The Sign of the Dove
The Venerable Jan Clark
Luke 3:15-17; 21-22
Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. (Ezekiel 1)
And I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east. His voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory. (Ezekiel 43)
Have you ever seen a dove dance?
The dove will dance when choosing a mate. Doves mate for life, so it’s a life-and-death dance. Doves are extremely loyal. They desire to live in relationship, and bond to each other completely. When one of the pair is injured, the other will behave compassionately and devote itself to caring for the other. When one is killed or absent, the other will mourn deeply and soulfully.
But more beautiful even than the mating dance of the dove is the dove that hovers and soars with wings outstretched and lifted in the air. The dove gracefully navigates its space in movements that look much like an elaborate ballet.
The dove’s wings raise up and in over its head in a kind of “releve” (a ballet term that describes the dancer on his/her toes with hands arched over the head----go ahead and show them). The dove will then bring the wings down in front of its body and allow them to stretch backward and outward, then circle round lifting them high above its head once again.
The dove’s flight is graceful and glorious. One has the sense that the dove is sailing on the winds of some kind of invisible waves.
In our scripture for this Sunday, the Holy Spirit of God descends upon Jesus at his baptism, not as a dove but “like a dove,” engraving forever in John the Baptist’s mind and in ours not only that Jesus is the Messiah, but what kind of Messiah he is!
He is the Son of God, and together with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, he has come with all of the power, yet the grace of God to re-establish God’s bond with humankind. The dove is the symbol of relationship, of loyalty, of grace, the symbol of the beloved partner in covenant. With that symbol comes our hope and our joy, our promise that we can become children of Light.
The symbol of the dove is a mixed symbol, paradoxically bittersweet in its very essence. In nature there is no such thing as a “dove.” A dove is a poetic name for a small pigeon. Noah’s dove was actually a homing pigeon (it came back twice). So on the one hand, is the dove little more than a pigeon? Or on the other hand, is the dove one of the most remarkable birds in the world, this bobbing-headed, blue-grey pavement pedestrian? The truth is it is both. Like we are. “The dove is who we’d like to be; the pigeon is who we really are,” as Barbara Allen puts it in her marvellous contribution to the Reaktion animals series “Pigeon” (2009).
As children of the Light, God’s desire is for us all to be wrapped up in the “garment of righteousness” and sheltered within the presence of God’s wings. In relationship with God, we all become the best people we can be.
As we yearn for God, God appears to us. We become God’s cherished treasure, God’s beloved disciple.
But the sign of the dove isn’t just a symbol of what “we get” from God. The dove is a relationship bird. And a covenant is a two-way relationship. When the Lord’s presence enfolds you like the wings of a dove, you are filled with the knowledge of God’s glory and the radiance of God’s pleasure. But you’ll also have a mission and a calling from God to fulfil.
Sometimes that mission includes characteristics of a dove. For example, when a church seeks a vicar, it has been said, they want the strength of an eagle, the grace of a swan, the gentleness of a dove, the friendliness of a sparrow, and the night hours of an owl. And when they catch that bird, they expect the captive to live on the food of a canary.
If any of you have seen any of the crime shows on television these days, you know that once a witness admits to “seeing” a perpetrator, you’re as good as dead. Recognition brings revenge because of the possibility of disclosure and the end of anonymity. The same goes with hearing the criminal’s voice. With “seeing” and “hearing” comes recognition, with recognition knowledge, and with knowledge responsibility.
In our scripture today, once Jesus has been identified as the Messiah by the ordaining presence of God (the hovering cloud or presence of God represented by the metaphor of the dove), his life will never be the same. It is the beginning of a journey that will end in death. Yet it is the beginning of a journey that will also bring a new beginning of life, of hope, of promise, or resurrection glory to the world.
It is a bittersweet moment that signifies a bittersweet life.
All of us yearn to be in God’s favour. All of us want to have our lives blessed by God. But few of us want to take the journey along with Jesus to the cross.
But with great blessing comes great responsibility. And following Jesus is always a bittersweet experience. For as a follower of Jesus, you won’t always be liked. In fact, you’ll run into people who will despise you, and who will oppose you. You’ll come across people who will taunt you and make fun of you. And in some places in the world, you could be killed for following Jesus, for your loyalty to God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
From within the cloud, Jesus heard these words: “You are my beloved son, who brings me great pleasure.” Your very existence brings God, pleasure. You don’t work to earn God’s pleasure, you live and love, work and play out of God’s pleasure. To revel and bask in God’s pleasure, you must also be ready to answer the call of God to turn your life around, to accept whatever mission God may hand you, to follow Jesus even to the death.
But the good news is that even in death, there is Life in Jesus, and a garden of beauty in God’s kingdom.
There is a little known book written by Elaine Wilson in 1998 called The Lost Dove of Peace. You can read it in one evening. The illustrations by Hans Erni are enchanting. It’s a story for young and old about a world in crisis based in part on Stefan Zweig's parable “The Legend of the Third Dove.”
In “The Lost Dove” there is so much death and destruction that the doves of the world leave their abodes, where they were painted, inked, sculpted, woven into tapestries, or alive in the wild, and hold a summit conference at the Mount of Olives. Their gathering is named The Great Council of the Doves.
From the Mount of Olives the doves are sent on a mission: to find the lost dove of peace from Noah’s ark. The dove elder that calls them together warns that the journey will be arduous, but in each place they travel, whether it be the Holy Land, Greece, the Great Plains, Japan, the isle of Iona, Tibet, they will find, hidden in the culture, a mechanism for peace that has lain dormant, been forgotten, or gone underground. The reader joins the search, only to find that the true secret of the dove “lies in love and compassion and the understanding of the interrelationship of all beings on the planet.” The secret of the dove is love.
Today . . . .
as you come forward for the Holy Sacrament,
as you pray for the Spirit of God to fall afresh upon you,
as you pray for a “dove of love” to hover over your life,
remember this: that with God’s calling comes a charge, and with the charge comes a mission. Noah’s dove was given a mission. Jesus’ ordination by the Holy Spirit descending “in the form of a dove” confirmed his mission. The mission may be difficult. It may be filled with both bitter and sweet times. It will be filled with bittersweet times. But in the end, there comes a beautiful promise. “I will be with you. . . . even to the ends of the earth until the end of the earth.”
This is the sign of the “dove.” The promise of God’s abiding presence…under whose “wings” you will always be cherished, sheltered, and sent out.