God's care for the sparrows & for us

Jeremiah 20: 7-13    Matthew 10: 24-39  

Today we celebrate the Chapel Anniversary – 203 years since The foundation stone was laid June 25th,1823.

I wonder how you feel about the passing years? It’s good to look back & I hope there are many happy memories. But we might also feel that we’re not what we were – and we’re not really sure where we’re going.

And yet we know that the same God has been present for Jesus’ followers and loving them, throughout those 203 years

 

Today is also Father’s Day. How you feel about that might depend on things like what kind of father you had, or whether you knew your father, or whether you have been a father yourself.

 

And both the anniversary & Father’s Day might colour how we feel when Jesus calls God ‘Father’, which he does very often in the gospel accounts.

What sort of Father does Jesus declare God to be – how can we better understand what Jesus means when he refers to God as ‘your heavenly father’? How is God our Father with us today?

 

One Easter holiday I was visiting a National Trust property. It was a lovely, sunny day, children were running around doing some kind of trail, I’d just had a cup of tea and I was about to go around the interesting, historic house. Then I noticed a small puddle in the path just ahead of me, and in the puddle a single sparrow, washing itself in the water, getting its head right in and showering the water over its fluttering wings.

It seemed oblivious to the crowds around it and was thoroughly enjoying that moment and that puddle. I got my phone out, quickly, to video this simple moment, thinking, as I did, of Jesus’ words that ‘not one sparrow falls to the ground, but your heavenly father knows it’.

While I still had my phone in my hand, it started vibrating with an incoming call. Seeing that it was a friend, I answered it with a cheerful ‘hello, how are you?’.

Not good, as it turned out – in fact my friend had just been diagnosed with leukaemia, and though neither of us knew it at the time was about to enter 18 months of gruelling treatment.

When we’d finished talking and I put my phone away I was shaken by the total contrast between the moment of warm fuzzy feeling as I watched the sparrow and the moment of desolation as I struggled to find words to support my friend.

I couldn’t help wondering what sort of heavenly father it is, who knows the tiny sparrow in the puddle but would not, or could not keep my friend free from a life-threatening disease?

 

Perhaps you can relate to that question today “what sort of heavenly father is this?”. As you come to worship you may be burdened with anxieties of all kinds – for yourself, for those you love, for the chapel, for the world at large. Worries about health, the future, money, conflict, a hundred-and-one things can weigh us down and can make Jesus’ words about God’s care for the sparrow seem empty and trite. It all might make you might want to lament, as Jeremiah did.

 

And yet, hearing today the context of what Jesus says about the sparrow in Matthew’s gospel might help us.

 

Jesus is offering help for his disciples precisely when life feels at its most perilous and difficult. Jesus wants his disciples to face difficulty, not to deny the existence of suffering altogether. Jesus is clear that his disciples will suffer, and yet he wants them to know God’s care throughout all the terrible times they will suffer.

He speaks of God as the father who cares for even a single sparrow.

 

There will be times of suffering, says Jesus to his disciples, but this should not make them afraid to speak out the truth of their belonging to him.He even warns them ‘whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’.

 

Jesus is preparing his followers for the time when Jesus himself will take up a literal, physical cross and be tortured to death on it. And he warns them that the forces which seek to kill him will torment them, too.

 

Yet, despite all this honesty about suffering, Jesus tells his followers three times not to feel fear, as they follow him:

‘have no fear of them…do not fear…do not be afraid’.

 

Our fears may be about our discipleship of Jesus, like persecution or ridicule, but more likely they are the everyday kind of fears which can be no less crushing. I won’t ask you to say out loud what you are most afraid of right now, but if you can’t think of anything, you’re very fortunate.

The good news of Jesus for us today is a promise of that same release from fear that Jesus first promised his followers.

Jesus says to us ‘You may feel as small and helpless as a sparrow – but your heavenly father knows, sees, cares, loves’.

 

The friend, whose bad news interrupted my reverie about the sparrow I saw, endured her 18 months of radical treatment, but would often say that throughout it all she never doubted the presence of God’s grace – whether it was carrying her back into this life are on into the next. She returned to health more grateful than ever for God’s care.

 

My friend often re-read this poem by an American woman, Annie Johnson Flint:

God hath not promised
Skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways
All our lives through;
God hath not promised
Sun without rain
Joy without sorrow,
Peace without pain.

But God hath promised
Strength for the day,
Rest for the labour,
Light for the way,
Grace for the trials,
Help from above,
Unfailing sympathy,
Undying love.

 

You might wonder whether Annie Johnson Flint knew anything about the suffering she refers to in this poem, knew anything about sorrow and pain.

She did: she lost both her parents in early childhood, she started experiencing severe arthritis in the second year of her teaching career, she lived with chronic pain, and died at the age of just 66.

She knew what suffering means, and yet she wrote about her certainty in God’s promise of undying love.

 

Annie Johnson Flint is not offering us a rose-tinted view of life and discipleship, anymore than Jesus is, when he talks of suffering to his followers. But in the pain, through the suffering, even when life seems to be offering only a muddy puddle, our heavenly father sees us, loves us and grants us the grace to endure.

 

The father who will raise Jesus from death, when his agonies are over, offers abundant life to each of us.

Whatever your feelings about earthly fathers, I pray that today you will experience the care of your heavenly father, and know his wonderful grace.

 

And as for this chapel – we may feel small and not very significant, like a sparrow – but God is with us, cares for us, and will be with us.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.