Come Thou Long Expected

I doubt that many of you, if any, have ever heard the sound of a saw being sharpened. If any of you have I would appreciate hearing a description of the sound since I have been spending a good deal of time lately listening to a monotonous whistle that is supposed to sound like a saw being whetted. This sound is being broadcast rather loudly in the nighttime woods of Lookout Rock on the Uxbridge, Northbridge line. The reason for this admittedly odd behavior is to fool migrating Saw-whet Owls into investigating what would be the mother of all owls (since the volume is a couple of magnitudes greater than normal). And the reason for this deception is to lure the little night flyers into one of a series of nets set up in hopes of catching them. As the operation approaches six weeks, the number of captures is pushing 200. Each of these owls now sports a small silver bracelet on one of its legs that will make it identifiable should it be recaptured. The great hope of any bander (the name for one who bands a bird with these numbered bands) is a recapture, either one of its banded birds recaptured at another banding station or perhaps the opposite, a foreign capture. Each night during migration, weather permitting, a small group of banders has stood in the dark and cold counting down the time to check the nets hoping that when they make that walk they will find captive owls and maybe, just maybe, that one that already has the jewelry above its ankle that will identify it as an individual that has traveled here from a known foreign place. This is part of the reward for losing hours of sleep and enduring the elements.

During this Advent season, I am struck with the parallel between the wait for a recapture and the wait for the messiah’s return. Each year we tell the story again and we wait. We wait for something we think we know, a child, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying a manger. But every year we light the candles and sing “Silent Night” yet I don’t know of one instance yet of angelic hosts giving instructions to shepherds since the original event. For me this begs the question, “Do we know what we’re waiting for?” We’ve got what we think is good data in the Christmas story, shouldn’t we be able to identify the returning messiah? At the banding station we are confident that all the owls passing through are coming from somewhere else, it is just that none of them have happened into someone else’s net prior to their stopover in ours. How many times over could it be that salvation has been sent our way but we didn’t understand because we were looking for something else? Do you really believe that God would only visit humanity once with a single return trip at the end of time? Surely the God who so loved the world that sending us God’s only child seemed like an appropriate means for our salvation wouldn’t stop trying after one attempt! Do you think that God has stopped loving the world? I certainly hope not. God loves us madly and I believe that God sends us a steady stream of opportunities for salvation. Oh, we can debate about the return of the messiah, but even Jesus said he didn’t know when that would be and that we wouldn’t recognize him, so what exactly is the value in that? I suggest that we open wide our eyes and ears and engage our whole beings in pursuit of discovering all of God’s gifts to us, no matter the form. After all, isn’t the thrill of discovering a mound of gifts the joy of Christmas?

A Community of Killdeer

Getting the church out of the doors is what church is all about. I mean that both literally and figuratively. On Rally Sunday we took our worship outdoors, but the challenge remains for us to carry church in our lives day in and day out.

When the last softball was fielded and all the pylons were collected, the field where we held church returned to usual state. Nearly the moment we left the field a few of its regular inhabitants returned. I was coming in from the outfield when I heard the familiar cry of “ki-dee, ki-dee, ki-dee.” I turned to see nine Killdeer wheel in flight and then land in a tight group on the field. It was as if they were watching and waiting for us to get out of their way. Fields are their natural habitat and some of these nine were probably hatched in this very field. But seven offspring fledged and ready to migrate seems to be a good deal more than expected from a single pair of Killdeer. The likely explanation is that this was a community of Killdeer. Once the competition over territory ends (i.e. the end of the mating season), most birds see the wisdom of combining their efforts in the name of survival. The most common gathering of birds is in migratory flocks, the most dramatic of which are the huge numbers of hawks that soar south together over mountain ranges. This community of Killdeer was just a smaller example of the same.

I was struck by the fact that this field had hosted two communities on the same day, one avian and one human. The fact that both communities had use for the same resource reminded me of the importance of being aware of the many things we share within and between communities. This sharing makes defining where one community ends and another begins a difficult task. When we speak of our church community do we mean only members? Only active members? Only those who contribute time, talents and treasure? Only those who have at some time worshipped here? Or do we really mean community in the sense that we ought; those who gather to help one another? I pray that we mean the latter. I pray that when we speak of getting out into the community what really mean is that, like the Killdeer, we are prepared to gather with any and all who understand the wisdom of bearing one another’s burdens.