Bear Witness

I have to think birds came to Jesus as he ascended into the heavens. In my mind, they would have come to say goodbye, or hello, or just to be playful with the only person they’d ever seen fly. We are told many times in the Bible that Jesus cares about the fates of birds, specifically sparrows, common in Jesus’ area and time, as plentiful and as associated with humans and human habitats as they are today. People thought they were annoying. Some still do.

When I was a child I had a neighbor who killed sparrows on purpose.

He was an older gentleman with the largest house on the block. LD was his name. He had erected a purple martin house at the back of his fenced property, which adjoined the back of our unfenced property (we were living in the church parsonage while my dad was pastor at Braymer Baptist Church). When one puts up a purple martin house, I was told, you want purple martins to come and nest there–not sparrows, or any other bird. It seems to me in retrospect that it’s arrogant to think you open up free apartments and reject whatever birds they attract. He didn’t want those bird houses filled with “nasty” sparrows, so he installed cages at the bottom of the pole of the purple martin house, cages where he placed enticing food to attract sparrows.

So for the birds he wanted, he created homes; for the birds he didn’t, he created cages.

The cages were on my way to school every day. I walked four or five blocks to school every day between people’s yards, but I had to pass by these cages and see sparrows desperately knocking themselves around in the cages. They had climbed inside to get the food LD offered them and then the cage snapped shut and they were trapped and never freed. He would just come by and “clean” out the cages periodically, taking out the bodies of broken sparrows, all while he looked up and enjoyed the purple martins soaring above him.

I couldn’t take it. I’m 9 or 10, and I’m opening the cages on my way to and from school, letting the sparrows out. Sometimes he caught blue jays, woodpeckers, other birds. I released them all.

LD would come out and yell out at me. Eventually he spoke to my dad. Dad told me to leave LD’s property alone. I could not. I could not pass by those cages with birds screaming to be released when LD was the one who tricked them into getting into the cages in the first place. He was capturing ALL the birds to rid the neighborhood of any birds that weren’t purple martins. I wish I had had the insight and argument I have now to defeat his very earnest, logical, ruthless gentrification of the neighborhood, “if I don’t stop the sparrows from taking the purple martin houses, I won’t have purple martins.” I saved every bird I could. Let the martins nest next to sparrows.

We were noisy kids occupying a house meant for a “good family.” Living in a parsonage always meant living in a borrowed house, a house that you could be rejected from at any minute for not pleasing the people who decided who lived in the house. We were rejected by the church four years later. The congregation turned on our family and decided we should move on, so we were forced to leave the parsonage. LD was rid of his nemesis, a 12 year old bleeding heart kid who cared about sparrows. Weren’t we sparrows too though? Shouldn’t we care about sparrows? Shouldn’t the son of a preacher care about sparrows?

Several places in the bible, Jesus mentions sparrows as a way to talk about how much God cares about us and our lives and welfare. He cares for sparrows, the verses say; how much more does he care for us?

Maybe these sparrows are thanking Jesus for putting such a good word out about them. Maybe they feel his love for them too. I can only hope that some sparrows got a feast during the feast of the 5000, when bread crumbs rained down from all those people listening to Jesus speak. Wherever people gather, sparrows are there. They have learned to work within crowds of people to get the leftovers and survive; they are hopping around my cafe table outside. They know we are careless, wasteful, sometimes generous.

Thinking of myself as a sparrow today–as a family of sparrows looking for a permanent home, hoping to be as loved and treasured as purple martins; as a sparrow grateful for the kindness of people relaxed (or hurried) at a cafe. I am a sparrow that God has his eye on. He sees me. He has always given me enough to keep going. I live off the bread he gives me.

The sparrows remember Jesus and honor him as he leaves them behind with people who may still despise them, but people they have grown somewhat dependent on. Jesus leaves the world in the hands of his disciples, hoping they have gotten his message clearly–hoping they remember to care for the sparrows in society. We are dependent on those who have the money in society. We hope they are kind. We hope they care for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the immigrants, the migrants who move from house to house to house, from land to land to land, looking to live in communion with others.

What has happened to Jesus’ message about sparrows, about the poor and oppressed? Now it is all about how you too can get a purple martin house. And God forbid that your purple martin house be too close to a family of sparrows. How can we make them disappear?

You are loved, remember, not at the expense of sparrows. You are loved in addition to sparrows, beside sparrows, with sparrows. Share your world with sparrows too.

The good news he gave to disciples to spread–it included sparrows.

So, my painting of the great commission, the ascension, remembers them too.

So, my painting of the great commission, the ascension, remembers them too, sparrows following Christ as he ascends, playful, joyful, but also as symbols of spreading the good news, to let it fly everywhere. Flight is about freedom too — and Christ offers that freedom. He offers it to the “least of these” symbolized by sparrows.

Other paintings of the Ascension might have a whole heaven full of angels rejoicing. I’ve never seen the heavens open up to a whole chorus of angels, but I have seen birds being playful and flying in intuitively-choreographed dances. And that makes me smile. Birds are the earthly equivalent of angels. Angels that you can enjoy when you put your feeder outside your window. Their joy is our joy.

Fly like the sparrows into every city, home, and just tell people that they are loved, they are precious, that they don’t have to do anything else to be loved, but be who they are.

There are no rules on sparrows to be loved by Jesus.

Nor on us.

Go, fly, tell THAT news.