August 3, 2014 Vultures? Really? Vultures! By Rev R. Butler Scripture Isaiah 40: 28-31 I did a wedding this week at an outdoor venue in Lafayette..Around the grounds were chickens not just plain white chickens beautifully colored chickens..i wasn t prepared for that They were beautiful. What is the prettiest bird you ve ever seen? A Peacock, yellow wing blackbird, wood duck? Have you seen the American Avocet? Here it is it is a unique bird, it s the bird that started Sue Clasen bird watching. Or perhaps you have seen the splendid fairy wren, that bird is beautiful. The paradise tanager? Unbelievable. The Himalayan monal pheasant? Spectacular. Birds are beautiful creatures. I doubt I will ever get to see those birds in person but I have seen blue birds, cardinals, and regular pheasants...and they are stunning and then there is the vulture. There are two major categories of vultures New World vultures and Old World Vultures. New World vultures are found in North America and South America there are seven species including the California Condor and the Turkey Vulture There are 16 different types of Old World (The rest of the world) Vultures. It has been reported that vultures projectile vomit into the face of anything that startles them. That may or may not be true but they do vomit. They eat dead bodies. They defecate on their own legs. Most are bald. The idea has been that that allows them to stick their entire heads into a carcass without fouling their feathers It is possible, they say, that you can see through a turkey vultures head from one side of its head to the other. Vultures sit with their heads hunched down like a sulking teenager. Sometimes they eat so much that they are too heavy to fly. Vultures do not sing. They grunt. A group of feeding vultures is called a wake. They wobble in flight.
Most people do not think of a vulture as a majestic or beautiful creature, I don t know if I will change your mind today but perhaps we will learn something. Would you pray with me? Proper burials were important to the Hebrew people. If you weren t properly buried, the vultures and other animals would tear your body up. In Deuteronomy, God threatens the Israelites with the fate Thy carcass shall be meat, if the Israelites don t abide by the covenant. Goliath threatened David by saying, come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds. In Revelation birds gorge on the flesh of the defeated beast. Vultures aren t always identified in these pieces in the Bible but there were plenty of them in Israel and Jesus says, Wherever the corpse is, there the vulture will gather. It s not a pretty picture when it comes to vultures. People who profit from other people s sufferings are called vultures. There are vulture capitalists who swoop in on corporations when they are not doing well. When you go to a car dealer and there are all the sales people out there waiting for their victims skulking around vultures. I don t know anyone who takes a liking to vultures but then again someone told me recently they did their college degree on the mating habits of salamanders..who wants to know these things? Vultures have not always been the low bird on the totem pole. In certain cultures vultures have been honored. In ancient Egypt, people saw a vulture as a great mother God. It was called nekhbet. It was referred to as Mother of Mothers who existed from the beginning, and gave birth to all that is. That is high praise. The Hebrew word Nesher is often translated in our English versions of the Bible as eagle but most scholars agree that griffon vulture is at least an alternative, if not a better translation. Rev. Debbie Blue who wrote the book Consider the Birds- Provocative Birds of the Bible says that as vultures became more loathsome to us English Speakers, translators couldn t quite bring themselves to use the word vulture it wouldn t sound right to our ears.
But when God says to Moses, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on nesher s wings and brought you to myself, it s probably not an eagle to which God refers. I thought to myself when I read this is that possible? So I went to one of the bibles I have, it is the New English version of the Bible, there it was in place of Eagle, the Griffon-Vulture. Sure enough I go to Job, Chapter 9 vs. 25 and 26, In my New Revised Standard version of the Bible it reads My days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They go by like skiffs of reed, like an eagle swooping on the prey. But in my New English Bible it reads, My days have been swifter than a runner they have slipped away and seen no prosperity; they have raced by like reed-built skiffs, swift as vultures swooping on carrion. In Jeremiah, chapter 40 In the new revised version For thus says the Lord: Look, he shall swoop down like an eagle, and spread his wings against Moab In the New English Bible For the Lord has spoken: A vulture shall swoop down and spread out his wings over Moab. One more example though you can find a number of others! They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like nesher, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (By the way my New English version couldn t make themselves put vultures in that line they left it as eagles. Didn t someone say, Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds! Well that changes things doesn t it? What would it mean to be carried on the wings of a vulture the great protective mother bird? Before you say noo, noo, noo. A Vulture s wings are huge. The California condor which is a vulture has the largest wingspan of any flying bird 9 feet 8 inches. I didn t know this but Vultures fly higher than almost every other bird on earth. Most birds fly below 500 feet but vultures glide at 10,000 feet easily and in 1973 a
griffon vulture collided with a commercial airliner over Africa. The plane was flying at 37,900 feet. That is the highest altitude ever recorded for a bird. It isn t raw power that helps the vulture fly that high they ride the thermals and the currents up, up up on vultures wings. Let me turn this to a theological reflection How do you think God acts in the world? Is it more like a vulture soaring or more like a hummingbird flitting here and there? Something to consider. Sometimes I want that hummingbird zooming God to come and take care of this war or that disease or that issue or that person. Perhaps though it takes a God with all the time in the world to see that some good might come from all the setbacks and the tragedies in life. For some people faith is like the strong, smooth powerful soaring of an eagle, but for some of us it is much more wobbly the way a vultures wings wobble as we are blown by the currents of the hot air that surround us. Maybe Isaiah really did mean to say that those who wait shall mount up with wings like vultures not eagles. We can t be sure. That would surprise us but I have a feeling that the Bible has been such a loved book through the generations because there are surprises in it like a savior who dies and who is remembered by eating a piece of bread and juice. Don t you think Jesus shook up the people of his time with the things he said and did? If the Bible is not shaking us up, we may need to look in different places, maybe read the footnotes, or read between the lines, open our eyes wider, dust it off and try it again. The Mayans referred to the vultures as death eaters. This struck them as something good because vultures stare death in the face and don t fear it. It goes through them, comes out harmless.
The Hebrews thought having your body eaten by vultures was a fate worse than death they carcass shall be meat was one of the worst things you could say to someone. But in Tibet, the Buddhists there proactive jhator which means alms to the birds also known as sky burial. The monks chant mantras, the incense is burned, and finally the bodies are laid out ceremoniously to be eaten by vultures. It is seen as an act of generosity in death one provides food to sustain the living beings. Isn t it difficult to see something from an angle we are not used to? We have our definitions of what is beautiful I wonder if we don t need to open our minds to see beauty in other places and in other ways. Maybe we should try to love something different for a change. Love something unusual one of our members loves the Green Bay Packers I don t know how they do it. There is a poem by Margaret Atwood about vultures, it goes like this: Frowzy old saint, bald headed and musty, scrawny necked recluse on your pillar of blazing air which is not heaven, what do you make of death, which you do not cause, which you eat daily? Then the vulture replies: I make life, which is a prayer. I make clean bones.
I make gray zinc noise which to me is song. And then the vulture asks the poet: Well, heart, out of all this carnage, could you do better? May their still be surprises for you as you live out your faith maybe even on the wings of vultures. May we set our hearts and minds to a place that welcomes the glad surprise and that begins to see just how wonderful this world is. May we go in peace and not forget to do something good in the world this week. Amen.