The Rev. Canon Joel Atkinson
April 30, 2006
I’d like to tell you a story about two birdcages.
The stories say lots concerning the meaning of Easter.
I’m going over there to pick up the first cage.
Do you see it?
It’s a cage like “Tweety Bird” took refuge in
from that mean old cat “Sylvester”
in those wondrous colored cartoons of our youth.
Here I’m picking it up.
Take a look with me.
Those adults present who can’t see the cage
please hold your cynicism in abeyance
and listen to me
while I examine this most special cage.
Listen and I’ll tell you what I see.
It appears to be a brand spanking new birdcage.
The bars are spaced so that even the tiniest of birds
could never escape from this cage.
Now there is something very peculiar about what I see.
What use is a birdcage without a door?
Did you notice there wasn’t a door?
I couldn’t put a bird in there even if I wanted to!
As I’ve been examining this cage
there is something even more peculiar.
Look at the bottom of the cage.
Do you see it?
There’s an eggshell
of a recently hatched bird.
Where’s the bird?
There’s no door to the cage!
There’s no way through the very narrowly spaced bars!
Yet, at the bottom of the cage are the remnants of an eggshell.
Here, I’ll hold the cage so you can see where that bird might have hidden.
Do you see the bird?
Neither do I! The bird isn’t in the cage.
I would like to meet a bird that can hatch from the confinement of its shell
into an escape-proof cage
and then just simply disappear from sight.
Where did it go?
Again I must say,
I would like to meet a bird like that.
That bird sounds remarkably like
that escape Jesus made
and we celebrated on Easter Eve.
The birdcage I described
was like one painted by Rene Magritte
a Belgian surrealist painter.
In this and in other works of his
this postal worker who painted in the dining room of his house
painted images that guide our minds to see realities
that transcend
the obviousness of the concreteness of the world, which surrounds.
In his painting of the empty birdcage
we are lead to see both the impossibility
and the reality of the empty tomb.
Let’s see, I think I’ll place this cage over here.
Right there is a good spot.
There’s another cage – do you see it?
It’s not nearly as nice as the first.
It’s all rusty and bent in places.
The bars aren’t evenly spaced and as close together as in first.
Why look, it’s even got a door.
Bear with me for a moment and I’ll walk over and pick it up.
I’ve got it! I’ll hold it so you can see it.
This ugly old cage looks like it’s ready for nothing but the trash bin.
Looking at it closely I’m reminded of a story.
On an Easter Sunday morning
a pastor at a church in New England
was walking to begin Sunday services.
On the way he saw a young boy coming toward him
with a cage exactly like this one.
As he drew closer
he noticed several birds thrashing in fear
as they sought escape from the confines of the cage.
Taking time out from his walk
he stopped the boy
and asked him what he intended to do with the birds.
“Mister,” the boy replied
“I am going to play with them.
I am going to make them angry and fight with one another.
I am going to pull out their feathers and hurt them.”
“That’s terrible,” the pastor thought.
The he said to the boy “Then what are you going to do?”
Answering his own question
he said to the boy
“You’re going to let them go aren’t you?”
“No!” he said enthusiastically
“there’re lots of hungry cats in the neighborhood
soooo I’m going to feed them to the cats!”
At this last statement the pastor slid his hand into the vest pocket of his jacket
and said “Son, what do you think those three birds are worth?”
“Well mister” he replied, naming a gargantuan sum for one so young.
“They’re worth ten dollars!”
The pastor pulled out his wallet took out a ten dollar bill
and quietly the exchange took place.
Each seemed satisfied with the deal they’d made
though as the boy walked away he waved his ten dollar bill
gloating at the stupidity of the adult he’d pulled a shame upon.
Looking back the boy shouted, as if to rub it in,
“Mister they’re only common field birds with no color at all.
Why they can’t even sing a pretty song!”
The pastor with his prize
walked quietly to a grassy place
by the side of a large tree
that would be hospitable to the three tiny birds.
Then he kneeled, opened the door of the rusty old birdcage,
and gently urged them fly away into the freedom…the life
he’d purchased for them.
On that Easter Sunday he preached one of his best sermons.
The two cages both speak to me of the meaning of Easter.
I am going to place them side-by-side
and I will try not to forget their story.
The challenge becomes for me…for us…
how do we make the story conveyed by the two cages real in our lives?
For me their reality comes
in seeking in my life
to live into the challenge
contained in the words of two extraordinary human beings.
Listen to the words the first extraordinary human being, Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
spoke in addressing the church:
“The compassion of Jesus was not just a passing feeling that made him feel pity
but left him wringing his hands.
No, compassion moved him to do something to change the situation…
People are of infinite worth
because Jesus Christ died for them,
and they must be treated
not just with respect but with reverence.
To treat fellow human beings as less than this
is to spit in the face of God.”
He continued:
“A compassionate church will discern the features of its Lord and Master
in the drug addict, the homeless person, the AIDS patient, the (single) parent,
the hungry, the widow and the orphan, the unemployed, the political prisoner,
the homeless, the oppressed.
The compassionate church will,
like its Lord and Master,
tie a towel around its waist to wash the disciples’
feet, because in serving these it is serving him.”
Our loving compassionate God, as illustrated
in the stories of the two birdcages,
comes to free us
from that which binds us to whatever circumstance
that prevents from being all God has created us to be
whether self imposed,
imposed by others,
or by the circumstances of the life into which we have been born
including the mortality shared by all.
Our loving compassionate God,
as illustrated in the stories of the two birdcages,
comes to call us into becoming God’s compassionate people
in God’s compassionate church.
When we leave the Cathedral this day these stories
will become more deeply writ into our hearts
if each day we’ll make just a little more effort to being God’s compassionate people
toward those closest around us,
to the strangers we meet,
and even to the self that each of us are.
As we seek to love and to free as God does,
we’ll feel the embrace of God’s eternal arms holding us ever closer.
In the words of that second extraordinary person, St. Teresa of Avila,
“Christ has no body now earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.
And yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.”
Your hands and your feet belong to Christ – use them in his name.
Amen.
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