Sunday, 6/25/17
Jesus spoke of God’s love for
all of his creatures. He said his love embraces even a pair of sparrows that were sold for a few
coins. Our Lord’s point was that if he
loves even those least of his creatures, how much more will he love humans created
in his own likeness?
But, let me tell you about an
interesting pair of sparrows.
As a young priest in Korea, I
sometimes needed to take the bus to meet with our bishop, and those bus rides often
had me standing for up to four hours on a crowded bus. On one such trip, as I
was struggling to keep my standing, I couldn’t avoid staring down at an old man
who had secured a seat below me.
There were two very curious
things about him: one thing was his unusual clothing, and the other thing was
what he was carrying.
The old man was very properly
dressed in a jacket, vest, and creased trousers; but the curious thing about
his clothing was that it was all sewn together from olive drab army blankets. I
couldn’t help but wonder about his relationship with the woman at home who pieced
that outfit together for him.
The other curious thing was about what
he held out in front of him. It was a pair of sparrows. They were dangling from a thin strip of bamboo that he
had threaded through the little nostrils in their beaks.
The Korean people all belong
to one or another of a hundred clans, such as the Kim’s the Choi’s, the Han’s. And
an ancient custom had the members of each clan coming together once a year to
honor their ancestors. Their peculiar way of doing that had them laying out a
table of delicacies for the old spirits to munch on.
That old man’s sparrows were
going to add charm to the dishes laid out for one clan’s ancestors. He probably
got more than a few coins for them, but only God knows that.
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