Sermon: The Falcon and the Falconer

This sermon was preached on January 26, 2025 at Church of the Good Shepherd in Augusta, GA. It was the Third Sunday After the Epiphany (C) and the lections were Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21; Psalm 19.

A small cadre of Good Shepherders went to Helen, Georgia at the invitation of Jet Taylor last week. Our purpose was to attend an Apprentice Academy with Georgia Mountain Falconry, hosted by the inimitable Buster Brown. Jet and I were joined by Matt and Chip Matson and John and Lucy Stewart. We spent time with owls, hawks, falcons, and a golden eagle and learned valuable information about the ancient sport of falconry.

On our second night, our sixsome went to The Troll Tavern…located under a bridge…where we realized we had the opportunity to become the opening of a good joke…a priest, a lawyer, and a doctor walked into a tavern… We consulted our phones and ChatGPT generated the best joke…here it goes:

A priest, a lawyer, and a doctor go hunting with a falcon. Spotting a pheasant, the falcon soars into action. It dives, catches the pheasant, and brings it back. The three stand there, unsure who gets the prize.

The lawyer says, “Clearly, the bird belongs to me. It was my suggestion to bring the falcon.”

The doctor counters, “But it was my sharp eyes that spotted the pheasant first, so it’s clearly mine.”

The priest smiles and says, “Gentlemen, let us not quarrel. Let’s trust in divine providence.” Looking up to heaven, he says, “Lord, whose pheasant is this?”

At that moment, the falcon drops the pheasant and flies off with the lawyer’s wallet. The priest grins and says, “Looks like even the falcon agrees—render unto Caesar!”

All joking aside, the image of the falcon has been used powerfully in poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Butler Yeats. In “The Windhover,” Hopkins beautifully describes the majesty of the “dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon” riding upon the wind. Yeats opens his apocalyptic poem, “The Second Coming,” with the words: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer.”

The relationship between falcon and falconer is significant. The falconer must earn the trust of the falcon and the falcon must learn to obey the call of the falconer. There is training, there are tidbits, and there is a lure. I have a lure right here, which I won in Helen, made by Buster Brown. The falconer uses the lure to train the falcon by recalling the raptor back to oneself. The lure leads to trust.

This image has been used by theologians Ashley Null and Zac Hicks in their works on the life and theology of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was the architect of the Book of Common Prayer and an avid falconer. Null and Hicks suggest that Cranmer’s falconry was central to his liturgical and theological convictions. They identify the grace and forgiveness offered through the work of Jesus as a divine allurement, intended to recall humanity back to her God. 

With the lure, Falcons are caught and then released before returning to the falconer again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This idea of returning to the call of God and being sent released for mission and ministry courses through our liturgy and passages today.

The collect describes a theological catch-and-release program. First, we must readily answer the call of Jesus. Second, we proclaim to all people the Good News of God in Christ. Jesus is the one who catches us and we are released to bring others to be caught by him as well.

Our lessons from Nehemiah and Luke paint the same picture.

Nehemiah was an Israelite living in Susa during the Babylonian captivity. He was away from the promised people, removed from the promised land, separated from the promised future. Though he had never been to Jerusalem, Nehemiah received word about the destruction of the city wall. He responded with four actions:

He wept. 
He confessed. 
He prayed. 
He worked.

Though he was only a cupbearer to the king, Nehemiah requested a caravan of people and supplies to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall. Nehemiah and the families of Israel overcame many obstacles and rebuilt the wall in just 52 days! 

In our passage, the wall is rebuilt, the city is protected, and the people are united in their work. But that’s not enough. The work of rebuilding the wall was vital but it was never intended as the primary focus. It is so easy in the community of faith to focus myopically on the work that we forget, ignore, neglect, or overlook the common story binding us together. As Simon Sinek argues, we must start with our why rather than our what or how.

Nehemiah introduces us to Ezra. Ezra brings the law of Moses with him. He stands before the people and he reads the law aloud. 

These aren’t just any words. 

These are the words of God’s gracious and limitless love; 
The words which God gave to his people back at Mount Sinai, 
Words given to a people already redeemed;
Words which forged and formed their common story.

That Ezra is reading the law now, here, to these people, is significant. Jerusalem has been under foreign occupation for almost 150 years due to Israel’s refusal to live faithfully in relationship with her Covenant maker. They forgot who they were because they ignored whose they were. The falcon could not hear the Falconer.

Ezra’s reading of the law is a call to return to God;
It is a divine allurement to be caught by the loving hand of God;
It is a reminder of who Israel is, whose she is, and how she will live.
Ultimately, it is an invitation to renew the covenant. 

Covenant renewals are depicted routinely throughout Scripture and they typically precede prolonged seasons of faithfulness, fidelity, and fecundity. Seasons when the falcon hears and returns to the Falconer.

In response to God’s word, the people lift their hands and say, “Amen and amen,” meaning “yes it is so and may it be so!” They bow down and worship with their faces toward the ground, acknowledging God’s holiness and their sinfulness. Hearts are rent, grace is received, and the people are renewed. The rebuilding of the wall was never about the bricks and mortar and manual labor. It was always about God’s people being united in their commitment to God and one another.

As our scene shifts to Jesus in the synagogue, we are still steeped in Israel’s common story. 

Luke fixes his narrative lens on Nazareth, the place where Jesus was raised. Luke tells us that Jesus was in the synagogue for worship on the sabbath, as was his custom. Jesus was a torah-observant Jew who oriented his life around the religious customs and traditions of his people. The language suggests that Jesus’ custom wasn’t just going to the synagogue but teaching there. While not his first sermon ever, this is an important sermon which Luke uses to set up the whole of Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus took the scroll of Isaiah from the attendant and began to unroll it. The Great Scroll of Isaiah, found in Qumran and dated to just after the time of Jesus, has 17 pieces of parchment stitched together and is 24 feet long! When Luke tells us that Jesus was given the scroll of Isaiah we are talking about a very big scroll.

Jesus locates the passage and reads Isaiah’s messianic words to the people. These two verses, coming from Isaiah 61, provide the basic job description of the messiah, outlining the arc of Jesus’ ministry as God’s anointed holy herald. Jesus announces what he will be doing in the peoples’ midst, what God will be doing in, through, and for them. 

The pronouns in these verses are crucial to our understanding. Isaiah and Luke use the word “me” three times. 

The Spirit of the LORD is upon me. 
He has anointed me.
He has sent me.

The first actor in this passage is God and the recipient of the action is Jesus. God has sent his son, Jesus, as the anointed One. Jesus isn’t here on vacation. He is here on a mission to redeem, rescue, restore, and reconcile people to the Living God. 

Jesus announces and proclaims that the ministry of the Messiah is Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered, and Spirit-anointed. It is a ministry to and for the life of the world.

Jesus describes what it looks like when the Messiah comes to town…because the Messiah has come to town! The Spirit has already descended upon him, he has received the Father’s anointing, and he will move forward from this sermon on his search-and-rescue mission. The promises of God are being fulfilled and will be fulfilled through Jesus: it is a veritable Jubilee. 

He then rolls up the scroll, gives it to the attendants, and he sits down. 

The reading has been fulfilled, both in their hearing and in ours, and now Jesus rolls up his sleeves and gets to work. Jesus is reminding the people of their common story and inviting them to catch the call and release the good news.

And this brings us back to falconry.

Christ is the falconer and we, the church, are the falcon. 

As Yeats so prophetically describes, there are moments when the falcon cannot hear the falconer. We either fly too high in our pride like Icarus or we train our ears to ignore the voice of our falconer, or we fly the coop entirely.  

When we lose the ability to hear our Falconer, Yeats tells us: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. 

Friends, I’m going to now shift our attention to a very sensitive topic, one which requires our care and concern.

As you know, there was a service at Washington National Cathedral this week where Bishop Marianne Budde preached and President Trump was in attendance.

But before I go further, I want to be very clear:

There are people in this room who want me to condemn the Bishop;
There are people in this room who want me to condemn the President;
And there are people in this room who want me to talk about anything and everything other than what happened.

But I’m not going to do any of that. Instead, I’m going to talk about what the Church must become in this age of division. 

The comment sections on articles about this service could take your breath away. But it hits a little closer to home, doesn’t it? I’m sure your Facebook feeds and conversations have been as full as mine this week. 

I’ve seen the Bishop labeled a heretic, a snake, an enemy, wicked, and evil. Similarly, I’ve seen the President labeled a heretic, a snake, an enemy, wicked, and evil. 

Labels are problematic enough, but it’s the corresponding calls to action that I find much more disturbing. I’ve seen encouragement to hate Bishop Budde, to hate President Trump, to give both the left and the right hell. 

Anyone who disagrees with one’s position is deemed morally bankrupt, corrupt, hypocritical, evil, wicked, and condemned to hell. Both sides have been declared beyond redemption. 

Hate has infiltrated the church. The quotes and comments I’ve just outlined have all come from clergy and lay leaders. Each of those keyboard warriors is sitting in a pew or standing in a pulpit right now. Instead of a posture of curiosity and humility, Christians have adopted a posture of anger and contempt.

Friends, this is not the gospel. 
This is not the love of God. 
This is not behavior befitting followers of Jesus.

The Church must resist this pull. We are a community centered around a different story. This is the work of Ezra in our Nehemiah passage – through the reading of their common story, he calls the people to remember who they are based on who God is and to reorient their lives around his will. 

When we forget our story, we find ourselves lost in the crossfires of public argument rather than in the quiet, persistent work of turning our hearts and minds toward the voice of our Falconer. 

In this story, no one is beyond redemption. No one is worthy of our hate. The church is called to be different, to love limitlessly, and to offer grace and healing. When the Church acts as the world acts, the one being hurt by all of this isn’t our opponents or the ones with whom we disagree. No, the injured party is Jesus.

When a falcon uses its talons to grip or scratch something other than its prey, it is called being “footed.” In these moments, a lure can be used to help the falcon release the Falconer. Lamentably, Christians have unintentionally footed the face of Jesus with zest and zeal this week. We desperately need the lure of his grace and love to save us from ourselves.

Just as marriage vows carry us through arguments, both small and large, the church is bound together in the vows of our baptismal covenant. That covenant carries the church through our own disagreements, both small and large – disagreements about bishops, presidents, theology, polity, and carpet color. Our baptismal covenant is not limited to us, however. It is also our covenant to those outside of the church. It is our covenant to those on the left, the right, and the center. It is our covenant to those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree, those whose lives are centered on our common story and those whose lives are not. 

There is a vast expanse of political and theological beliefs at Church of the Good Shepherd. But our gospel call is to commit ourselves to God, to renew our covenant with him, to make sure that hate and self-righteousness never takes root in our hearts or our doors, and to walk together in love, charity, and humility. As a church, our mission and ministry is based on our commitment to the common story we share in Christ. We gather and worship under no sign or symbol other than the cross of Jesus. With Christ as our focus and head, as our unity and identity, we will work, live, and serve together because in Christ we belong to one another. 

Many of you came to church today burdened by what happened earlier this week and burdened by the aftermath. I pray everyone leaves both feeling a little uncomfortable because the Holy Spirit is convicting us and feeling light and uplifted because Christ shoulders our burdens, pains, sorrows, hurts, and fears. I pray that we find the lure of his grace and love.

I’m calling an audible this week and rather than reading the Nicene Creed, I am going to invite each of us to stand and recommit ourselves to Christ by renewing our baptismal covenant, pledging ourselves to God and to one another.

May it be said of us that the falcon hears and heeds the falconer. Amen.