The sorrows of the universe and a tiny green bird
We appreciate cycles and seasons at Intertwined, so today I want to recognize that it’s the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday will begin the Advent season, which leads to the celebration of Christmas. The season of Lent begins in mid-February, and that leads to the celebration of Easter. Perhaps “Advent” and “Lent” are terms with which you’re familiar, but you might not be aware that today has a name as well: Christ the King Sunday. It’s probably better known as “the Sunday after Thanksgiving” since that’s where it usually falls. Others might think of it as “the worst day of the year to drive.” Regardless, I grew up in the church, but I was an adult before I realized this Sunday even had a special name.
In my experience, nobody really knows what to do with Christ the King Sunday. There are things that happen soon after, of course. Many churches will decorate for the Advent season, and our attention will shift to preparing for the birth of Jesus. You might have noticed that, in a nod to tradition, I have a vestment hanging behind me when I record my reflections. It’s been green for a number of months, but that will change next time as we begin a new church year and I hang up a purple one (provided I remember to do so).
But what about today? How should we acknowledge Christ the King Sunday?
Wilda Gafney is a biblical scholar whose schedule of scripture readings and translations has accompanied us for this entire church year (or what she refers to as a “liturgical year”). She offers the following for this day: “The liturgical year ends with a reflection on the Majesty of Christ as the Church prepares to begin a new year remembering his first advent while preparing for his next. . . . [as] the rise and fall(s) of Israel’s monarchies . . . have made abundantly clear, monarchy is as all human institutions, an enterprise that is doomed to fail. Yet monarchy and its conventions have given us language for God, imperfect but familiar. . . . Jesus takes that language and those conventions and inverts them; the reign of God and its majesty are very different from the splendor of the world’s sovereigns.” (Gafney, 338)
Maybe we’re turned off by the language around kings and kingdoms. Our resistance might come from such terms seeming antiquated, though for those in Biblical times and those who wrote scripture, being subject to kings was all too real. Thus the idea of a monarch who outranked worldly powers might have been very appealing.
If we’re honest with ourselves, though, aren’t we subject to kings and queens as well? I’d suggest they just come in the form of celebrity, legislator, and corporate executive. Thus today’s scripture might indeed have something to say to us, just as it did for those in the time it was written.
A few days ago I was holding a tiny green bird in my hands. She was not quite 24 years old, had become blind a few months prior, and was — for the first time since we’d met her in 1999 — not acting like herself. We were sitting together in a house that was quiet except for a radio playing an interview in the background.
The tiny green bird was Peanut, a maroon-bellied conure. She’d never been sick before, at least not to our knowledge; parrots generally don’t show symptoms of illness. All of a sudden, though, her balance was shaky and she seemed lethargic. This was a big change from her usual spunky self.
Here are some things to know about maroon-bellied conures:
- they are small but have big attitudes
- they are vain and like to be looked at
- they assume they are people, and should have all the rights and privileges pertaining thereof
- they like to be as high as they can in a given space, whether that be at the top of their cage or on top of your head
- they imprint on one or two people for life, and are very affectionate toward them
- they hold everyone else in suspicion
- they insist on sampling whatever it is you are eating or drinking
- they might speak some words or phrases, but unlike some other parrot breeds they sound like birds when they say them
- they love water, whether the sound of it running or an opportunity to dive into it
- they are incredibly resilient despite being fragile
Sadly, the tiny green bird in my hands was not showing any of those characteristics, and I feared she would not live through the night. I talked to her for a long time, reminding her of what a good birdie she was, and even put on my reading glasses so I could better admire the intricacy of her smallest feathers.
As I did, a man on the radio was interviewing a doctor who worked in a hospital far away. The hospital was in a war zone, and the doctor said a little boy was being wheeled in on a gurney as they spoke. For a few moments, my consciousness shifted to the suffering taking place in this far-away land.
This wasn’t the first time I sat with Peanut while processing grief, but it was the first time I did so when the grief was focused on her. Although she was happy to sit on my shoulder while I worked around the house or at my computer or attended Zoom calls, I would also often sit and hold her so she could oil her feathers or groom my fingers. Holding her would force me out of my tendency to always be getting something done, so when I needed to take time to grieve or just to breathe, she was a great companion.
On this particular evening, she didn’t seem interested in grooming. She was laying quietly and breathing, but not saying much. My attention again turned to the doctor on the radio. He feared for his patients, who had to be moved from their rooms and life-support systems to safer locations. His voice was heavy with desperation. My heart felt for him as I recognized the enormity of what he was facing. My situation didn’t even register on such a scale.
Nonetheless, my thoughts mostly focused on the tiny green bird in my hands. Would she survive the night? Should I put food on the floor of her cage in case she couldn’t reach her dish? Might I be able to move up her vet appointment to the next day?
As these questions circled in my mind, I was still aware of the conversation on the radio. The doctor’s voice became twinged with pain as he reported that the little boy who had been wheeled into the hospital a few minutes earlier had not survived.
The author of Hebrews was addressing a number of questions facing the early church. We’re not sure who wrote Hebrews, but it seems to be intended for the second generation of Jesus-followers who were starting to have doubts about their fledgling faith. (Powell, 770) Perhaps they were considering a return to a form of Judaism or even another religion.
In writing about the author, Mark Allan Powell suggests he or she “knew people who had known Jesus and was well educated with regard to both Greek rhetoric and the Jewish Scriptures. The author also knew the readers personally and assumed a mandate to speak to them authoritatively, even though [they do] not appear to have been the founder of their community.” (Powell, 774–775)
The author bridges the past to present, reminding the reader of how God used to speak to their spiritual ancestors through the prophets. Jesus continues that conversation, but does so as the Son of God, the “heir of all there is.” God created the worlds through him, and he is “the brilliance of God’s glory and reproduction of God’s very being, [undergirding] all there is by his word of power.”
The author continues to detail the connection between the God worshiped by their forbears and Jesus, providing support in a literate and logical fashion. Jesus is clearly set apart, being the Son of God, higher than angels, and present at the world’s creation.
This seems fitting on Christ the King Sunday, a day that reminds us of the place of Jesus in the universe, at the right hand of our Creator. He is the firstborn of the new creation promised by the gospel, one that upends worldly values.
Wilda Gafney refers to such values when she reminds us of past kingdoms and their shortcomings. “To the fallen Judean monarchy and their Babylonian colonizers and occupiers, Jesus says the poor of the land who were deemed not worth the labor to even deport are at the heart of the reign of God. The majesty of Christ is not found in treasures of temple or palace, burgled and broken apart, but in a crown of thorns beaten in by bullies and in his battered and denuded body. This human, mortal, woman-born Jesus is the glory and majesty of God; in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘the brilliance of God’s glory and reproduction of God’s very being.’ That humanness, shared with every girl and woman, boy and man, nonbinary child and adult, is also the majesty of Christ and our own.” (Gafney, 338)
Perhaps on Christ the King Sunday, our focus should not only be on what makes Christ the greatest of kings, but even more so on what makes him different.
There’s nothing like a life or death situation to bring out our humanity, even when the life in question is not human. We were able to get into to the vet a couple days after Peanut’s health scare began. She was still eating, drinking, and climbing around her cage a little bit, but was very weak. The vet couldn’t tell what was wrong, so administered a few painful shots with the hope they would bring healing.
Peanut was quiet on the way home, and when we arrived I wrapped her in a towel and had Jennifer hold her while I got her cage situated. Then I held her, and as I was getting things around for dinner, she made a small noise. I looked down to see she was gone. What had been a little bundle of life was now still…
I don’t need anyone to tell me how silly it is to mourn the death of a tiny green bird considering all the suffering and sorrow in the world, country, and even right here in our community. In the days since, I’ve criticized my sorrow with words like “perspective” and “priority” and “privilege.” What must the parents of the little boy in that faraway hospital be experiencing? What about the sorrow in Ukraine and Sudan?
Yet I can’t explain or rationalize away the grief that I still feel when I walk by the space where Peanut’s cage once stood, or when I return to a quiet and dark house with no bird voice to greet me.
So in my defense, I offer this: I didn’t invent this tendency; I get it from somewhere. This ability to grieve over even the small things is part of what makes me human and an image-bearer of God. Thinking about that in the days following Peanut’s death has given me comfort and allowed me to be gentler with myself.
Just as I cradled Peanut in my hands with care, the One who imprinted on me offers the same in my times of need. Just as I held Peanut during those final days in what seemed like a space outside of time, Jesus not only has the capability of offering the same to all of us, but does so without suffering compassion fatigue. The One who hung the earth on its axis also numbers the hairs on our heads, and is witness to all of the biggest and smallest sorrows of the world, and to those who are experiencing them.
So yes, Christ might be a king, but you don’t seek a king when your heart is broken. What sustains me in the face of grief and hopelessness and fear is that Jesus experienced all of these feelings as a human, and knows what we’re going through. The Author of Life does not fault us for mourning loss of life, even when that life is contained in a tiny green body.
Mourning the loss of my little bird allows me to better mourn the tragedy of thousands of tiny green birds dying daily due to loss of habitat and our collective failure to care for creation.
Mourning the loss of the boy in the hospital far away allows me to better mourn the tragedy of the thousands of other civilians who are suffering and dying in faraway places.
And when we mourn, we don’t do it alone. Even if nobody else understands our grief, the One who mourns every loss mourns alongside us. Our king. Our kin. Our friend.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Works Referenced
Gafney, Wilda C. A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W. New York City: Church Publishing, 2021.
Pfitzner, Victor C. Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: Hebrews. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997.
Powell, Mark Allan. Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2018. Kindle edition.
