That Feathered Thing That Perches on our Souls

Dec 9, 2001

Scriptures   Matthew 3:1-12

I did something this week which I haven’t done before in exactly the same way.

One morning in my quiet time, I wanted to express some of my basic hopes to God, and I did this in writing.

And the exercise made me really examine some of the deep hopes which are operative in my life.

Now, I don’t have time to tell you about all of the hopes I wrote down, but I’ll share a few of them with you.

I hope that my wife and children will experience love and peace in their lives.

I hope they will never have to suffer.

I hope for peace in my own nation and for peace in the world. I hope for the time when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, for the time when the lion will lay down with the lamb.

As I get older, I hope that my wife and I will always have enough money.

I hope that I will be of service until the day I die.

(Martin Luther King Jr. quote)

I hope that I will face my death with faith and courage.

I hope to enter into the fullness of eternal life.

Our hopes are what keep us going no matter what is going on in our lives.

We can be broke or on the brink of it.

Our relationships can be suffering badly.

We can feel so lonely we don’t know what to do.

We can feel buried by the exhausting routine of our lives

And just when we think we’re completely hemmed in or we don’t have much or anything left, our hopes kick in again, and energize us and drive us forward, and we are again, in the words of Alanis Morrisett...fine, fine, fine.

Some of you might be wondering by this time what our scripture lesson today has to do with hope…the scriptures about John the Baptist.

Well, old John the Baptist was all about hope

The nation Israel was down just about as far as a nation could be.

The powerful Romans literally occupied their land…their soldiers were all over the place.

Organized religion had about as much power over the people as the Romans, and misused it just as badly.

A kind of poverty existed in Israel which is hard for us to imagine.

But the Hebrew people had this hope of a better day coming, a time when God would make himself known again in an unmistakable, powerful way.

Then this unusual man John the Baptist came along and said in essence…

The time has come! 

God is going to do a marvelous thing in your midst!  God’s kingdom is coming…even better, it is here! Clean yourselves up

Get ready for God’s new thing.

And the hope which had kept Israel going for so long but had just about died was rekindled.

John the Baptist gave people hope again and he took them down to the Jordan River and baptized them all over the place. 

When Jesus wanted to be baptized to begin his ministry, he chose this man of hope to do it.

I want to tell you a story now about hope, and then I want to finish my remarks by thinking about the sermon title today.

As many of you will recall, five years ago I spent a lot of time in Texas with my brother who had lung cancer. It was a difficult but rich time for each of us.

One morning I was sitting with Lew as the sun came up. 

Dove and an assortment of birds began to sing their songs, but the dominant singer was the Mockingbird. That bird began to sing and mimicked the songs of every bird she had ever heard.

Lew and I listened in amazement. Then Lew said…You know Mike, I’m not afraid of death, but I’ll tell you one thing…after I die I’m sure going to miss those birds singing.

I responded by saying this…Lew, the wisest men our world has known seem to be in agreement on this point…in eternity, we cannot even imagine the beauty  or the fulfillment which awaits us.

He said…You think so Mike?

I responded…I sure do.

Emily Dickenson wrote this poem once and in it she said…hope is that feathered thing that perches on our souls.

In other words, it’s the songbird that God has placed within us.

And sometime she sits quietly, but only for a time.

And then she sings again, and when we hear her song, we get our strength again, we get our vision again, and we walk forward with courage and new resolve.

Israel wondered if there was any hope, and sometimes we do to.

Never fear.

The song bird perched on our souls is alive and well.

And the people said…..AMEN