A sermon for the first week of the Chautauqua Institution season, 2023, Year A Proper 7

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There’s nothing like starting in the middle. With no context, no backstory to soften the blow, we arrive for a week at Chautauqua focused on friendship, only to have Jesus announce that he has come to ginger up our divisions. But do not be afraid.

Just as this is one week out of many, a Sunday in the middle of most of our lives, these verses, this word, is one out of a whole speech that Jesus is in the middle of giving to his disciples in the middle of his ministry. This speech began with him sending them out in great power: to cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead. It continues with warnings: sheep among wolves, fallen sparrows, dissent, and even persecution. But do not worry, he says, and do not be afraid.

It’s the personal divisions that catch at us, though, isn’t it? The threat of family arguments, the breakdown of peace talks at home. The Psalmist laments,

For if it had been an adversary who taunted me, then I could have borne it;
But it was you, one after my own heart,
my companion, my own familiar friend;
you have broken your covenant. (Psalm 55:13a,14,21b, pronouns altered)

Still, do not be afraid. God is faithful to God’s covenants. And this is only part of the story.

You remember elsewhere in the gospels, when Jesus’ mother and his brothers came to take him home by force if necessary, for they said, he has gone mad. He is a laughing stock. That boy is going to get himself in trouble. And Jesus, feeling a little salty perhaps, looked around at the crowd of friends and strangers gathered around him and said, “Well, maybe you’re my family now.” (Mark 3:21;31-35) And yet at the end, which was not the end, he saw his mother and his friend and he made them family: “Woman, here is your son; Here is your mother.” (John 19:26-27) And at the beginning of the following book (because that was not the end), Jesus’ mother and his brothers were gathered together with his disciples in prayer (Acts 1:14).

Yes, Jesus came to put a cat among the pigeons, and see what a flurry of fur and feathers and wool would ensue. But he also came to heal, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and those whose hope was no longer alive. If we don’t read these verses in the context of the whole story of God’s grace to us sinners in the Incarnation, we miss that.

At our parish bible study last week, we read this passage and someone asked about the sparrows. One person described them as “junk birds”, but there is more to their story, too. The house sparrow, it turns out, is not indigenous to the Americas. Millennia ago, they evolved in Asia and Europe to live among humans: they are house sparrows because they have adapted to build their homes among us. I read somewhere on the Audubon website that you will not find a sparrow’s nest in a completely natural setting, only among the structures that humans have built or altered. The house sparrows nestle up against us.[i]

That sounds lovely, but when they were imported to America, in order to deal with a caterpillar infestation, they did tend to proliferate, and they became the source of great consternation and even conflict, as bird people argued over whether they had become a pest, an invasive species, an enemy.[ii] But if they have, it is we who made them so.

Yet not one sparrow falls that God does not notice, and catch. There are no junk birds in God’s economy, and however far we fall out over them, and however we devalue not only them but one another over them, and over bigger issues than a sparrow, let those with ears to hear understand, God does not stop noticing.

Whatever our divisions, however they devalue us and others, God does not stop counting the hairs on the heads of enemies and strangers, wolves and friends alike. So do not be afraid, even in the midst of conflict and rumours of more, but be humbled by the love of God that passes human understanding and calculation.

None of this is to make light of the very real divisions and decisions we are left with among family and friends, former family and former friends. Jesus, the incarnation of the unimaginable grace of God, does put a cat among the pigeons, does sometimes demand that we risk offending one side of the bird debate by standing up for the sparrow, whom we have cast as a junk bird, but who isn’t junk to God. The risk of fallout is real.

But do not be afraid. For we are not called to remain rankled, but to let our peace return to us, and shake the dust from our feet, and walk on in the way of the cross. We will find dissent and division (we may even feel persecuted), but we are called to cast out demons and heal those in need of it.

Remember where this word from Jesus started: Proclaim good news. Cleanse the leprous, raise the dead. As you enter the house, greet it with peace. If the house will receive it, peace be upon it. If not, let your peace return to you (Matthew 10:7-8;12-14).

Do not be afraid, but let your peace return to you. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in the knowledge of the love of God, which is Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7, altered).

Amen

[i] https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/house-sparrow

[ii] https://www.audubon.org/news/meet-little-brown-bird-holds-mirror-humanity

Also read on background: D. Mark Davis, https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/