Prayer | Go now, little birds

Go now, little birds,

and make your home in God’s unruly culture:

in the schools and prisons, hospitals and offices,

highways and byways and households of this world.

Take the seeds you have ingested here,

and distribute them liberally wherever you go. 

And may God’s culture give you shelter;

may the Bread of Life provide you with crumbs;

and may the Holy Spirit keep you aloft

until you build your true nest,

deep in the heart of God. Amen.

No sermon or meditation tonight; instead, we exercised our hermeneutical muscles together reflecting on seeds, weeds, and little birdies, as we investigated how Mark 4:26-32 disrupts Ezekiel 17:22-24. We tackled questions such as:

> What plant grows in the Ezekiel vision? What about in the Jesus story?

> What sort of God culture does Ezekiel describe? What words spring to mind? What about Mark?

> What might a church rooted in Ezekiel’s culture look like? What about in the Jesus story?

> Which vision do we usually assume cares for small and vulnerable creatures? Is this the reality we observe? Which feels like a good place to make a home?

I was asked to put the final blessing online, so I did (above). It was written for Sanctuary, 17 June 2018 (BP06)  © Alison Sampson, 2018. Image credit: My friend Jason Goroncy went through a stage of photographing bird poo. I shamelessly stole this pic – Reduviiidae –  from his blog; you can find more surprisingly beautiful pictures here.