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” (Matthew 8:21-22) When I first read this years ago, I thought Jesus’ response was a little cruel. I mean the man’s father was dead and how could the dead bury their own dead? How cruel was it to deny a man the right to bury his father? It just did not seem like an appropriate response from Jesus. The truth is I did not understand the situation. The man’s father was not dead at this time, but he was requesting to be able to stay with his father until his father died. In other words, he wanted to follow Jesus, but he was not ready to leave his home, his father, or his comfortable surroundings to do so. Jesus was offering the young man life, so His statement about the dead burying their dead now seems appropriate. Those who were not following Jesus were dead spiritually and were not seeking life. Although this young man believed in Jesus – remember the verse said he was a disciple – he was not ready to give up all for Him. Do we not see this same attitude and behavior in some Christians today, especially when it comes to their willingness to make sacrifices for Jesus? One more point about loving the dead. A Vulture Christian will often take on some of the characteristics of the dead that they are spiritually feeding off of. The person who is spiritually dead does not speak faith and life to their situations. Instead, they speak defeat, doubt, and death to their situations. A Vulture Christian speaks like the spiritually dead. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” If you are speaking doubt, defeat and death to your situations, maybe, just maybe, that spiritually, you are walking the path that will lead you to becoming a Vulture Christian.