(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Listening To Birds”, originally shared on May 10, 2021. It was the 114th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
We have a bird issue. Our issue concerns what we hear. Could the most important thing you will ever hear come from a bird?
We thought we had a mockingbird in our backyard last week. It turns out that we do have one, and a neighborhood full of them. 24/7. Looking for love.
They are known as nightingales in Europe, which sounds a lot classier until they sing at night. All night. Every night.
It’s the male mockingbirds who sing, trying to attract a mate. They are either never-partnered singles or widowers. And they are persistent. I don’t know when they sleep.
Apparently, we don’t have a lot of single-and-ready-to-mingle female mockingbirds in our neighborhood. We thought about, setting up a dating service like, Plenty of Birds in the Tree, TreeHarmony or Hatch.com.
We were at the point where we were ready to send away for some female avian companionship, but how do we know that the lady birds would find our guy to be a good singer? As male mockingbirds are territorial, how do we know they would like our territory? Sure, we have neighborhood cats roaming around, but other than that it’s nice.
It was wonderful for a while. Who doesn’t enjoy the sound of songbirds? Especially ones with a diverse song list that includes various car alarms.
We have other birds, too. The hummingbirds provide an endless stream of entertainment. We seem to attract a lot of blue jays, which are aggressive and predatory, as opposed to blue birds.
We also have crows, which we’ve tried to shoo away, mostly successfully.
BTW, do you know the difference between a crow and a raven? Both of them have 10 primary flight feathers, or pinions, but ravens in flight show only four at the tips of their wings while crows show five. So, the difference between a crow and a raven could be said to be just a matter of a pinion. 😊 (say it out loud)
Birds play an important role in the Bible.
They were created on the fifth day, described in Genesis 1 starting at the 23rd verse:
*Genesis 1:20-23
Being created along with the sea monsters, that’s pretty cool.
Noah sent a dove out after the Flood to look for dry land. In Genesis 8, starting at the 6th verse, we read:
When the dove didn’t come back, Noah knew it wouldn’t be long before the ark came to dry land in fulfillment of God’s promise.
Doves mate for life and presumably there were two on the ark. I wonder how the mate felt and if they were reunited when the ark found land. I’d like to think so.
When Jesus wanted to show how much we were of value to God he used the image of birds. In Matthew 5, starting a the 26th verse, we read:
*Matthew 10:26-31
But the most important bird in the Bible is important only as a form, or is described as being like something else.
When Jesus was baptized, this happened, in
The whole Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was there at Jesus’ baptism. When Jesus came out of the water, the heavens were open to him and the Spirit of God descended like a dove and alighted on him and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The description of Jesus’ baptism is told in all three gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and they all describe the Spirit descending like a dove. (Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22, and John 1:32)
Why is the Holy Spirit shown as a dove?
For that, let’s go back to the story of Noah.
Remember how Noah sent the dove out and it came back with an olive branch in its mouth? That showed Noah that the Flood waters were receding, and land and vegetation were reappearing. That gave him hope. Then the dove flew away, and the dove didn’t come back. That told him that the dove had found rest and that God’s promise for new life had been fulfilled.
The most important take-away from that, I think, is that the Holy Spirit is Spirit, not literally a dove. Martin Luther, the 16th century Church reformer once described Thomas Muntzer, a theological opponent, who said that the inner light of the Holy Spirit had more authority than the scriptures themselves. Luther said that Muntzer had swallowed the Holy Spirit, “feathers and all.”
The Holy Spirit is spirit. It is God’s personal ongoing presence within is. It is not something we achieve; it is something we receive. We listen to its voice, and it shapes us. It makes us who we are.
But how do we know when it is the Holy Spirit speaking and not our own voice, our own wish fulfillment?
That comes from scripture, the Bible.
“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
The words, “All scripture is inspired by God” are sometimes translated, “All scripture is God-breathed” because in both Greek and Hebrew one word, pneuma in Greek and ruach in Hebrew can have the same three meanings: wind, breath, and spirit”. It is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the writers of the books of the Bible to write what they wrote that inspires us to understand what they mean. The Bible is authoritative not just for the words on the page, but for the living, present God who inspires us to understand them. That’s why the Bible has authority in any language, and in any faithful version in that language.
Paul wrote to his “bad boy/girl” church in Corinth about sexual immorality, in his 1st letter to the Corinthians, the 6th chapter, starting at the 19th verse: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
The Holy Spirit dwells within us.
Someone once said that the Bible says that our bodies are God’s temples while most people treat them as their playgrounds. God dwells within us, and that makes us holy. Saints and sinners.
That Holy Spirit transforms us from within, like streams of living water, another way the Holy Spirit is described both in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Living water is moving water. The movement of the Holy Spirit brings life and transforms all around it from within the human heart. It gathers us into communities, it makes us a new creation. Born again.
The dove with an olive branch in its mouth is still seen as a symbol of peace in our culture, but its original meaning was the faithfulness of God to God’s promises and God’s steadfast love, reconciling in peace between God and humanity. The dove is not predatory but mates for life. It is faithful.
We are experiencing now very low rates of hospitalization with the coronavirus and some states report a vaccine surplus. We have a long way to go reach the needed rates of vaccination before we see the New Normal, but we have hope. What do we seek now?
We, like the nightingales in our neighborhood, are looking for love and seeking to multiply.
The Holy Spirit opens our heart and comes to dwell there. It makes of us a place fit for the holy God to dwell. It opens us up to love.
We are a people made for relationship. We find it in the gift of God of that for which we were created, a living relationship with the one true living God. The Holy Spirit changes us. The words we seek to describe the works of God come from the transformational presence of the Holy Spirit within us.
We multiply by sharing the hope that is within us, that relationship, a living faith, with others because we are stewards of what God has given to us and want to share something good, and God produces the increase.
Listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Let it transform you, guide you and empower you. Let it move you to action. Listen to the Spirit’s song and sing it in return.
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