What Is a Sparrow Worth?

“You are of more value than many sparrows,” Jesus says in today’s reading from Matthew 10:24-33.  Figuratively speaking, it’s a very nice sentiment, but I can’t help but thinking—okay, but what’s a sparrow worth?  We’re worth more than sparrows, but how much is that? 

And for the literalists among us, Jesus gives the answer to that, too. 

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” Jesus asks, rhetorically.

Okay, so we’re worth more than a penny, but really, does that answer the question as to how much God values us?

So, I’m worth more than a penny, but what is that in today’s money?

It’s like that time when a friend of mine, who is a priest, told me she prayed for me for a whole mile on her way to church that morning. 

“Thank you,” I told her, earnestly.  “That’s so sweet.”  But in the back of my head, I’m wondering, was that a mile through a school zone, or a mile on the interstate, because a mile going through a school zone is going to take a whole lot more time than a mile zipping down the fast lane on the interstate.

These details are important!  How much prayer did I get?

All joking aside, let’s get back to the original question—how much does God value the sparrows?  What is a sparrow’s worth?

I have been a nature photographer for a long time and especially, living in Florida, that meant becoming a bird watcher too.  In Florida, birds are celebrities. 

Seriously, next time you are in Florida, drive around—maybe not in the big cities—but definitely in the smaller cities and suburbia, and if you see a group of people gathered on the side of the road, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s for a bird—sometimes for an alligator, but mostly birds.

Some years ago, there were so many people pulled over down the road from where I lived in Florida—people with tripods and cameras and even a news truck, you’d think they were covering a royal wedding.

It was royalty of a sort.  The mating pair of swans that called that particular retention pond home had brought half a dozen or so cygnets into the world.

That was a rarity.  But the sandhill cranes seemed to make that same spot home for their nest year after year and believe me, I pulled over in mud and through heavy traffic to get pictures of those first steps those baby cranes took.

There was a bald eagle’s nest overlooking the interstate and in order to get a picture of their babies each year, I had to either hike up the overpass, bike up the overpass, or eventually, I just bought an electric scooter and scooted up the overpass and then used a camera with a zoom big enough to capture the rings of Saturn to get pictures of the eagles.

And then there were the white pelicans.  White pelicans are migrating birds in Florida, so you see them in December usually and then again a few months later.  But when they arrive it is with such fanfare.  There can be dozens and dozens of them, moving, swimming in mass in the retention ponds.  But they aren’t alone.  They follow the cormorants who lead the pelicans to the fishes.  All that attention draws in the great blue herons and great egrets and hawks and osprey and eagles.  Yes, you have to stop when you see such a sight.

The Florida Scrub Jay is the only bird endemic to Florida.  Florida is the only state you will see them in and they are protected.  I would drive a few miles down the road from where I lived to a sanctuary where they were known to live.  Scrub Jays generally stay with a very small area.  They don’t venture very far.  They are also very tame because, despite the signs warning against feeding the Scrub Jays, people still do.  And so yes, I have had Scrub Jays land on my head when I have tried to take a picture.

I was looking through all my old photos the other day to try and see when I became a bird watcher, when I went from someone who noticed the birds here and there, to someone who brought her camera to church with her, just in case something miraculous happened outside the church windows, like the hawk who landed on the arbor that marked the entrance to the prayer labyrinth, or the cardinal who regularly tapped on the glass during the service.

When did I start seeing birds as something of value, of worth, as something distinctly of God’s creation?

It was in 2014, I think.  It had been a rough few years.  I had gone from the highest of highs, starting seminary, trying to answer God’s call to the priesthood, to the lowest of lows, having to drop out of seminary and quit my teaching job because of health problems, I had zero control over.

What do you do when you are one hundred percent certain of your purpose in life, one hundred percent certain you are serving God with everything you have—and it’s not enough?  What happens when your spirit is strong and more than willing, but your physical health means that somedays just walking from the couch to the bathroom is nearly impossible.  What do you do when all you have ever wanted to do was serve God, but now there seems no way? 

“God will make a way,” the lyrics to the song tell us or in Proverbs 16:9 this, “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.”

Or earlier in verse 3, “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”

And so, in a story I have told many times, a friend of mine from work told me about a book where a man had taken a picture of the same tree every day for a year.  Knowing my love of photography, she told me, “You can do something like that.”

And so every day, I drove to my church, to that beautiful little church surrounded by trees and overlooking the water, and I took a picture.  Sometimes I only made a few steps from the car, but I took a picture, drove home and wrote about where I saw God that day.  I was able to do this for almost three hundred days in a row, and those pictures turned into a book called, Hope Lives: Choosing God in the Face of Illness.

But it was around Day 172 that suddenly my daily pictures exploded with birds, mockingbirds and blue jays, cardinals and osprey, red-shouldered hawks and cooper’s hawks, ducks and great egrets, great blue herons and little blue herons, and the incredible pileated woodpecker. 

Together with all the other life, flora and fauna, dragonflies and butterflies, snakes and turtles, lizards and wasps—God filled my days with His creation.  He filled my spirit.

All that life, especially that bird life, was precious to me.

God saved me with birds.

And so birds are priceless to me.

And if they’re priceless to me, you know they are priceless to God.

That is how much a sparrow is worth.

You are worth more.

Amen.