Doves All Around
Genesis 8:1-12, Matthew 3:13-17
The Reverend Thomas C. Willadsen
Last week President Obama offered an olive branch to the United States Chamber of Commerce. While the president did not offer a physical olive branch, he made a speech to the Chamber that indicated a new willingness to cooperate with them, which was viewed by news analysts as a kind of peace offering. This image of an olive branch as a sign of peace comes straight from scripture. In fact, this metaphor looks down on us every time we gather to worship here in this safe place.
Last month the group that meets every Tuesday for lunch, Brown Bag Bible Exploration, took its first field trip. We came up from Magnolia Hall into the sanctuary to look at the stained glass windows. We are very fortunate to have such beautiful windows. It is easy for us to overlook, to take for granted, the beauty that surrounds us every day. I confess that I am not good at noticing things. Words are much more stimulating to me than images. So I have to really slow down, concentrate and force myself to see the images in our windows.
As we looked at the windows we started to notice other things as well. [If you love the windows I suggest you consider singing in the choir, you really will get a much better view of them during worship that if you sit in a pew.] If you look at the east window, you'll see that each of the four main panels has a representation of animals. There's a bee hive, with a dove with an olive branch next to it. There's another dove in the south most panel, this one over Noah's ark, also with an olive branch in its mouth. The scene in the semicircle above those three panels shows the lamb mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
I want to focus on the doves this morning. It really struck me as we were looking at not just the windows, but all the art in the sanctuary that we have a representation of a dove on all four walls here. [Here's a question for you to work on: there is one other symbol that appears on all four walls of the sanctuary-look around this morning and see if you can figure out what it is.] Doves are important symbols to Christians, but they really do not appear in scripture very much. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described as "descending like a dove" when Jesus is baptized. This description is common to all four gospels. The only other mentions of doves are as animals that can be purchased for sacrifice at the Temple or as symbols of innocence.
In the Old Testament, a dove has a significant role in Genesis 8, and doves are mentioned elsewhere in the prophets and psalms as symbols of innocence.
The doves on the east wall of the sanctuary point us back to the aftermath of the Flood. As we looked at the passage from Genesis 8, a few Tuesday ago, we noticed that it took a long time for the flood waters to abate. We know it rained for 40 days and nights, but it took months and months for the water to recede, months before the ark came to rest in the mountains, and more time after that during which Noah sent out a raven, then a dove three separate times. It was a long time before the dove returned to Noah with a sign that life on earth was continuing, an olive leaf. This sign of peace did not come quickly. That is a helpful reminder, I think, to all of us that peace, however we understand it, takes time to come to fruition.
In the windows on the south side of the sanctuary, there is a huge dove, descending into an open Bible. Remember that the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In this case, the window reminds us visually that the Bible is not just words alone, we interpret the Bible guided by the Holy Spirit. Word and Spirit are essential for people to hear and understand what God has to tell us in the Bible. Also, notice that the dove is in the center of bright light. Each Sunday, the first thing we do in the longest section of our worship service-We Hear the Word of God-is we pray for illumination. That is we pray that God's light will shine through the reading and interpretation of scripture.
The dove flying down from above is a nice contrast to the dove we have on the north wall of the sanctuary. This dove is rising straight up, in a way it looks like a NASA rocket. For me this dove depicts visually what happens when the Holy Spirit comes into one of us-we rise up, maybe even fly! The twin descending and rising doves are present at Jesus' baptism. The Spirit descends into Jesus like a dove, and Jesus rises from the water.
The dove that appears on the west wall is in the quilt which renders our mission statement in words and pictures. When we really looked at the quilt at Bible Exploration we realized that of all the art in the sanctuary, this is the one piece that resonates most strongly with us. Maybe that's because it's the most recent, or maybe it's because it uses so many images, and so many different church members worked to make it so beautiful. Maybe it's because this is the only work of art in our sanctuary that includes people. In the quilt the dove appears to have just flown out of the open door of the church. This is great symbolism! First of all, the church's door is open-which symbolizes that everyone is welcome here. But second, that the Spirit is flying out, it says that we need to get out of the building and fly to where the Spirit is leading us. A few years ago we partnered with the Samaritan Counseling Center to begin Project Open Door. This is a ministry to offer faith-based, professional counseling to families and children who cannot afford this service any other way. Each week broken, hurting families come here and are helped by kind, spirit-led counselors to greater wholeness and happiness. Then they also, leave our building through an open door.
More than any other part of the trinity, the Spirit moves. We represent the Spirit with fire, wind, breath and a dove. In their own way, each of these images reminds us that God is alive. And those who follow God are alive-and constantly beloved-and always changing. With that we move to the installation of one, final elder, who we pray will be led by the Holy Spirit as she serves this congregation with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.