The Dance of Call and Answer

I am not reading the Lectionary today.

I have done something momentous and irreversible— I started feeding birds.

I bought a feeder that attaches to the outside of the picture window in my kitchen. I thought it would be amusing and delightful to watch birds right there on the other side of my window.

It took the birds two months to find the feeder but, once they did, events spiraled out of all control.

I have two kinds of birds at my feeder: House Finches and House Sparrows. The sparrows live in a long-established colony in the ivy that grows on my chimney. They are a constant presence all year round.

I don’t know where the finches come from but they can’t really compete with the sparrows, and so they tend to flit into range in stealth mode, snatch a beakful of seed, and execute a strategic retreat.

New Year’s Eve was very cold, and the birds’ behavior that day showed me very clearly the final phase of a progression that I realized had begun the very moment the birds first discovered the feeder.

At first it took several days for the sparrows to empty the feeder. They came in one’s and two’s— demurely pecking and fluffing their feathers; petite and charming, they were. There was a little pushing and shoving and a few skids along the floor of the feeder, scattering seeds into the air. It was cute.

Then slowly they became more voracious. Four or five at once in the feeder, and four or five more flapping and sideswiping each other in the air. Scrabbling and clinging to the edge of the window frame; flailing each other with their wings; coming and going in a cloud of greasy seed-hulls and dislodged down-feathers. It was still cute, though.

By Christmas, I had to fill the feeder every day, and I realized something. I was now beholden to these birds. I hadn’t noticed. It dawned on me the day I was mildly burdened with guilt because I had not filled the feeder, and the birds had gone without for a day— these birds were now depending on me. They had expectations and hopes which I had the power to either crush or fulfill. And they were so hungry!

Just yesterday I watched them frantically gobbling seeds as though they were possessed— insatiable, voracious, obsessed little barbarians, they were.

This morning I came into the kitchen and there was one forlorn, feather-inflated bird sitting in the empty feeder with its back to me in what seemed a silent accusation. My morning routine was disrupted, because suddenly my chore of filling the feeder took on enormous significance. It felt like an emergency—an urgent situation demanding immediate action. I delayed making my coffee, hurried and fed the dog, and then filled the feeder. My comfortable routine was all unraveled, and I felt out-of-sorts, as though something crucial was missing from the pattern. Uneasy, I was.

On the other hand, I was wryly amused. I thought of the understanding common among some indigenous peoples that a healer or physician incurs an obligation toward anyone whose life they have saved. They become responsible in some intangible way for the remainder of that person’s existence, since that person would not be alive if it weren’t for the healer’s intervention. I like that notion. It’s not a matter of tit for tat, or quid pro quo; in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The patient does not owe the doctor; the doctor is obligated to the patient. The patient’s life was once in the healer’s hands, and so in some manner it remains there. I didn’t necessarily save those birds’ lives, but I certainly changed their world. I introduced something that gradually altered their reality, and became part of how-it-is. Once that happened, the repercussions of failing to maintain the new state of affairs became quite clear. There really was no possibility of going back.

This morning, in that half-lit consciousness just before I’m fully awake, I made a connection between the birds and Christ. Nebulous, it was, and uncanny. I’m not sure I can describe it.

I had somehow become convinced that our work as Christians is to rescue Christ.

I saw how the Incarnation had reordered the pattern of reality for human beings in much the same way as I had altered the pattern of reality for my birds. There is no going back. It’s just not that simple, though—the birds had transformed my reality as well, shifting my boundaries and reshaping my choices.

I don’t believe that the Incarnation changed the nature of Creation. Instead, I think that it manifested the very essence of Reality, the same Essence that has always existed and always will, from before Time and after the end of Time. What the Incarnation did was simply to bring that Essence to our attention in a way that ever afterward could not be ignored, any more than I could ignore my empty bird-feeder. It shifted our boundaries and reshaped our choices. It blurred the distinction between the feeder and the fed. It incurred an obligation from the healer to the patient — and here is the big deal—

I saw the Christ Event as the patient, and humankind as the healer.

I’m not sure why, but I know it had to do with my sparrows, and my obligation to them to keep that feeder eternally filled. My original impulse to feed the birds resulted in a shift in the pattern of reality; not just the birds’ reality, but mine. Choices changed; hopes formed; boundaries shifted; duties arose. Because the birds came to my feeder, and I saw them and took delight in them; because I was awed and disconcerted by the power of their hunger and their insatiable appetite; because I was unsettled by their unexpected claim on my reliability, my world changed.

What if that is exactly what happened in the Incarnation?

What if God manifested as God-made-human so that human beings would be moved to fill the feeder? What if God so loved the world that the feeder gets voraciously emptied every day by the power of God’s Love? What if it’s our job to fill that feeder over and over again until the end of time? What if that was the whole point of God-as-helpless-child, and God-as-innocent-victim?

What if God was being literal in the words of Christ—

“Whenever you do this for the least of these, you do it for me”?

Matthew 25— ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you made me your guest, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you provided them, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ ³⁷ Then the people who have done what God wants will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and make you our guest, or needing clothes and provide them? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ ⁴⁰ The King will say to them, ‘Yes! I tell you that whenever you did these things for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did them for me!’

So I guess my bird-feeder is a metaphor of God’s Love—

and

it isn’t about whether or not I fill it,

and

it’s not about how delightful the birds are,

and

it’s not even about finishing what I started, even if there’s no end to it.

No,

it’s about the hollow feeling in my own chest at the sight of the empty feeder,

and

it’s about my reaction to that lone, puffed up bird with its back to me,

and

it’s about the dance of call and answer,

and

it doesn’t matter in the least which one came first.

No,

it’s about knowing that it does matter, and it is real—

We are meant to save Christ,

and once done,

be beholden to God-in-the-world

forever after.