Spiritual Hiccups - Even the Sparrow

Umayyad Mosque

When I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to be part of a three-week-long trip to the Middle East and Greece.  We started our journey in Damascus, Syria, and one of our early stops there was the huge Umayyad Mosque, which has a small shrine in it purported to contain the head of John the Baptist.  The structure is completely open, with almost no furniture.  The floor is covered with carpet and rugs, and you must take off your shoes to walk on it.  And you had best watch your step because there are numerous birds nesting in the rafters, leaving their droppings here and there.

Ancient buildings don't have the hermetically sealed structure of ours.  Birds come and go, making nests the way they do today underneath bridges.  And according to the psalmist, this not only happened in the Jerusalem Temple, but it is as it should be.  "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts."

It is curious the way that Christianity often thinks of God as only interested in the fate of human "souls" when the Bible so often speaks of God as not only delighted in Creation but concerned for it.  Jesus says that not a sparrow falls without God knowing.  Paul speaks of all Creation groaning as it awaits redemption, and today's reading from Isaiah has creation joining in worship. "The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."

Perhaps this last is only hyperbolic, prophetic imagery, but perhaps not.  I don't agree with those folks who claim that they can worship simply by communing with nature, but I do think they offer a needed corrective to Christian practice that has become detached from nature.  It almost makes this Presbyterian want to figure out how to do a "blessing of the animals."

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.