Yesterday, Easter Sunday, I was sitting at lunch with David and David, Kim, Colin and Margaret… at the Davids’ house, and I saw something awful happen.  I was going to say “I witnessed something awful,” but that sounds too detached, too distant from the gruesome reality. In their neighbor’s yard a big crow floated down and perched on a utility wire, and hovering above it with occasional shallow dives a tiny hummingbird was clearly trying to drive the crow away.  The crow dropped suddenly into the fronds of the small palm below.  The hummingbird followed. The crow flew out carrying away a baby bird in its beak.  

I thought off and on all day about whether or not I would write about what I saw.  Obviously I decided to do it, and now I’m still wondering why.  I don’t know… I guess maybe it’s because I can’t get another horrible story out of my mind… a story that culminates in a “Holy Week” celebrated all over the world every year at this time. The reason for the season is that in a classical mythical passion play a god of love killed his son on an altar of sacrifice so the shed blood of the innocent son would somehow pay a debt that all people, as sinners, owe to the god because of their sins. In the story not everybody benefits from the sacrificial killing.  Just those people who truly believe the story benefit.  

Death happens… obviously… sooner or later to absolutely everybody. It’s not the fact of death in the story, even cruel death,that mystifies me. It’s that this powerful god, called the God of Love, would set up his own son, or anybody’s son for that matter, in a scheme that deliberately culminated in the son’s death.  There is nothing in my experience as a parent that helps me understand how that story makes sense…  

That little hummingbird parent yesterday tried desperately to keep the powerful crow from going to the nest.  Of course, I’ve heard the sermons and have read the exegesis, but it still seems a most unlikely strategy for making peace happen on earth… or anywhere else.