“Silent witnesses: a dove”
Genesis 8:8
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Ornithologists, (that’s “bird watchers” if your Latin is a little rusty), tell us that, today, there are as many as ten thousand different kinds of birds in the world. Most are normal, some are strange, and a few are downright scary.
Take, for example, the Hoatzin, also known as “the reptile bird,” “the stinkbird,” and “the skunk bird.” Can you guess why it’s called “stinkbird?” Because it stinks!
Weighing in at a little over two pounds, and standing some twenty-six inches long, most everything about it is strange. With red eyes, a blue face, and a brown mohawk, it has claws not only on its feet, but even on its wings! That helps them to climb trees for safety.
And why does it stink? While most birds have one, small crop to digest their food, the Hoatzin’s crop is large, and it’s folded in two, making the poor thing smell, unfortunately, an awful lot like cow manure.
But if you’re afraid it might become extinct, you don’t have to worry. Absolutely no one wants to eat one or even get close to one, for that matter.
Or how about the Shoebill? Do you know why it’s called the Shoebill? Because it’s bill is shaped like a shoe! While in the wild some might call them, “the stork of your nightmares,” and “the most terrifying bird in the world,” thankfully when you put them in the zoo, they get pretty calm and quiet. Good thing, because they can stand five feet tall and weigh as much as fifteen pounds.
And one more--how about the Superb Bird of Paradise? With blue fluorescent eyes, a greenish-yellow beak, and jet-black feathers, (some of the blackest feathers in the world!), it hops and skips and double-snaps its wings, which, if you don’t mind me saying, drives the girls wild! But let me tell you--those girls can be a little fussy. She’ll reject as many as 15-20 of her suitors before she finds the right one. Who would have thought?
Birds--where would we be without them?
You can find birds in the Bible too, in fact, quite a lot of them! The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming.” Isaiah wrote, “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” And in the book of Matthew, Jesus said, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
And in our text for today, we hear about birds once more, in fact, two of them--first a raven, then a dove. Listen to the words of Genesis chapter 8, starting at verse 1: “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen” (Genesis 8:1-5).
Nothing like it had ever happened before, and nothing like it would ever happen again. Man had become so corrupt, so evil, so rotten to the core, that God had no choice but to destroy every single one of them, all except Noah and his wife, their sons and their wives. It was the most violent and catastrophic event of all time.
And the one way out, the only way out, was a ship, a boat--450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.
And just as soon as Noah built that ark, the animals came two-by-two. Then came the rain. The Bible says all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Let me stop there for just a moment, because there’s something we really shouldn’t miss. Now you’d think that if the flood really happened, (and it did!), you’d expect to find the story told by Noah’s descendants, in languages and cultures all over the world.
And it is! For example, the Aztecs tell of a very pious man named Tapi, whom the Creator told to build a boat for himself, his wife, and a pair of every animal. And though everyone thought he was crazy, he built that boat. Then the rain fell and the flood came.
The Greeks tell of a god named Prometheus, who told his son, Deucalion, to build a chest. And after he and his wife Pyrrha floated in that chest for nine days, they landed on a mountain called Parnassus.
And the Chinese tell of a time, during the reign of Emperor Yao, that a great flood began, a flood so vast that no part of his territory was spared. He wrote in his book of history, “Like endless boiling water, the flood is pouring forth destruction. Boundless and overwhelming, it overtops hills and mountains. Rising and ever rising, it threatens the very heavens. How the people must be groaning and suffering.”
Even more, look at the Chinese pictograph for the word “boat,” and you’ll see three characters--“eight,” “people,” and “vessel.”
And that’s not all! You could find flood accounts in places as far away and as different as Africa, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Borneo, Russia, Iceland, New Zealand, and Mexico, just to name a few. In fact, there are more than two hundred flood stories from all around the world.
And if that’s not enough for you, think of the Grand Canyon and its five thousand feet of sedimentary rock, or the 350 foot-thick White Cliffs of Dover, or the millions of sea creatures found on the top of Mt. Everest, or the fossilized trees discovered in Antarctica, or the mile-deep sediment on the Pacific ocean floor.
The flood happened. Of that, there is no doubt.
And when the rain finally stopped and the water slowly seeped back into the ground, Noah’s ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. But how would he know that the earth was ready, that it was time to get back down on the ground?
That’s when we hear first of a raven, then a dove.
It’s kind of funny if you think about it. When the Bible talks about Noah’s flood in Genesis chapters 6 through 8, it moves pretty fast. In fact, you could sum it all up in just a few short words--God warned. Noah built. Rain fell. Flood came. All perished. Ark rested.
But all of a sudden, out of the blue, there’s a pause in the text, a look at what happened next.
Genesis chapter 8, verse 6: “At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.”
So why did he first send a raven, and not a dove? Because a dove is a clean bird. It’s a picture of purity and innocence, a symbol of peace.
But not a raven. Ravens are scavengers. They literally feed on death.
So when Noah released that bird, it didn’t take long at all for it to find a home. In the post-flood world, there was quite a lot to feast on. Millions of trees and thousands of carcasses all floated along just waiting to be devoured.
And what did it do? Verse 7: “It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.”
But not the dove. Verse 8: “Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.”
The story of Noah’s flood is a story of law and gospel, of sin and grace, of wrath and mercy. And ever since that time, the world has never been the same.
In October of 1918, American soldiers had pushed too far into the Argonne forest, and found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the slopes of a hill. Cut off from both supplies and reinforcements, some 550 men held their ground against a far larger German force for several days. And since they were beyond radio range, their only means of communication was carrier pigeons. Hoping against hope, they sent up one bird after another, until every single one of them was shot down out of the sky, torn apart by German fire. Desperately, the commander, Major Whittlesey, sent out one more, one named Cher Ami, with a note that read, “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.”
The very last chance for the Lost Battalion to walk off that hill alive, off it flew straight into enemy fire. But as it flew, the soldiers watched in horror as it was shot, wounded, then fell helplessly to the ground. Still alive, it took flight again. Blinded in one eye, and with its right leg barely hanging on, it somehow managed to survive, crossing twenty-five miles in a half an hour. He delivered the message, arriving at the base alive.
To this day, it’s impossible to say just how many are here today because of Cher Ami, that one, brave little bird.
Does it remind you of anyone? It should, for as Isaiah wrote, “He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted, pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities. With His stripes, we are healed.”
There’s no one who could love us more than our Savior Jesus.
One more thing. It’s been said that a pulpit isn’t just a podium, a piece of church furniture. The word, “pulpit,” is also a naval term. It’s what sailors call a raised platform on the bow of a ship. It leans out high over the water, where you can see the best and the clearest.
And even to this day, Noah-like preachers continue to speak words from God--raven-words and dove-words, that wing their way into our hearts and minds.
And much like a raven, the law flies back and forth, to and fro, cawing its accusations against us. There is no peace, no harmony, and no forgiveness apart from God, only judgment and condemnation. The raven is a dark bird with a dark word for each and every sinner.
But also from the pulpit comes dove-words, gospel words. And while the raven-words caw an accusation, dove-words coo an absolution. And with them comes an olive leaf, a token of peace with God through Jesus Christ.
In the words of a song, “Jesus, our Savior came to earth one day; He was born in a stable, in a manger of hay. Though here rejected, but not up above, for God gave us His sign on the wings of a dove.”
The flood, dear Father, is to us a message of law and gospel, sin and grace. Grant that each of us, in spite of our sin, may find mercy and grace in the cross, for Jesus’ sake. Amen