SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
19 JUNE 2005

 

 

"So do not be afraid.  You are of more value than many sparrows."  (Mt. 10:31)

 

 

Sparrows fly in and out of the Old Testament. In fact they take off and land about 40 times. Perhaps one of the most familiar verses we find is in Psalm 84: "The swallow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; even by your altars, O Lord of hosts." In other words, having no regard for holy places, they would even set up house in temples. They were a nuisance. They would stop up your stove, get stuck in water pipes. And although birds of a feather flock together, swallows are solitary birds, rarely seen in groups larger than pairs, but they manage nevertheless to get in the way. Sparrows were found all over Palestine, but mention of them is made only twice in the New Testament. (Translators normally translated the word meaning "sparrow" as simply "bird" or "fowl.") And because sparrows were a) so common and b) so bothersome, Jesus cites them as a symbol of worthlessness. They were even cheaper than the proverbial dime a dozen. Jesus asks "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?" Of course we who grew up with the King James Version know that the word was "farthing." I guess the Bible translators changed it to "penny" because nobody knew that under the old pound-shilling-and-pence system, a farthing was a quarter of a penny!

 

After raising the question of how cheap and dispensable sparrows are, he adds, "Yet none of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." In other words, Jesus is saying that each and every human being is precious in the eyes of God. If he is concerned about the death of a worthless sparrow, how much more will he be concerned about us? Why does Jesus drive this point home? We must remember that Palestine was occupied territory. The Jewish people lived under the rule of the Pax Romana, which was a peace that existed at the expense of a downtrodden, subjugated people. Under this system, human beings were like proverbial pawns, valued only insofar as they could, by the sweat of their brow, contribute to the wealth of the Empire. Jesus tells such people that they have infinite worth in the eyes of God.

 

People still need to hear this message. The results of the autopsy of Terry Schiavo have been made public. They show that she suffered irreversible brain damage and that she was indeed in a persistent vegetative state. We would have hoped that this sordid affair, into which the Federal Government had unlawfully and inappropriately inserted itself, could, along with Ms. Schiavo's remains, be put to rest. But no! The Governor of Florida has reopened the case! Let us put aside for a moment his contention that there may be several minutes unaccounted for between the time Mr. Schiavo found his collapsed wife and the time he called 911. Let us look instead at the Governor's theology: In a letter to Friday's New York Times, he writes: "We will continue to strive to protect our most vulnerable citizens. All innocent human life is precious, and government has a duty to protect the weak, the disabled and vulnerable." Am I the only one who recognized the insertion of the adjective "innocent?" At the time when the debate was raging as to whether Ms. Schiavo should be disconnected from life support, the Governor's brother, pleading a "culture of life," made a virtually identical statement without the word "innocent." The insertion of the word, you see, makes it possible for the culture of life theorists to maintain that the same Government who believes that comatose patients should be maintained on life support can also hold the belief that convicted felons should be put to death! Perhaps the Bushes read my Agape article in which I raised that very point.

 

We are no longer in occupied Palestine, but we need to hear Jesus' words "You are of more value than many sparrows." It is one of the hallmarks of the Judeo-Christian faith. This is why we ask the witnesses in the Baptismal service, "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?" We ask this question because we know that left to their own devices, human beings will fashion their own theology to justify taking away the dignity of some other group. And there are even some theologies which maintain that all of God's creatures are, by virtue of their humanity, "depraved" or "wretched." This is inconsistent with the Divine plan, in which being created in God's image means that we have been infused with God's own spirit, and given a touch of the Creator's own creativity, intelligence and ability to reason and make wise choices. In one of his books, Robert Schuler, whose excellent sermons from the Crystal Cathedral are piped weekly into the nation's living rooms, "I am somebody, I am a child of God, I am friend of Jesus Christ . . . I am God's chance to do a wonderful thing."

 

We celebrate the dignity and self-worth of human beings in many ways. Two weeks ago, two visitors to the garden eucharist came up to me and said that the most memorable part of the service for them was when we prayed, by name, for each of the members of the Armed Forces who had died in Iraq during the previous week. They said that by hearing names, they felt that they knew those young people who had made the supreme sacrifice; they became more than a statistic.

 

A positive feeling of self-worth is not only good theology, it is good psychology. Scott Peck, in his best-seller The Road Less Traveled, wrote "The feeling of being valuable --- 'I am a valuable person' --- is essential to mental health." It is often a belief in having no self-worth that leads to addictions and certain acts of violence. Jesus knew this, I think, and that is why his comments about sparrows are placed in the larger context of not being afraid. "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul," he says. History is replete with those who survive prison camps or concentration camps because, despite physical and mental abuse, and attempts at brain-washing, they resolutely hold on to their identity and their psyche.

 

But the poet wrote, "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." We all inhabit prisons of one kind or another, often entrapped by fear and trepidation. But when we are, we know that God, who numbers the very hairs of our head, wants us to know that it doesn't matter what is happening in your life. We may be suffering in silence, and those around us may not appreciate the depth of our pain, but God holds us in his hands and gives us hope in the time of fear. "Do not be afraid; you are worth much more than many sparrows."

 

There is a hymn that was inspired by today's text, and it goes like this:

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come?

Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,

When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free,

For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

                                                            (Lift Every Voice and Sing II, 191)