"Vultures and Hummingbirds
" Sermon Transcript for July 29, 2001 By Dr. Bill SchweinScripture Reading: Philippians 4:4-9
Thank you, John. I appreciate your leadership. And I am delighted to be here. I’ve been looking forward to being here. I do have some question about Mike. He asked me several months ago to speak at your Wednesday night program and was gone. And he asked me to preach today and he’s gone. But at least he did tell me, he said, "I’ve arranged for there to be good music so the day won’t be a total loss for the folks."
I do feel in some ways very much at home here. This is one of our best congregations. You have two wonderful pastors with a grand supporting cast. I feel comfortable because there are some folks here whom I have known for a long, long time. Some of them will tell you that they helped raise me. If the sermon is really bad, you won’t see them after worship of course. They’ll take no responsibility. But there are some people here who mean a great deal to me; and I thank God for them. I’m grateful to be here.
I’ve got to be honest with you. In my life, I don’t do very much that Jesus tells me to do. I don’t have a very good record except for two things which he specifically said we should do. And I think I do them well. He said, "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow and look at the birds of the air." I do both of those. My Grandpa Schwein was a florist in Brownstown. And so ever since I have spent summers with him, I’ve considered the lilies, the petunias and the geraniums. I love flowers. I’ve been a life member of the Indiana Audubon Society; and so I look at the birds of the air and on the fences and in the bushes and on the ground. Right now I’m in a District parsonage not far from here that’s in a subdivision of Greenwood and I’ve counted over 24 different species of birds that have come to my bird feeders.
Now Jesus didn’t say "become bird watchers", though there are worse things you could do with your time. As was often the case he said, "there are some theological insights which can be gained from horticultural, ornithological truths." He said, "Look at the birds. Watch how they don’t do the same work that we do, and yet God takes care of them. Look at the flowers. They don’t have to go to the mall and pick out clothes and yet aren’t they beautiful." So maybe we ought to trust God. That was the message that he gave.
But I also think we can learn a lot about life, about ourselves by looking at some of the birds of the air. I was on a staff retreat a couple of years ago and the leader said, "If you weren’t a human being, what kind of bird would you be?" And somebody, of course, said, "Oh, I’d be an eagle, I like to soar, you know." And I said, "I’d probably be a morning dove." Nobody said they’d be a vulture. Nobody said they’d be a hummingbird. But I think those are two birds from which we can learn great truths about ourselves. Because there are differences between people, maybe we can divide the world into two groups--into vultures and hummingbirds. I know every church I’ve served there are vultures and there are hummingbirds. Maybe in this church there are vultures and there are hummingbirds. Probably in your office and in your family, around the table when you eat lunch today, there are vultures and there are hummingbirds.
Vultures, yeah, got to be the ugliest bird God created. Maybe it’s that little tiny bald head, I don’t know. Maybe it’s their imposing wing span. And just maybe it is their coloration. You’ve seen them circling around dead animals. That’s what they do! That’s what they live on! Road kill - carrion - the trash - the leftover - the rotting. On the other hand, there is the hummingbird. Is there any more delightful bird to watch in God’s creation than a hummingbird? They measure less than four inches long. They weigh a tenth of an ounce. They eat half their weight in sugar each day. They can fly backwards for a time. They winter in Mexico and in South America and when they get word that the flowers in your yard are about to bloom, they fly nonstop.
Vultures are always looking for rotting stuff; hummingbirds are always looking for what is sweet and good. Do you get the difference? Now do you know the people I am talking about? Steve Goodyear described the difference. The hummingbird and the vulture both fly over our nations desserts. All vultures see is rotting meat because that’s what they’re looking for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the dying, smelly flesh of dead animals; instead they look for the colorful blossoms of dessert plants. The vultures live on what was; they live on the past. They fill themselves up with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is; they seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do!
There it is! We find what we are looking for in life. We never are disappointed. If you look for the worse, you are going to find the worse. Life will be terrible. If you look for the best, life will be great. I guarantee it! A fellow was going to move into a town and he ran into a fellow sitting on a park bench and he said, "Tell me, what are the people like in this city?" And he said, "Well, what were they like where...where was it you’re from?" And he said, "I’ll tell you what they were like." He said, "I hated it. That’s why I’m moving. They were just rotten people. They were dishonest; they didn’t care for you. They were poor neighbors. I can’t wait to get out of there." And the man said, "Well, I’m sorry, that’s what they are like here." Another man came along, and he said, "I’m going to move into this town. What are the people like here?" And he said, "Well, tell me a little bit about the people where you came from." And he said, "Oh, I hate to leave. They were warm, they were helpful, they were neighborly, they were hospitable." And the man said, "That’s exactly what the people are like here."
Charles Swindall was right. The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude. The remarkable thing is we have a choice! I’m convinced that life is ten percent what happens and ninety percent how we react. There’s an epitaph on a woman’s grave — "Ever she sought the good and ever she found it!" If you go through life seeking the bad; you’ll find it. If you go through life seeking the good, you’ll find it. I’ll never forget visiting a woman in one of our congregations. She was an artist; she loved flowers. She was dying of cancer. I went to visit her. She was in a hospital bed in her family room. I was standing looking out the window at her garden. She said, "Bill, I live in a garden of Eden. Everyday is a miracle. Life is beautiful."
There’s an old Jewish proverb that says, "We don’t see things as they are, but as we are." If you don’t believe that, how else can you explain two people will sit through the same movie, sit through the same worship service, go through the same experience and evaluate it, critique it so different? It’s like what the Israelite army said when they confronted, encountered Goliath. "Oh, my gosh, he’s so big. We’ll never kill him!" And David said, "He’s so big, I can’t miss him!" Which would you have said?
We’ve all known vultures. They are the ones who are determined that it is their life mission to find something wrong about everybody and everything. I like that little joke. A man came into a restaurant and he says, "Do you serve crabs here?" And the waiter said, "Yes, sir, we’ll serve anybody." I guess that’s the thing about the church. The church serves anybody and everybody--even the crabs. And a lot of crabby people find their way into churches. "It’s too cold in here. I wish they’d turn down the heater or turn it off. Did you hear the choir? I didn’t like what the preacher said today. Did you see where the preacher parked? Have you seen the way his wife dresses?" On and on. I had a woman who circled around me like a vulture in a church. She did! Finally, I said, "If there is ever anything I do right, feel free to come up and tell me." I did! I said that. I said, "You know, it may never happen, but please..."
I don’t understand human nature enough to know why it is some people are like that. I think it was my dad who used to tell me the story about the navy was on leave. The group in the restaurant; the guy fell asleep at the bar. And so his buddies found some Lindberger cheese and rubbed it across his moustache. And he woke up and he sniffed and he walked outside and he sniffed and he kind of walked around and he sniffed. And he came back in and he finally sat down and he said, "It’s no use, the whole world stinks." But there are people, I guess its..just the whole world stinks. They made that their affirmation. Their mission statement! It’s like the widow who had two sons. She depended upon them for her income. One sold umbrellas, the other sold fans. She’d get up every morning and check the weather report. And if the sun was shining she felt so sorry for her son who was selling umbrellas. And she was so depressed. And if she got up and it was raining she felt so sorry for her son who was selling fans. And each day it was a bad day. She could have looked at it just the opposite; but she didn’t. There are those who see the thorns and not the roses, who see the trash and not the treasures, who see the weeds and not the flowers.
We have some friends who loaned us their condominium in Florida a few years back. It was up on the fifth floor overlooking the ocean. When we were there an egret happened to be perching on the railing of the porch. It was a gorgeous bird. I got my camera; and it allowed me to walk out and to take its picture. It was a wonderful experience. I couldn’t wait to get back and to tell my friend. I said, "You know, this bird, this egret..." And he said, "Oh, yeah, it sits there all the time. You ought to see the mess it leaves." I couldn’t help but say to him, "You know, that’s a parable isn’t it." It’s the difference. Some of us see beautiful birds; the rest of us just see the droppings. It’s the difference between getting up in the morning saying, "Good Lord, morning." or "Good morning, Lord!"
If you put on dirty glasses everything is going to look kind of smudgy, dirty, unpleasant. Norman Vincent Peale said, "If you expect the worse, you’ll find the worse; if you expect the best, you’ll get the best." And he told this story about baseball team that was in a slump. It couldn’t hit; just couldn’t hit! So the manager said, "I’m going to take your bats to a faith healer in a neighboring town and I’m going to get them blessed." Okay. He didn’t do anything with them. He brought them back the next day and said, "These are your regular bats. They’ve got a holy divine power now. They’ve been blessed by a faith healer." The team hit 37. They got 37 base hits, scored 20 runs. From then on they went on to win the championship. Everybody wanted to buy one of those blessed bats. It was all here in their head. All here.
British psychiatrists did an experiment to see if there really is something to blue Monday. They told a group, "Here are studies which indicate Monday is the worse day of the week." They told another group, "There is no indication, no study to prove that Monday is the worse day of the week." Guess wish group had tough Mondays? The ones who were told. You know about teachers. Teachers were told at the beginning of the year, "You’ve got the best students. These are the gifted students. We’ve gotten them all and put them in your class." At the end of the year, they excelled, they outdo themselves. When really, they’d been picked at random. They were no different from anybody else.
That’s why Paul said, "If you want to get through life with some contentment, with some peace, than whatever there is that’s good, look for that." Think about that. Eugene Peterson says, "I’d say you do best by filling your minds and meditating on things that are true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious, the best--not the worst, the beautiful--not the ugly, things to praise--not to curse." How tragic, we don’t get that when it comes to people! We just pick people apart. We put them down. We’re what Laura Beth Jones calls members of the "demolition" crew. Now we’re just tearing down people all the time. How wonderful it would be if we would encourage others with our affirmation. Help them to get in touch with their strengths not their weaknesses. Sure, Jesus could have come up to flaky, shaky Simon and called him Sandy, but he called him "Rocky". He said, "You are Peter; you’re a rock." And from that moment, Peter began to fulfill that expectation of him.
What a difference it would make in our marriages if we started looking for what’s good instead of what’s bad. If in our churches we started accentuating the positive. Let me tell you, no preacher ever, ever has to be told what they are doing wrong. We know. How wonderful it is to be told something we are doing right. A woman had been married for 15 years realized her marriage wasn’t what she wanted and so she said, "Well I think it really has to do with the mistakes we are making and our shortcomings." And she said, "Let’s each have a little fault box and we’ll put it on the dining room table and when we eat we’ll put in what we see as the others fault. And that will help us to evaluate." And so they did that day after day. And she some days would put two things in about him. And he would dutifully put in a piece of paper. Finally after two or three weeks she said, "Well, let’s open them and we’ll learn from them." And so he opened his. And one after another, "You don’t put the jelly jar back on... You know, you don’t put your dirty socks in the hamper. You leave the microwave door open. You don’t come home early." One after the other. All of his faults. He said, "It’s your turn." She opened up the box; pulled out a piece of paper. Every paper said the same thing. "I love you. I love you. I love you."
It’s not just what we’re looking for, it’s what we’re willing to overlook. That great hymn, "Now Thank We All Our God", you know, written by Martin Rinkart, a German at the time a plague decimated a community. Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor, buried his family. Buried his family and he wrote, "Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices. Who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices; who, from our mothers’ arms, hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today." My friends, I would hope that you will every day look for reasons to say, "Now thank "I". Be a hummingbird. Be a hummingbird. Amen.
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