By Father Casey

In the church of my childhood, the Scriptures were read from a big brass eagle. Oh, how I loved it! It presented a somewhat awkward platform for the large Bible that we read from, but that awkwardness was more than made up for by its symbolic power. Effective symbols don't need a lot of explanation, and that is certainly the case when a reader stands behind a huge gleaming eagle and says, "A reading from…"

The tradition of lecterns in the shape of eagles dates back to the medieval era in England and Italy. Scholars think they originated in the ancient belief that eagles could gaze into the sun, symbolizing our call to peer into the light of the divine word, or else the belief that eagles soar the highest of all creatures, symbolizing the carrying of the word of the Lord throughout the world.

Who doesn't love the eagle as a religious metaphor? It's at the heart of one of the best loved hymns of the 20^th century, "On Eagle Wings," which is easily the most requested song for funerals. And it appears in several famous places in the Bible, including the passage from Exodus that we'll hear this weekend.

Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites:

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians,

and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. (19:4)

But what if I told you that the bird we've been celebrating in sculpture and song, not to mention in our spiritual imaginations, is all wrong? The Hebrew word nesher that typically gets translated "eagle" (including in the Exodus above) is actually the word for "vulture." That does change things a bit, doesn't it? It is a totally different image to imagine ourselves on the back on a vulture flying toward the Lord, or to sing, "And I will raise you up on vulture'swings"! It is, as the kids say, "cringy."

While it may not be a metaphor we like or want, it is a metaphor we need. We want life with God to be like riding on an eagle, because we want to be cruising with an alpha predator who isn't afraid of anything. We want a God who soars high, flies fast, and evokes awe. There is a reason why eagles are the symbol of empires, from ancient times to our own nation today. They represent everything we desperately want to be.

Yet when we look at the gospels, the God who walks the earth doesn't seem all that interested in the trappings of an eagle-like faith. Jesus doesn't preach power and ferocity, but compassion and mercy. He doesn't circle his enemies like a predator hunting prey, but circles the world like a shepherd in search of lost sheep. Empires love eagles, but Christ's kingdom is much more like a very different majestic bird. As Debbie Blue writes in her wonderful book, Consider the Birds,

Faith for me is not like the strong, smooth, sure-of-itself eagle soaring; but rather the waiting, wobbly, awkward circling of those blown-by-the-merest whiffs-of-wind turkey vultures… Faith is more like circling than seizing. It is being lifted by thermals more than flying by the power of our individual wings.[1]

I have nothing against eagles. Every time I ride my bike around White Rock Lake, I stop to see if I can spot the bald eagles nesting in the trees, and anyone who has seen an eagle fly is unlikely to forget it. But in our confused age, when the humble and merciful way of Jesus is being replaced by a false religion of power, we need some alternative metaphors to help us hold onto the way, truth, and life of Christ.

And here's one last reason why the vulture is a metaphor we need: the scientific Latin name for the turkey vulture is Cathartes aura, literally "the golden purifier." Vultures are able to take in things that would be toxic to anyone else and swallow them down. The rot and decay of death go through their bodies and come out harmless. Cathartes aura purifies the world of death and makes it clean. The ancient Mayans had it right when they called vultures "death eaters."

Doesn't that make the Exodus verse that much more powerful? When we read, "I bore you on vultures' wings and brought you to myself," it rings with gospel truth. It took our golden purifier, our world-cleansing, our death-digesting Lord to save us. He is the one bearing us on his wings. He is the one carrying us home.

So while our journey may wobble at times and look a little unsightly, we don't have to be afraid, for we soar on the wings of a death-eating God.

Casey+

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[1] Debbie Blue, Consider the Birds (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2013) p 73.