The Wild Goose
The Way of the Wild Goose - Part 4
June 9, 2024
Ephesians 4:1-6, 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Hebrews 10:24-25, John 15:1—17
Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.
Ephesians 4:1-6 (CEB)
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The fundamental human need for relationship and community reflects the love which flows from the very God whose image we bear. Here again, the image of the Wild Goose might have something to teach us about the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives and in our world. Wild geese model a communal life of mutual support. They honk in flight to encourage one another. They fly in a V-shape and rotate the lead position so that when one bird grows tired it can move toward the back, allowing another to take the point position. If one becomes too weak to keep up with the flock and falls out of formation, at least two others will land with it and remain by its side until it is able to fly again.
Many people struggle to “fit in.” “Fitting in” requires that we fundamentally change, or at least conceal part of ourselves to look or think like those around us for the sake of conforming to the group. Underneath is the constant anxiety that we might be found out. Especially in church, we worry what people will think if they find out we don’t share all the same beliefs, or if we have different political views, or if we struggle with doubt in our faith. When we feel weak, are there people who will land with us and sit by our side, or do we feel like we just need to keep flying so that nobody will find out that we are not as strong as they think we are?
Perhaps the Spirit invites us to something more. What if the community of the Holy Spirit is not about fitting in at all, but about genuine belonging? John O’Donohue puts it this way:
We have fallen out of belonging… The commercial edge of so-called 'progress,' has cut away a huge region of human tissue and webbing that held us in communion with one another.
What if belonging, like the belonging in a flock of geese, comes from simply being there? What if we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable enough to show up and to be present with and for one another with no judgment or expectation? This kind of unconditional acceptance, belonging, and love is the primary mark of one who calls themselves a follower of Christ.
As those who seek to follow Christ’s example, we cannot pick and choose who we will love based on preference, affection, similar interests, or agreement of opinions. We must love as Christ loved us. We must be vulnerable, serve one another, and open our hearts to the stranger. As a popular benediction from the United Methodist Hymnal declares,
Go now in peace to serve God and your neighbor in all that you do. Bear witness to the love of God in this world, so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in you generous friends.
~ The United Methodist Hymnal: Book of United Methodist Worship, 7. print
(Nashville, Tenn: United Methodist Publ. House, 1998), 869.
~ excerpts from The Wild Goose: Embracing the Untambed Beauty of the Holy Spirit
