For the Birds
a sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First
Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, June 14, 2009
After a reading from the sermon, “The Audacity of Hope,”
by The Rev. Claire Petersburger:
A 14th century
Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, believed that we can feed our every need
when we start with love. She is the
first woman known to have written a book in English, “The Revelations Of Divine
Love,” and she lived during the height of the Black Plague in England. Most of the families who came seeking her
counsel had experienced death and great hardship.
Julian offered a hopeful
spirituality, teaching that:
“God
did not say ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you
shall not be discomforted’. But God did
say, ‘You shall not be overcome.’ God
wants us to heed these words so that we shall always be strong in trust, both
in sorrow and in joy”…
It seems to me that we come
to church… to remind one another of the audacity of hope and to be reminded, as
Julian of Norwich taught, that we may be tempest-tossed, we may be work-weary, we may be discomforted,
but we shall not be overcome. Instead, we can depend on
one another to imagine a new way and a new day to meet and overcome challenges
that face us personally and collectively.
On any given Sunday, our
hope is renewed through shaking a hand and exchanging a smile with someone we
do not know well; singing a particular favorite song; hearing words to live by which resonate
during the week; participating in the
dedication of a child and committing ourselves to a better future; looking at the fruits of human creativity on
our walls and at the beauty of the changing seasons out the window.
In a seminary class I attended recently, a classmate of mine, Rev. Larry Hill, used a short film he had found to get us talking about behavioral issues in congregations. I found this presentation and this film so compelling that I wanted to bring it to you today to see what you thought. It’s not quite as scholarly as you might expect for a Doctor of Ministry class, but it is insightful and a devastating critique of the way people in some churches treat each other. Yes, it’s the same short animation I showed the kids a few minutes ago, but I’d like you to watch again with a critical eye and think about whether you’ve ever seen these kinds of behaviors in any church you’ve attended before. I especially want to know if you’ve ever seen these kinds of things happen here. I especially, especially want to know if you see yourself anywhere in this short video.
[Pixar’s “For the Birds” short subject
animation, 2001 Oscar for Best Short Animated Film]
The 1st bird settles on the wire, the 2nd sits too close and stretches, the 1st is annoyed and complains. A 3rd looks disgusted at the argument as more birds land and get embroiled in the chaos of personal space violations. Angry chirping goes up and down the line until a visitor appears on the fringes and seems to want to join the community.
The visitor puts his best face forward, but the others start mocking him immediately, putting aside their own disagreements as they patch up their relationships by making the visitor the butt of their jokes. The group looks disdainfully at the visitor and moves away down the wire while whispering among themselves.
The visitor stumbles ineptly toward joining the group, but his weight bends the wire, pulling all the others toward him in the middle – which satisfies the visitor but annoys the group. When they start to complain loudly, he takes it as happy conversation and joins in the tumult – until one bird jabs him in the backside with a sharp beak, startling him off the wire where he hangs upside down by his toes.
Mad, the two center birds begin to peck at the visitor’s toes to make him fall, at which point the others strike up a chant something like, “Fall! Fall! Fall!” in bird language – to which the visitor innocently looks up and chimes in.
One bird realizes the folly of making the visitor fall – they’ll all be catapulted off their perches if the visitor goes. But the warning is too late, and when the visitor is released, the group is sprung free, leaving their feathers behind.
The members of the group can no longer fly and come crashing back to earth where they realize their nakedness. As the visitor starts to laugh, they run to hide their nudity behind him.
I don’t think we treat visitors like this – we say we’re welcoming, and I think most people find that we are. But do we ever treat each other so badly?
Consider the beginning of the cartoon where the birds are landing on the wire together and getting annoyed at each other. Have you ever felt a little annoyed that there are so many people here, or that someone was sitting in your pew, or that someone was sitting too close to you for comfort? Or, have you ever felt like someone was annoyed at you for being here? I hope not, but it happens, I bet.
When those little birds were yammering back and forth at each other, seemingly over nothing, did you think of any situations around here that might have been similar? Did you see yourself on that wire chirping away?
When the visitor shows up and wants to join in, the group of birds makes fun of him. Have you ever had the sense that anyone here was making fun of you? Have you ever made fun of anybody else? And when they peck on his toes to make him fall: Have you ever had the sense that someone was pecking at your toes as you tried to hang on? Have you ever pecked at anybody else’s toes? Or have you joined in a chant of “fall, fall, fall” while somebody else did the pecking?
Maybe it’s a stretch to see too much about human behavior among birds on a wire – especially these birds: they’re just cartoon characters, after all. Maybe a cartoon is not realistic enough. Or maybe it’s too realistic, and too full of sociological and psychological truths to take them all in. Whichever it is, I have this morbid fascination while I’m watching the big screen and seeing the similarities between what’s going on up there both and what I’ve experienced at times in community and what I’m sure I’ve perpetrated within them.
I hope you’re able to see this animation as a light-enough-hearted invitation to reflect on how we treat others who come to us and how we treat each other. But if you insist on seeing it rather as a scathing indictment of how and who we are together, then we have an awful lot of work to do. For the birds in the film, who end up naked and exposed because they’ve acted so badly, how will they go on? How will they accept their new vulnerability and face living once again? The cartoon doesn’t show us, but I would suggest that it takes awhile for feathers to grow back, it takes awhile to be able to fly again. And in religious and moral and human terms, it takes recognizing our faults, asking forgiveness, and pledging not to act that way again. After that long and difficult process, we may be able to appreciate flying all the more.
But more than simply comparing our behavior with the behavior of the birds in the film, I wanted us to take on another question about something we don’t see in the film. That question concerns the opening scene of the film: why did those birds land on that wire together? In other words: Why here? Why now? Why together?
There’s probably a zoological answer of some sort: It might have something to do with herding instinct. That kind of bird acts like that because they’re pre-programmed by God or nature to do so.
Or you might think of a sociological or psychological answer: any animal will act in ways that maximize its chances of survival, and birds have more chance of survival in community than out.
Or, maybe we just want a pragmatic answer: the artists who drew this film needed the birds to land there and act that way so they’d have some dramatic interaction and build some tension and sell a lot of seats in theaters.
Whatever answer you come up with for this question about the birds in the film may be true from one particular perspective or another. But now I want to invite you to apply the same question to ourselves here in this congregation: why do we land here together? Why here? Why now? Why together?
Some of my Christian colleagues believe that the purpose of gathering in church is to continue to honor and pass on the biblical texts, or to teach their doctrines and uphold the one right way to worship, or to try to save souls by talking about heaven and hell in some everlasting hereafter. But I don’t think that’s why we gather.
We certainly love reading books, including but not limited to the Bible and other sacred texts. We love learning. But I don’t think that’s why we gather.
We have our own liturgical traditions and ways of worshipping that are important to some of us. Those traditions are varied and fluid, and we keep trying to innovate and to renew them as we can. But I don’t think that’s why we gather.
We have a history of gathering in religious community that goes back to 1836 in this congregation, and our traditions go back to the late 18th century in this country, back to the mid-16th century in Europe, and further if you want to look. But I don’t think that’s why we gather.
I don’t think any of those answers are good enough for me to keep me doing all the work I do. And I don’t think they’re good enough to keep you coming to church and supporting this community with your time, your talents, and your treasure.
I think we gather here and we gather now and we gather together for the reasons Claire Petersburger offered in her sermon that we read from earlier. In that sermon, this is what Claire said:
“It seems to me that we come to church… to remind one another… that we may be tempest-tossed, we may be work-weary, we may be discomforted, but we shall not be overcome. Instead, we can depend on one another to imagine a new way and a new day to meet and overcome challenges that face us personally and collectively.
On any given Sunday, our hope is renewed through shaking a hand and exchanging a smile with someone we (may or may) not know well; (through) singing a particular favorite song; (through) hearing words to live by which resonate during the week; (through) participating in the dedication of a child and committing ourselves to a better future; (through) looking at the fruits of human creativity on our walls and at the beauty of the changing seasons out the window.”
We don’t have one book to hold aloft and say, “This is it!” We have no creeds to pass along. We have no doctrines that we say will save you from suffering and death or that promise your ego a life everlasting.
We seek together the good, the true, and the beautiful; but we have only as much goodness as we can muster, we have only the truth as we have come to know it personally and communally, and we have only as much beauty as you’re able to see and hear and accept.
The hope we offer is not in the sacred texts. It is, rather, in a handshake and a smile, in songs to sing and words to live by.
The hope we offer is not in the creeds. It is, rather, in art, in the seasons of the earth, in participation in the life of a community, in commitment to one another and to that which is larger than ourselves.
The hope we offer is not in doctrine. It is, rather, in the imagining of a new way, in the wonder of a new day, and in the eyes of a child.
If you think that’s for the birds, then so be it.
Amen and amen.
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