We have a Pastoral Letter from our bishop today on some reorganisation in the diocese. So I will address the scripture readings only briefly this morning. Today's scriptures speak of a God who cares greatly for his universe. Not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing it. We are called to be witness to the care of God. We are to speak gently of God's care for his creation. Because we too are recipients of that great care. "There is no need to be afraid; every hair on your head has been cared for, has been counted. You are worth far more than hundreds of sparrows." This is the gentle face of God, a face which has been concealed in our teaching and our preaching for far too long. As the Old Testament put it, he is the God who does not “break the bruised reed or snuff out the fluttering flame.” Too often the God we presented was muscular God, a fussing, almost neurotic God of fury, a God who took offence all too easily. That image took no account of the frailty of humanity, the billions of crushed reeds and fluttering, hesitating flames.

I like the some of the childhood stories told by the late Cardinal Hume of Westminster. Hume was a powerful witness to the gentle God of the scriptures, a witness to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. His stories reflect the infant roots of his convictions. One of his stories brings out the contrast between the God of the Old Testament and the God presented by Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He is in the sitting room of his family home as a small kid. He notices that the jar of lovely sweets has been recently replenished. He is on his own. He goes over to the table, gets his hand into the jar and retrieves a sweet. Unknown to him, his mother is looking on. In a menacing voice, she warns him, “George, you must know that God is watching you!” Hume reflects on this incident years later. He is convinced now that God, rather than asking a menacing question, would have said: “Go on George, take two!”

Hume often spoke of searching for God in the quietness of our daily lives. Despite his obvious confidence in God's love for him and for all, "Search" was a central theme in his thinking and writings. In fact one of his publications is called "Searching for God" (1977) This was a series of addresses to the monks at Amplefort while he was Abbot there and, ironically, this work, first intended for cloistered monks, had the widest readership of all his works. He referred to "the hide and seek" game that God plays with us, the ‘God of the sparrows’. His last work was, appropriately, the Mystery of the Cross, published in 1998. Despite the gravity of his office, he had a self-deprecating sense of humour. He once remarked, "It's true I like rogues, because you will never meet a conceited rogue." That's a beautiful, gentle approach to humanity!! It captures well the ‘God of the sparrows’.

Home