August 9: “The Pigeon: Spirit, Purity and Impurity” - Birds of the Bible Sermon Series (Week 1)

By Rev. Sandra Nixon

Today I’m starting a sermon series that will take us through August up to the Labour Day weekend. We’re going to be exploring birds of the bible, drawing primarily from the book: “Consider the Birds” – A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible” by Minnesota based pastor Debbie Blue.

Except for my relationship with my back yard hummingbirds, I am not really much of a birdwatcher. I mean, I like to watch them when I’m out for a walk but I don’t go birdwatching, per se - I don’t own a pair of binoculars and I’m not very good at identifying  many birds.

As with the foundational narratives/stories of many cultures and religions, birds are everywhere in the Bible.,

This is because people identify with birds. As DB observes, “we watch them, research them, tell stories about them, and in the process we explore humanity and inhumanity, mystery and manners.” 

And so, humans have over time and across cultures and religions, invested meaning in different kinds of birds, based on their qualities and characteristics. And we use them as symbols for many things. 

So – birds of the bible  and there are quite a few! We’re going to look at five over the next five weeks. As we explore the birds and how they show up in scripture, we may be surprised at what they teach us about ourselves, the human condition, and even God.

I will say, as I have been diving into the reading for this Birds of the Bible series, I have begun to appreciate the space and storytelling that birds in the scriptures take up and do.

Considering birds is different than considering rocket science or technology; it gets you thinking different thoughts about creatures, creation and the creator.

This week, we are going to talk about the dove.

Take a guess as to how many times the dove is mentioned in scripture. The answer is: 46 times! (This would make a good question for the next TGUC jeopardy so make a mental note!)

And we are starting this sermon series off with the dove because it’s the first bird to get mentioned in the bible – in the first creation story in Genesis, the first book of the bible.

Even before God creates the birds, the spirit of God hovers over the face of the deep – the ancient rabbis suggest – like a bird. The Talmud even specifies what kind of bird – a dove.: “the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters – like a dove.”

Not a pterodactyl or the humongous forbidding birds found in so many creation myths, nope – just a small, gentle, quiet, friendly thing. One would think that a giant powerful bird is a more likely character to take on the void; I mean, what chance would a dove have with the deep and the dark? It has a small brain, stubby little legs – it is easy picking for predators.

So a dove it is. Have you ever noticed how more delicate and smaller members of a family are sometimes referred to as “doves.” We often dismiss those small, quiet, softspoken members of our families – who can get lost in the fray of familial noise.

So God – as dove – hovers over the deep, so that it then births creation.

There are many other Older Testament mentions of doves:

“Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.’” (Psalm 55:5-8)

“If he cannot afford a lamb, then he shall bring to the LORD his guilt offering for that in which he has sinned, two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering.” (Leviticus 5:7)

Those are probably not the scripture references that most readily come to mind. 

Let’s skip to next time we hear in scripture about God’s spirit hovering…

It’s in the beginning of Luke’s gospel, when the Spirit of God hovers over Mary – so that she then conceives a son (Jesus). Christian art through the centuries has, in the spirit of the rabbis, depicted this hovering spirit as yes, you guessed it, a dove.

Then there’s the third time God’s spirit hovers: at the baptism of Jesus, where this time the text makes it explicit. Each of the gospel writers mention that the spirit of God alights on Jesus “as a dove” – the implication being that this is how we know Jesus is the chosen One, the messiah.

In her book, Debbie Blue writes about how she always saw the dove in the baptism story as merely a sign, “like something written on cardboard, or flashing at the roadside when there’s construction, or over a restaurant: “Go slow. All-day breakfast. This is the messiah. Flash flash.”

And she talks about how in this story we often focus on the message and don’t pay too much attention to the messenger. But perhaps it’s important that the messenger is a dove (and not something else).

Before I go any farther with this, I think it’s important to mention that while I’ve been talking about doves this far, the theme bird for this service was billed as “The Pigeon”.

So why all this talk of doves? It’s because a dove is a pigeon.

Pigeons and doves (Columbiformes) are a group of birds that includes about 312 species such as Old World pigeons, American pigeons, bronzewings, ground doves, crowned pigeons and many others.

The terms ‘pigeon’ and ‘dove’ are informal and aren’t used to officially differentiate types within the group. The terms are often used interchangeably, although there is a tendency for the term ‘pigeon’ to be used when referring to larger species and ‘dove’ to be used when referring to smaller species.

So – to get back on track – we were talking about the baptism of Jesus and whether the choice of the dove to symbolize the holy spirit had deeper meaning beyond being “a sign” of God.

Well why don’t we start with the fact that, while we may have long imagined the dove at the baptism of Jesus as a traditional white one, it was more likely gray, with an iridescent green-and-violet neck – a rock dove, which is very common in Palestine and considered to be the ancestor of our common domestic pigeon.

The common domestic pigeon – the kind that gathers in parks, nests in our eaves, poops all over our buildings and sidewalks – and cars.

There are lots of birds that want to avoid us, who need their space. Pigeons want to be close to us. They are where we are – in some of the worst places we have made (our neglected projects and abandoned buildings) and some of the best (art museums, parks, piazzas). They won’t leave us alone.

People are very often not fond of pigeons. Sometimes they’re called “rats with wings.”

The pigeons of our day are often referred to as feral pigeons. They’re everywhere on the streets. They’re considered pests who “infest” urban areas.

Whereas the image of the single white dove is a as this polite, petite, pure thing,  and had come to seem bland and cutesy as far as Christian symbols go, pigeons are feral, everywhere you don’t want them to be, and won’t leave us alone.         

So what is we were to consider the pigeon, then, rather than the dove, as a symbol of the holy spirit?

The pigeon spirit - so common – wherever life is, that we don’t recognize her or necessarily respect her.

Always underfoot, and routinely ignored, even despised because her work challenges us, her habits inconvenience us, her call unsettles us.

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Some rabbinic writings suggest that they believed that what a person eats has an effect on them; and so, the reason certain animals and birds are forbidden for the people to eat is that they possess questionable character traits that would badly influence someone’s  character.

This morning, the other story we heard was the story of Noah, the ark and the dove. After the flood, Noah sends one pigeon/dove out of the ark to test if the floodwaters had subsided. It consented to go without protest – selfless and faithful to her mission. In this story she is a messenger of hope, and a reminder of God’s covenant and faithfulness with Noah.

By the time of Jesus, the dove already had a rich history of symbolism attached to it. It had come to represent the Israelites, the spirit of God and fertility. And unfortunately for the pigeon/dove, its purity and “ritual cleanness”  also made it the only bird that was acceptable to be used as sacrifices.

We heard the passage from Leviticus and The Gospel of Luke says that Mary and Joseph sacrificed two doves at the Temple following the birth of Jesus, as was prescribed in the law (Luke 2:24).

And then there’s Jesus, baptized by that pigeon-spirit, ready to be in the mucky places and with the mucky people, unafraid of getting his hands dirty, touching the messiness of life and sometimes making things messier.

Some argue that the apex of his ministry is when he declares all foods to be “clean” – ritually clean vs ritually “unclean” – that what goes into a person can’t defile them. Jesus comes onto the scene and immediately violates boundaries, challenging cultural notions of what is pure and impure – just the way Fred Rogers almost two millenia later would sit beside a black man on national TV as they soaked their feet in the same wading pool.

Such is the activity of the spirit of God. It hovers without menace or malice in places seemingly out of its depth; in places we would not expect a gentle, pure spirit to be. It lands, hovers, plunges and coos, calling us to open our hearts and let new life be birthed from our depths.

May it be so. Amen.