The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on Sunday, February 19, 2023.

That Bird has my Wings

(by Ernest Boyer - written version)

The older I get the more I realize that the world that we see is just the tiniest sliver of the world as it truly is. Reality is infinitely larger than we know — infinitely larger than we can even imagine. Now and then we get the briefest glimpse of that fuller reality, a quick peek at the enormity that lies just beyond our sight. Such moments open can our minds. Perhaps they can open our hearts too. Today’s gospel describes one such moment in the life of three of Jesus’ followers, Peter, James and John. It describes the Transfiguration, the day that Jesus took them up a mountain, then suddenly stood before them transformed so that the three were all at once given a hint of who Jesus truly was. They could actually see it. As Matthew says, Jesus’ “face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.” That description was the best he could do, but I’m sure it was so much more. As Peter later said in the letter that is also among today’s readings, the three “had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

We hear this story every year on the last Sunday of Epiphany, which is what today is. Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. But just because it comes on the last Sunday of Epiphany, we shouldn’t think of it as the last epiphany in the life of Jesus. Far from it. Remember what “epiphany” means. Epiphany is defined as “a sudden and striking realization, specifically a realization of God and God’s manifestation in the world.” By that meaning, the entire gospels are one epiphany after another. It begins even before Jesus’ birth, with the angel’s appearance to Mary, and continues through Jesus’ baptism, to his calling of the disciples, his teachings, his healings — through even his crucifixion — to his resurrection and Pentecost and beyond. In fact, such realizations of God’s presence continue even to this day. They are there all around us in large ways and small. Sometime that hit us like a blinding spotlight straight in the face. We can’t help but notice them. They stop us cold. They wake us up. Other times they creep up on us quietly and may even pass us by if we aren’t primed to watch for them. 

Let me tell you a story of something I heard years ago. This dates back to the days when I was visiting jails and prisons twice a week to conduct services and bible studies. I did that for years in addition to my duties in the parish. I often took parishioners along with me, in fact. The work was inspiring but also demanding, so to help me get better prepared, I signed up at one point for a workshop being held at San Quentin prison. I have been in many jails, many prisons. Every one of them is daunting. They are built to be. There is something about steel bars slamming closed that just chills the blood. Some jails and prisons are worse than others, though. Worst of all are parts of San Quentin. It’s probably for that reason that they make it almost as hard for visitors to get into as it is for prisoners to get out.

What made the starkness of the walls and the gloom of the buildings at San Quentin even more striking was the gentleness and tenderness of the men I met there. The day started out with a gathering of a group of men serving life sentences who were all part of a meditation group. Most were in their 60’s and 70’s and had been in that place for decades with no hope ever leaving, and yet every one was warm, open, and unexpectedly vulnerable. When one of the women in our group shared at one point how much she was learning about what it meant to be loving from them, one of these men serving a life sentence suddenly began to weep. Between great, gasping sobs, the prisoner haltingly explained that the woman’s words had been the first time he had ever heard anyone suggest that his life might actually help make the life of someone else a little better. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much that means to me,” he said.

It was also in that group that I heard the story of Jarvis Masters, a member of this meditation group, who because of a work detail, couldn’t be present with us that day. As related by the man leading the group, this is his story. As the man told it, Jarvis didn’t just start life with two strikes against him. He struck out right from his birth. Not only were both of his parents addicted to heroin and alcohol but his father was brutally abusive to both him and his mother so that Jarvis was eventually removed and bounced from one foster home to another. Most of these were at least uncaring and sometimes worse. There was one family that was the exception and in later life Jarvis would look back on them with gratitude as his one light of hope. But otherwise the account of his early years looks like nothing more than a one-way road to crime. With schooling a nightmare and no jobs available, gangs looked to him like the only way to be safe in a violent world. The result was a conviction for armed robbery at 19, a sentence he knew he deserved. Not long afterwards, though, several members of a gang that he had been trying to separate from falsely testified that he had been an accessory to their murder of a prison guard and he was sentenced to death.

Finding himself 22 years old and suddenly in solitary confinement on death row, Jarvis decided that, if he was going to die for a crime he didn’t commit, he was at least going to try to find out how his life had ended up like this and do what he could to change it while he still could. In the process, he discovered meditation, and as he sat in silence hour after hour, day after day, slowly all the hatred and fear and anger of his early days began to fall away and, to his astonishment, he found a faith in something higher — a reality beyond himself — and he found peace. Months passed into years as he sought to get his sentence appealed, and as he did, his faith deepened further and further, so that even where he was, locked in solitary confinement in a tiny, dark, grim little cell, he began to experience moments of revelation. He especially looked forward to the one brief hour when he was allowed out into the yard with other prisoners. It wasn’t often. I seem to remember that it was only once a week, but that now feels hardly credible to me. Only an hour a week? Could that really be possible? I don’t know. But it wasn’t often.

Then one day something happened out in that yard. The night before there had been a heavy rain so that the yard was now partially flooded. Jarvis wandered over to the one dry space, an asphalt basketball court where one of the other inmates was shooting hoops, but he wasn’t there to watch him. Instead, he was looking up. He started out looking at the gun turrets and the high stone walls topped with electrified razor wire, but then he caught sight of a sea gull. San Quentin is situated right on the bay so sea gulls are a common sight, but this time the sight really hit him. Its wings spread, Jarvis watched the gull as it rode the air currents, his eyes never leaving it as it flew high above the wall, gliding back and forth with careless ease as if the wall were not even there. It rose higher, then dipped, then rose again. The bird soared far over head and circled, and the young man’s heart soared with it. He felt himself one with that bird. It was free, and in that moment, he knew that he was free too. The walls, the razor wire, the gun turrets all suddenly disappeared as he suddenly knew that they really did not contain him at all. They didn’t contain who he truly was. They didn’t contain his soul. That, he now saw, was as free and open as the sky itself. It had no limits. And best of all, it was loved. He was loved. He was loved by an infinitely loving God.

         “What are you looking at?” the demand startled Jarvis. It came from the other man on the basketball court, the one shooting hoops.

         In answer, Jarvis simply pointed towards the bird, which had now descended to float placidly in a pool of rainwater not ten feet away.

         “What?” the prisoner who had been shooting baskets cried. “You’ve spent all this time just staring at a bird?! A stupid bird?! Are you crazy, man?” He shook his head in disgust. “A stupid bird,” he repeated, then turned to study the bird. “Man, I bet I could kill that bird with this ball. What do you want to bet?” The man switched the ball to one hand, and cocked back his arm. “Come on, what do you want to bet?”

         “No,” Jarvis said. “Don’t kill it.”

         “What you like that bird?” the other said, leering at him now. “Well, say good-bye to it man, because it’s dead.”

         And with that, he snapped his arm forward to throw the ball, but Jarvis had already shot his own arm out to block it. Their arms tangled and the ball dropped helplessly to the ground where it bounced off in another direction.

         Suddenly furious, the other pushed Jarvis away. “What’d you do that for?” he demanded. “What’d you do that for?”

         By now, everyone else in the yard was watching. All knew that what Jarvis had done — blocking another prisoner like that — was like striking a match to a pile of dynamite. They moved closer, certain there was about to be violence. Jarvis stepped back, holding up his hands.

         “I don’t want any trouble, man,” he said. “I just don’t want you to kill that bird. Just don’t kill the bird.”

         “Are you crazy?” the other countered, still angry. “Why do you even care?”

         “Why do I care?” Jarvis repeated, searching for a response.

How was he to tell him all that he had realized in those long moments as he had watched the bird? How was he to describe how he himself had begun to soar with as it flew and, in the process, had discovered a freedom far deeper than he could have imagined, given to him by a reality beyond all that we could know, a truth that is the very heart of God.

         “Why do I care?” he said again. “Man, you ask me why?” He paused. “It’s because… It’s because …Oh, man,” he blurted out suddenly, “It’s because that bird has my wings, that’s why!”

         With that, the whole yard grew silent. That bird has my wings. All those who had gathered expecting a fight, slowly turned to look at the bird.

         “Yeah, man,” someone said at last, “don’t kill the bird.”

         “That’s right,” another continued. “don’t kill the bird. That bird has our wings.”

         They were all watching the bird now… and continued to watch as it slowly spread its wings and rose into the air. It circled the yard once, then slowly banked and slipped effortlessly… easily… miraculously over the razor wire and vanished into the distance.

So, you see, such moments are there all the time, even in a prison yard — moments when we see behind the veil, moments when we glimpse how things really are, moments when we see the world as God actually made it, with God’s love the thread that draws it all together. “You will do well to be attentive” to such moments Peter says in his letter about his own experience. Each one of them is “a lamp shining in a dark place,” he continues. We can use its light to show us the way and give us hope “until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” These are beautiful words, these words of Peter, and they tell a beautiful truth: there’s more to reality than we know. …And it’s all …wonderful.

Amen.

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