Jesus rarely taught doctrine or creeds as a way of knowing God. He acted out God’s love, and let people draw their own conclusions about God from what they saw him doing. He told a lot of stories, usually that make the listener revise what they thought God was like. And he pointed to life of the world itself as a way of knowing God.
In today’s
reading – part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus directs us to
look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field, if we
want to know anything about living well, and living in God’s way in the world. Many faithful people in his day – as in ours,
somehow equate money and material accumulation with faithfulness to God. Jesus has a different idea:
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Reflection
Look at the birds of the air … consider the lilies of the field … how God is with them, and howe they are with God, and with the rest of the world that they are part of…
It makes me think that in Jesus’ experience, it’s not so much we who teach the world to sing, as it is the world that teaches us, when we let it. That it’s not we who make the world abundant, but the world that makes us know that “abundance” is even a thing. That it’s not so much we who make the world work well, as it is the world and all its life – when we are ready to listen to it and learn from it, that helps us know what it means to live well, in healthy and life-renewing ways.
Jesus pointed to the birds of the air as teachers for us, about learning to relax into, and live within the natural order of Earth, and the divine good will of God for the well-being of all.
There’s a story about St. Francis, walking in the footsteps of Jesus twelve centuries later, stopping on his way one day to address a great gathering of birds – not so much to tell them what they needed to know, but to celebrate and affirm what they already knew and were living out just by their nature. St. Bonaventure tells the story this way in his biography of Francis, written just decades after Francis’ death.
“When Francis drew near to Bevagna, he came to a place where a great multitude of birds of different kinds were assembled together, which, when they saw the holy man, came swiftly to the place, and saluted him as if they had the use of reason. They all turned towards him and welcomed him; those on the trees bowed their heads in an unaccustomed manner, and all looked earnestly at him, until he went to them, [and spoke to them thus]:
‘Oh, my brother birds, you are bound greatly to praise your Creator [that is, there is little you can do to keep yourself from praising the God who made you], who has clothed you with feathers [showing off his skillful beauty] and given you wings wherewith to fly [living out the variety of his good will for all]; who has given you the pure air for your dwelling-place [making good place and space for all to be in the world], and governs and cares for you without any care of your own [feeding and nurturing you with good things that come to you as pure gift].’ And while he spoke thus to them, the birds rejoiced in a marvelous manner, swelling their throats, spreading their wings, opening their beaks, and looking at him with great attention….
“And all these things, [Bonaventure goes on to write], were seen by his companions, who were waiting for him on the road,” and no doubt learning from Francis something of how to live well within the world God has made, and into which God has breathed us to live as well.
Moving from the birds to the bees, I also had a bit of a schooling recently in living well within the circles and cycles of God’s care.
One day last week I took my morning prayer time out to the back deck. In the early morning light and gentle warmth, I sought an openness to the presence and purpose of the Divine. And what I became aware of was a number of bees hovering, buzzing and moving quite purposefully among the brilliant yellow blooms of some kind of sunflower that stand tall beside the deck, along the boundary between my neighbour’s back yard and mine.
I silently watched the bees there – no more than a foot or three from me, for maybe five minutes. And as they gathered pollen and nectar from the blooms, I gathered wisdom for living well from them. And I wonder if this is wisdom – both natural and divine, that appeals to you as well. Is there anything perhaps in what the bees showed, that may be a lesson for you to reflect on as a way to live in the world with deeper and greater gratitude?
The bees came and went with great regularity. But even with that constant turnover, at any moment there were at least 8 or 12 or 15 of them at work in the bunch of blossoms there – maybe a 5-foot square patch of plants. No bee was there alone; they worked in community with a shared and common purpose.
Even with that number at work, there was not a single instance of two or more bees setting themselves in competition for access to a particular blossom. There was more than enough to go around, and they quite easily lived within that sense of sufficient abundance.
Also, no bee ever stayed over-long at any blossom. No bee drank any blossom dry, as though it was intended and given just for them – their special blessing from God. Over the time I watched them, many different bees visited the same blossom at different times. Which, really, is how they contribute to pollinating all the world with new life season after season. If they ever began claiming exclusive right to any one parcel of blossoms and drank it dry all just for themselves, all life on Earth would come to suffer.
And, finally, they all flew with great regularity back and forth between blossoms and hive – wherever it was, to deposit and collect together there, for the good of all, what they had gathered. They all shared in their own way toward the common good of the community.
Is there anything there for us to learn about giving thanks and living from a place of gratitude within the circle and cycles of God’s care for all? About living in a truly spiritual way, in the world God has made the world to be for the good and well-being of all? Do the birds and the bees and all other manner of our kindred creatures know something about living within, and towards, and by the kingdom of God, that we so often still have to keep learning?
One last lesson. A bonus perhaps, beyond the birds and the bees. This one from a doe and her fawn.
This past Tuesday – just after sunrise, I was walking the forest path alongside Spencer Creek in Dundas – a quiet little refuge in a wooded ravine just steps from the center of the town. I was alone in following the path, until I rounded one bend and there no more than 20 feet ahead of me, was a beautiful, gentle deer – a doe, standing absolutely stock-still in the middle of the path, looking at me as I also stopped and stood motionless, looking at her.
I dared not move. Dared not reach into my pocket for my camera to take a picture. And God forgive me for even having that as my first thought!
I did not want to startle or frighten her. I did not want to make her run away to a different safety than the one she had assumed on that trail. I did not want to make her give way to me.
As we continued looking at each other in the still silence, I began to move slowly backwards. As I held our face-to-face gaze, I began retreating, step by step yielding my place on the path to her.
She took a step forward. It was then I saw the fawn maybe five or six feet behind, waiting to see what its mother would do.
Perhaps it was the movement of my eyes. Maybe my retreat was too slow. The doe changed her plan as well. Easily and gracefully, without alarm, without fear, without undue haste the doe went off the path a feet into the woods, kept coming in my direction, but through the woods and with five or six feet of brush between us. The fawn followed, and I stood still as they slowly, contentedly walked around me, and then eight or ten feet behind me, regained the path and continued quietly and slowly on their way into the warmth and the growing light of the morning.
It reminds me a line that Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet, writes about love. “Love consists of this,” he says, “two solitudes that meet, greet and protect each other.”
Is that perhaps a love that we can live out in our relations not only with one another, not only within our families and the global community, but also within the family that is all the natural order. Is it possible for us to love creatures – animals, plants, all living things, even water, air, Greenbelt, a field, a mountain – in this way, whenever we meet them? And in some way … for them also to love us? In the way of two solitudes that meet, greet and protect each other?
Could that kind of love – one for the other, in all our relations – be one way of seeing and being in the kingdom of God? A way that Jesus invites us to learn from our kindred creatures, about living healthily and gratefully within this world that we and they are given to be our home?
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