Epiphany 2

City mice can’t cut it. No, they can’t even squeak by.

You know the classic children’s tale: A cosmopolitan city mouse decides to leave her home at the zoo and visit her untamed country cousin. Now the metro mouse had all the urban survival skills any proper mouse would need. She knew how to have exact change when she boarded the cross town bus. She knew which cathouses and alleyways to avoid. She knew how to cross busy streets, where to shop for imported fine fish, and which boutiques had the hippest mouse clothing. She knew how to look tough and walk strong on the sidewalk, and she knew not to talk to strangers.

Off she went, her clothing neatly packed in designer luggage, to her wild country cousin’s home. It was a wooded and green place permeated with buzzy noises, whistling winds and the odd unsettling racket of hidden animals. There were hungry mosquitoes, darting dragonflies, peering hawks and silent hunting owls. At twilight, it got very, very dark – unlike the city mouse’s illuminated metropolis – which of course made the scary sounds even scarier.

Worst of all was the food. It was terrible and she had to gather it herself, as if she knew anything about gathering wild food – grass grains, flower seeds and pokeweed berries for breakfast. Nasty stuff! And, of course, there were plenty of predators breathing down her neck as well. The city mouse could not wait to go home for fear she might be invited to dinner … as the meal.

So this mouse out of her house is a mouse out of place. She’s long since lost her instincts to feel comfortable in the wilderness. She is safest in her home at the city zoo.

No surprise here. Most mice, and plenty of people, feel more comfortable and safer in familiar surroundings. No one likes to be in a situation for which one is unprepared .

It’s not unlike how we feel sometimes when we leave the safety and sanctity of our worship place and return to the workplace: we often don’t quite know how to be a witness, how to use our spiritual instincts in an environment that is sometimes hostile to our faith.

It’s a principle biologists are beginning to appreciate. For some time now, natural scientists have been forcing animals to act out the story of the city mouse and the country mouse – in an effort to save endangered species. Researchers are taking captivity-raised endangered animals, releasing them into their native habitat and hoping for successful survival in the wild.

With few exceptions, the project is not going well. “Zoos are becoming latter-day Noah’s arks for endangered species,” writes one scholar. “But captive breeding has been problematic. Animals born in captivity and then released into nature often have trouble finding food, fleeing predators and selecting mates.”

Many animals need to learn complex behaviors if they are to forage successfully and avoid ending up as another critter’s meal. Without exposure to older, more experienced members of their own species, young captive-bred animals are at a major disadvantage. They are like children raised without culture or tradition. They don’t know how to be wild in the wild.

When a group of animals is released into the wild, as many as 80 percent may be eaten by other animals. In some particularly depressing cases, all the animals have been destroyed.

You can try to teach survival skills to captive-bred animals, but you aren’t going to have much success. For one thing, animals don’t learn as well or as quickly from people as they do from members of their own species. It takes a condor to teach a condor.

The question is: How do you give endangered animals the skills they need to survive in the wild? This is not much different from the question Christians ask when they step out of the church door and into the world: How are we going to survive out there? Paul has the answer.

We must exercise our gifts, says Paul, or there’s little chance of changing the culture. Use ’em or lose ’em. Unfortunately, the transforming Gospel often gets hidden away inside the church and seldom gets carried by Christians into the wild world where it’s needed most.

They may be endangered, but not extinct: The gifts of wise speech, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation of tongues (1 Cor. 12:8-10).

Would Paul agree that the church is a zoo? In the Corinthian church, it often appeared that the inmates were running the asylum. Yet, his point is that unless the church is skillfully equipped, a premature release into the world will be an unmitigated disaster. Perhaps this is what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant when he said: “Modern man is presently having a rendezvous with chaos, not merely because of human badness, but also because of human stupidity.”

During my years as a deputy sheriff, my crusty sergeant would brief us each night before we went out on patrol.  Fuzzy Furlong’s words were, “Remember, life is tough.  But it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”  Now this wasn’t just a condescending remark.  It actually was a compassionate statement to encourage his deputies to realize that behavioral norms are formed by whatever models people choose to emulate.  Everyone looks to some particular model.  For many, it is the Jerry Springer Show.

That’s the downside. The upside is that the church as zoo is a sanctuary, a safe place to live, learn and grow in God and the Spirit. We have teachers who can instruct us. It is here that condors can teach condors.

Indeed, most great agents of change, such as Martin Luther King, sat literally or figuratively at the feet of others from whom they learned. Gandhi, although a Hindu, got his inspiration from the teachings of Jesus. Martin Luther King, in turn, regarded Gandhi as his spiritual leader. Jesus himself mentored the disciples, who mentored or discipled others who discipled others. And so on.

We sharpen our spiritual skills in the company of those who have been there, done that. No wonder that Paul stresses the communal nature of the gifts of the Spirit. They are given of one Spirit, one Lord, one God (vv. 4-6). They are to be used for “the common good” (v. 7). And the body, or community, that receives these various gifts is one (v. 12).

Dr. King once said that “Evil is not driven out, but crowded out … through the expulsive power of something good.” Dr. King also said, however, that “history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

It’s past time for the church to make some noise, to leave the church howling and growling!

We need not fear leaving the zoo today and living in the wild tomorrow. Yes, the predators are out there, but we have the instincts to thrive and survive, and to tame the cultural wilderness for Jesus Christ.