We all know the parable of the birds, in which a man on Christmas Eve sees a flock of birds huddled in the snow, cold and miserable. He tries to entice them into his warm barn, but being afraid, they want nothing to do with him.
“If only I could be a bird,” he thinks to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see and hear and understand.”
What a wonderful tale to illustrate the incarnation of Christ!
However, the parable of the birds doesn’t go far enough. It’s a nice Christmas story, but it stops short of Easter.
Tippi Hedron & Rod Taylor—with the lovebirds!—in an early scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
For the true story is that most of the birds could not understand this new bird on the block—even when He spoke their language of tweets—and they rejected Him.
Worse, they turned on Him and killed Him.
Why? Because we all know that God could never really be one of us, so hateful are we to ourselves. Nor could anyone ever be that special, for we are all alike, all sinners.
So much for the nice homespun notion of nasty evil birds welcoming their Maker with open wings.
And so a new version of the old parable is needed, one in which the other birds are immediately suspicious of the newbie upstart.
Who do You think You are? they tweet. Some kind of Messiah?
Frightened and outraged, most of the birds even say what the demons said to Jesus: We know who You are! Have you come to destroy us?
Turns out the real version of the parable of the birds would be something more like the Alfred Hitchcock film, in which all the birds go crazy and start attacking people.
But wait! For Hitchcock, in a subtle masterstroke to this famous horror film, gave the slightest hint of an Easter finale. For he leaves us with the suggestion that something small and positively unlikely might well save the day.
A pair of lovebirds.
Appearing only at the very beginning and the very end of the film, and so framing the entire story, the only birds who do not turn mean and vicious are a pair of lovebirds.
True, these lovebirds are caged. A birthday gift for a little girl, they are not free like the menacing wild birds, and so they suggest the tragic repercussions of caging love. At the same time, they point to the possibility that love, should it be released (like a dead man escaping from a tomb!) will prevail over chaos and horror.
Love: the love of the Father for His Son—and for you and for me—raises the whole human story to another level. On Easter morning the two lovebirds of the gospel—Jesus and the human heart—are set free.
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