There was a loud crash at the back door. Our son, Halden and daughter, Chelsea were both working in the kitchen. The noise shocked them. What ever had hit the door was pretty significant for it almost broke the window. Halden eventually peered out the door and saw the culprit. It was a young cedar waxwing, which was lying on its back on the deck. It was stoned, more than likely stoned dead. It was Saskatoon month.
Every year when the Saskatoon berries ripen off around our country home there are so many berries that most of them ferment on the bushes. Several species of birds love them this way but none more than the young cedar waxwings. Unfortunately the ripening and fermenting happens just about the time the adolescent cedar waxwings have left the nest and are really getting into flight school. And doubly unfortunately, these juvenile waxwings, like juveniles of most species, haven’t yet grown much in the way of brains, at least the part that is responsible for restraint. And so they eat/drink till they are stoned and then they really think they can fly. Part of what they think they can do in their inebriated state is fly right through the reflection in our windows. And so every Saskatoon season, several dozen intoxicated pubescent waxwings crash dive at full speed into our windows, breaking their foolish necks and very nearly our glass. That was how the young cedar waxwing ended up, out cold and apparently dead on our back deck. It did have the distinction though to be the first ever to perform this drunken aerial maneuver into the little window on our kitchen door.
And so we have yet another overindulgent waxwing story to add to the compendium of overindulgent waxwing stories in our family. But honest, it’s not my fault, it’s the over indulgence of the young birds.
Overindulgence. It seems to me the young waxwings fit right into North American society. Everything we do in our culture seems to be overindulgent. Every form of communication seems to scream at me — indulge yourself, you are worth it, you deserve it, it’s your right, it’s good for you. But the truth of the matter is, overindulgence, from artery-clogging food and drink to poverty-causing consumerism, to greenhouse gas-belching travel, takes you to one place, essentially the same place the overindulgent waxwing ended up. Doesn’t the Christian faith have any sage spiritual advice to save us?
It turns out it does. I am going to attempt to be very clever and invent a word here to describe what the Christian faith has to say about overindulgence. The word is “underindulgence.” I’ll use it in a phrase: the spirituality of underindulgence, or perhaps better put, the spiritual discipline of underindulgence. I know the Bible has a lot to say about underindulgence because I am an incorrigible overindulger in almost every category of my life and every time I flip open my Bible I am exposed. Overindulgence is rooted in self, myself. It is a me, my, mine occupation. But from cover to cover in the Bible, the welfare of the community is put above the welfare of the individual, so much so that every blessing that a generous God freely gives is required to be generously shared with the community.
Generosity begets generosity in the Bible. That’s a form of the spiritual discipline of underindulgence and it is found in its highest form in the celebration of Jubilee. On the Day of Atonement, once every 50 years, after some joyful horn playing, liberty was proclaimed in all the land. All property bought or confiscated was returned to its original owner, all debts incurred were cancelled, and all who were made slaves were set free (Leviticus 25:10). Jubilee was a huge ‘pay it forward’ scheme and the basis of it was that you could afford to give up all you owned today because God was going to give to you what you needed tomorrow anyway. God provides, God always had, God always did, God always would. You could always trust God to be generous with you, so be generous with your neighbour. Don’t strive to get, strive to give. The point to Jubilee in the Hebrew scriptures is liberty, not just to set at liberty those who have not, but just as much, to set at liberty those who have. The year of Jubilee was anticipated for years and as such it was a huge metaphor for daily living that taught the people of God to not be possessed by their possessions, but rather to be set free by totally trusting God for provision. It was a bicentennial celebration of the daily spiritual discipline of underindulgence, of living your life joyfully and freely trusting God to provide and seeking first God’s justice for the poor and oppressed by sharing what you were provided with.
And wouldn’t you know it, Jesus taught the same liberty-generating Jubilee lifestyle in the New Testament. He taught it to the rich young ruler who was invited to give up all that he had to obtain the liberty of following Jesus. He taught it to his disciples when he looked at the rich young ruler and said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the liberty of the reign of God (Matthew 19:21-23). He taught it in the Parable of the Sower when he spoke about the worry of wealth and the deceitfulness of riches choking out the life-giving Word of God (Matthew 13:22). He taught it when he told his disciples that unless they gave up all they owned they could not enter the liberty of the Kingdom (Luke 14:33). Liberty through the spiritual discipline of underindulgence is what Jesus is teaching when he says to give up worrying about overindulging yourself with what you will eat, drink or wear, rather trust God to provide what you need and seek first his Kingdom (Matthew 6:25-34).
While the little bird in my head is chirping away at me to do the cedar waxwing thing and become captive to pigging out on all the good stuff I see in the world all around me, Jesus teaches me: Set yourself free with the spiritual discipline of underindulgence. Trust God to provide and become a jubilee kind of person, freed from the stress of possessing and generously giving of what you have been generously given. Be like the Apostle Paul who practiced the same spiritual discipline and found contentment in all circumstances (Philippians 4:12).
