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Address:First Baptist Church, Ashland
800 Thompson Street
Ashland, VA 23005
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(804) 798-9014
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E-mail: fbcashland@verizon.net
Sermon for Sunday, August 3, 2008
“A Lesson from a Hummingbird”
John 14:7-11
Let me tell you a story about something that happened the Friday before we left on vacation. I went into our garage to do something. The door was opened and I looked up and flying around the garage was a hummingbird. They are cute little birds. This bird would fly around and then come to rest on the electrical cord to the door opener attached to the ceiling of the garage. He would fly and then rest.
It finally dawned on me that he was trying to figure out how to get out of the garage. I tried to shoo him out by the waving of a newspaper, but he did not get the message.
I finally called my neighbor, Henry. “Henry, I’ve got an odd request and figure you would know the answer.” You need to know that I consider Henry a ‘know it all’ in the very best and positive sense of the word. I explained to him what was going on. “Sorry, Bud, can’t help you there. I’ve never dealt with that before.”
I went back into the garage and had an inspiration. There are three windows in our garage and so I lowered the top half of the windows thinking maybe the air coming through would give the bird the hint that freedom was just a jump away. Waiting awhile and then checking…nothing. He was still flying around the top of the garage and resting on the cord of the door opener. Then another idea. Hummingbirds love sugar water with the red food coloring that attracts them to the water. “Kathy, make me two little pans of the water.” This will do the trick. I balanced one on one of the opened windows and put the other one on the ground just outside the garage. Two different views. One would surely attract the bird. He would get the hint and fly to it and into the world.
I went back inside to do some work. After a while I checked on the bird and did not see him anywhere. He got the message. About that time, my ‘go to’ Henry called, “What’s the story?” “Success!” He is gone. He understood the message I was trying to convey to him. I was feeling good.
In a couple of hours we were leaving to go out to dinner with some friends. As I was getting into the car I saw something I did not want to see. There by my door was the little hummingbird. It had grown weak from flying and not able to figure its way out. Now it was just lying there fluttering to no avail. I realized that all of my efforts had been futile…the shooing, the open windows, the red sugar water…all useless. I had not been able to get him to understand what I was trying to get him to do. I wanted to show him the way to safety, to freedom, to his way of life, but he did not understand what I was trying to do. I scooped him up and carried him outside and tried one more thing. I place him in a shallow container with a little water in it and he fluttered out of that onto the ground. He was too far gone for anything but death. I don’t kill things very well so I placed him on the ground. I had done all that I knew how to do but to no avail. I couldn’t get the message to him that all I wanted to do was to save him, give him his freedom. I just couldn’t get the message to him so that he would understand.
God wants us to understand Him and know Him. If you ever wonder why God sent Jesus, it was to show us Him. He had tried all kinds of ways and we didn’t get it. He tried other ways to show us who He was and the world didn’t get it. So He sent a son. We proclaim that during the Christmas season. He sent Jesus to give us a picture of Himself. The disciple Philip asked Jesus, “Show us the Father and we’ll be happy.” Jesus told him that all He had to do was to look at him.
It is through Jesus we find God…the Father who wants to have a relationship with us, to show us unconditional love, to redeem us that we might know Him.
The life of Jesus is the best look we have ever had at who God really is. If we want to know who God is, we look at the life of Jesus who as some say about relatives, is the “spittin image” of God.
Jesus, the one human life that best showed us God, had his real human limits. He got tired, he got hungry, he did not know some things, he had misunderstandings with his parents and conflicts with his adult brothers and sisters, he faced real choices and complex decisions and he felt pain and sorrow. Jesus was a full time human being.
In fact, one could say that the one who was the eternal Son of God, Jesus, was also the only fully human person who has ever lived. In Genesis, the word “human,” was the name God gave to those who were created in God’s image. If we let that be our definition of the word “human,” then to be human means to live life in the image of God, and Jesus is the only person who has absolutely, completely, embodied the image of God.
That means that even if Jesus’ body had not been broken, it would still be important for us to eat the bread and drink the cup, as a reminder that God choose to reveal Himself in real human life, with all its possibilities and all of its limitations of real flesh and blood humanity. As it turned out that body was broken and that blood was shed. Jesus did die for us. But even if Jesus had only lived for us, even if Jesus’ body had not been broken for us, that one human life would still have been the best look at the way God really is. The tiny crust of broken bread and the little cup of juice can call to our minds and hearts our best glimpse of God, the glimpse of God we saw in the life of the only fully human person who ever lived. So come, let us eat the bread and drink the cup and remember God’s best to us in the gift of His son.
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