Reflection:
In our gospel today, Jesus makes a magnificent point in a marvelously simple way. He wants to tell us about how God loves, so he turns to a handful of sparrows, tiny creatures who hardly seem worth a second look. To us, sparrows are a dime a dozen, seemingly so interchangeable that one is as good as another. But to God, Jesus says, every one of these supposedly forgettable creatures matters; to God, not a single sparrow is expendable, not even one is superfluous. The message could not be more striking: God is invested in everything, even the well-being of sparrows. Nothing exists that does not live in and from and because of God’s love. All creatures, even the smallest and seemingly most negligible, are prized by God; all things, even chattering sparrows, are loved through and through.
But if God’s imaginative, creative, and always caring and compassionate love pertains to sparrows, what does that mean for us, who, Jesus attests, “are worth more than any sparrows”? This gospel passage from Luke gives us insight into the wonderful ways of God’s love. God is no lazy lover who approaches us as if we were just anyone, but the supremely diligent lover who takes everything about us into account. Like all great lovers, God has an eye for detail, down to the hairs on our head; like all great lovers, God grasps our own special beauty and goodness, our shimmering singularity.
In God’s eyes, we are all fabulous creatures, and it is a sin to think otherwise.
That’s the wonderful message we are left with today. We are loved down to the most minute details of our lives. Like the sparrows we hardly notice, we are loved by God in every possible way, wrapped up in a fierce, unshakable love that will never leave us. So why should we ever be anxious? Why should we ever fear? Why should we ever be sad? When we truly grasp God’s immeasurable, undying love for us, those things just never make sense.
