One day, an old man was walking through the African bush. As the sun was
going down, he came to a village and decided to stay there for the night. At
the gate of the village, he called out, “Ekuhle.” (Is it good [for me to come
in]?) The father of the village replied, “Yebo, umdala. Ngena!” (Come in, old
man.) They sat and visited as food was prepared and a bed made ready. As they
talked, the old man saw an eagle running around on the ground, pecking for corn
with the chickens.
“Baba,” he said, “Why is Ukhosi running on the ground like inkuku?”
“Yes, umdala,” the father replied, “I found him on the ground when he
was very small. He must have fallen from the nest. I raised him here with the
chickens, and he thinks he is a chicken.”
The old man found this disturbing, such a majestic creature, reduced to
pecking corn on the ground with the chickens.” “Baba,” he said, “may I try
something.” “Of course, my friend.” The old man got up and went to the eagle.
He picked him up and whispered to him, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are
an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air to help him fly. Ukhosi fell to the
ground with a thud.
The old man stepped over to him and picked him up again. Climbing into
the tree to get some height, he whispered again to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you are
not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air as high as he
could. Ukhosi fell to the ground helpless and winded, then scuttled off to
hide.
The old man pursued him and finally caught him. Climbing on top of the
highest hut in the village, he repeated his words to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you
are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” This time, Ukhosi fell even further and
harder and lay on the ground trembling. He didn’t run away. It seemed to him
that the old man would just catch him and torment him again.
The old man was discouraged and sat down to his meal with the people
from the village, apologizing for his behaviour. Darkness fell, and he went to
bed, but he couldn’t sleep. Finally, sometime after midnight, he got up and
went searching for the eagle. He found him on a low branch, his head tucked
under his wing like the chickens around him.
The old man picked him off the branch before the eagle knew what was
happening. Then he started to walk out from the village. They walked across the
plain. For hours and hours they walked. Ukhosi wondered where they were going.
Then they started climbing. Their path wound higher and higher among the rocks,
climbing up a mountainside.
The sun rose above the plain, shining brightly, as they came to the edge
of a cliff looking out over the valley. Ukhosi looked down, amazed. He thought
he had never been so high. The old man held him up and spoke aloud to him,
“Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him as far
from the cliff as he could, and Ukhosi started to fall. Faster and faster he
fell, the wind whistling about his ears. He closed his eyes shut tightly and
clamped his wings against his body as hard as he could, but the wind was too
strong for him. It ripped a wing out from his body, and to steady himself he
put out the other wing. Then the wind stopped, and he cautiously opened his
eyes. He found that he was gliding in a big circle above the plain.
He tested one wing and then the other. Soon he was moving his eyes up
and down in large gentle beats, and he began to rise still in big circles. He
came level with the old man on the cliff edge, and as he turned to fly away for
a new start and a new life, he heard the old man call after him, “Remember,
Ukhosi, you are not a chicken! You are an eagle!”
1 John 4: 7-12
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one
another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of
God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love
does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is
how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the
world that we might live through him. 10 This is
love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an
atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear
friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one
another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if
we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
In the passage we heard earlier, John writes simply and
directly: “God is love.” John’s letter is an extended riff on this idea – that
the centre of the Jewish faith is (as Jesus said) to love God wholeheartedly
and to love our neighbour the same way we love ourselves. To this idea, Jesus
added the distinctive command: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Such
love is the mark of the Christian life, and it derives from God’s nature as
perfect love.
All of this leads to the question, “What is love, anyway?” I
might say that I love soccer. The statement is true, but it reduces love to a
kind of liking, however fanatical. When we say that God is love, we are not
reducing God to a kind of super-fan.
Often enough, we think of love as the sort of deep emotion
that binds people together. Erotic love binds a couple together. Community love
binds a family (biological or otherwise) together. Essential to such love is
the sense that I am incomplete without the loved one. If I am left alone when
my wife dies, I have part of myself ripped out. Such love is not simply caring
for the other; it is almost a synonym for need. “I love you” is close to “I
need you.”
God loves us, but God does not need us. God remains fully
God, fulfilled within the eternal trinity, even without the universe God has created.
So, “God is love” and “God loved the world so much” cannot mean “God needs us
and is incomplete without us.” What then does love mean?
A friend of mine once said it this way, “Love means wanting
God’s best for the other person.” Whether you are my friend or my enemy,
whether I like you or not, saying that I love you means I want God’s best for
you. I think that also describes God’s love for us. God made us as God’s images
in this world. God made us to represent God in this world. God made us to care
for each other and for creation. We fight with each other and destroy our
environment, abusing God’s good gifts, but God continues to love us. God wants
us to be all that God has made us to be.
Here’s where the story of the old man and the eagle comes in.
I am uncomfortable making the old man stand in for God. Dropping the eagle off
a cliff was cruel, and God is never cruel. But there is a connection. The old
man was distressed that the eagle was satisfied with being a chicken. In the
sense I have suggested, the old man loved the eagle. He wanted the eagle to be
true to his nature as a majestic bird soaring through the skies.
Whatever we say about being thrown off a cliff, we can say
this. God uses all that happens to us in our lives to make us into what God
wants us to be. The US Marines have a slogan, “Be all that you can be.” The
trouble is that they define what you can be. God wants something more - even more than anything we might want to be. God
wants us to be even better than the marines. “Be all that God has made you to
be!”
God has made us royalty, to rule with God forever. God is not as easily satisfied as we are and continues to mould us and shape us throughout our lives.Whatever happens in your life, know this: God is
at work in you to make you into God’s eagles. As the prophet put it so many
years ago, “28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the
earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can
fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and
increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow
tired and weary, and young people stumble and fall; 31 but
those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they
will walk and not be faint.”
Providence
International Chapel
13 Nov 2019
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