Tracking God's Reign

Learning to follow the signs of the Kingdom | The Word in the Wild, Proper 13, Year B

John 6:24-35

Photo by Goran tek-en

On Sunday afternoon, I rode my bike to the city edge, around the airport where Western and Eastern Kingbirds gathered with Scissor-tailed Flycatchers along the roadside, and into the industrial park called the Port of Little Rock. In those areas not occupied by factories making everything from highway signs to peanut butter, there are open fields and marshlands that make for good birding. This year I’ve been trying to find as many birds as possible by foot or bicycle, and the Port had recently been host to a wide variety of shorebirds migrating through.

When I reached the open mudflats where the shorebirds were feeding, I pulled my spotting scope and tripod from my backpack and walked across the grassy field to get a better look. There were Least Sandpipers on the water’s edge, a few Stilt Sandpipers wading in the deeper water, and three Semipalmated Plovers running about on the mud near the more common Killdeer. Many of these birds were stopping here on a journey that took them from the sub-Arctic, where they nested, and toward the beaches of South or Central America where they will winter.

I’ve been keeping lists of bird species for many years. I keep county bird lists, a life list, a state list, a year list, and now a bike year list. On this birding trip, however, even though I was drawn to the Port to add species to my list, I found myself paying more and more attention to what the birds were actually doing. When they called to each other, what did it mean? When a group of sandpipers suddenly burst from the mud and flew in a circle, what had provoked them? Was there any reason the sandpiper I was watching suddenly crouched close to the ground?

This new attentiveness to bird behavior had come from a book I’ve been reading by the bird language expert and tracker, Jon Young. In his book What the Robin Knows, Young shows how paying attention to bird language—communicated through both sound and behavior—can attune us to what is happening in the world around us in a new way. He recommends beginning this practice with the common North American thrush that loves to inhabit yards and parks across the country—the American Robin. Through the book Young teaches the reader the various signs Robins offer about what their perceiving in the landscape. And through my practice with Robins, I’d begun paying attention to what other birds might be telling me as well.

I thought about the different kinds of attunements involved in birding as I read our Gospel for this Sunday. It is the beginning of a major section of the Gospel of John called the “Bread of Life Discourse,” but it starts with Jesus pointing to larger aspect of how he shows up in the world—the signs he offers.

When the crowd follows Jesus, who had just fed 5,000 of them from a few loves and fishes, Jesus says to them: “you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” This word sign is important. One of the unique aspects of John’s Gospel is that there are no miracles, only signs. Though we would call it miraculous that water was turned to wine or a few loaves could be extended to feed thousands of people, John calls them signs instead of miracles because each one is meant to communicate a larger truth. To drive this point home, John’s Gospel contains exactly seven signs that Jesus offers. Since seven is a holy number, any time it shows up is a clue to that thing’s significance.

With Young’s book in my mind, when I read this term sign, my mind jumped not to road signs or storefronts, but to tracking. When trackers encounter a print in the mud, a bit of trampled vegetation, some scat, they call them “signs.” This term helps us understand that what we’re seeing isn’t just a footprint in the mud, but a reality that communicates something to us, clueing us into a larger story. A good tracker can read such signs and know not only what kind of animals are present, but in some cases whether or not the animal is pregnant or nursing, what kind of condition they are in, and an amazing array of other things. To an outsider it can seem like magic.

Our lives can easily get stuck on the level of plain objects. We experience the things around us, the people we interact with, even the prayers we say on a surface level. On such a level we might be able to identify important features around us, even recognizing a prophet when we see one, but like simply identifying birds rather than listening to what they have to say, this level misses the larger reality at play beyond the surface.

What Jesus is inviting us toward isn’t simply to see him as one who can fill our bellies and meet our needs, either materially or spiritually. Instead, Jesus wants us to encounter a different reality, one we find through in the signs he offers us. It is by carefully paying attention to Jesus, watching what he does, attuning ourselves to his behaviors and patterns of life, that we are then able to perceive this greater reality.

Admittedly, so much of my own spiritual life has been like my birdwatching—focused on placing check marks on a list. That has its place, but it isn’t where we should stop. Instead, by opening ourselves to the signs that will lead us to a deeper reality, we should slow down our discipleship and dwell before Jesus. We should simply look at him, at his life and way of being, and begin to notice where it leads us. By following such signs we’ll become trackers of God’s reign, followers of Jesus through the wilderness where the trails are not always marked.