So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to talk to all of God’s children. And I brought with me a few books I read with my kids. It’s a popular series that you might know too and it’s all about a pigeon who can be a little much. The series is by Mo Williams and started with a pigeon begging us to drive the bus. The series has grown to include books like “the pigeon has to go to school,” “don’t let the pigeon drive the sleigh,” “the pigeon needs a bath,” and “the duckling gets a cookie.” Open a book As we can see, this pigeon can be a lot. The pigeon complains. The pigeon whines. The pigeon has big dreams, big emotions, and shouts all the time. And as we see when the pigeon finally agrees to do what it should do – like take a bath – it delays delays delays, arguing that the water is too cold, too hot, too cold, too hot, too wet, too reflective, not enough toys, and too many toys. This pigeon is up and down and all around. And while this pigeon can be pretty funny, this pigeon is also pretty exhausting. And when we get to the end of each book, the pigeon usually discovers that what it was afraid of, what it was worried about, and all the energy it spent avoiding the good thing it could do wasn’t necessary in the first place.
Now one of the reasons why I think these books are so great is because we can imagine pigeons – and ourselves – being exactly like this. We don’t always want to try new things or we have big emotions that we always like to share or we don’t always know how to be flexible when things happen that we don’t expect. This pigeon is something we especially see in kids your age – but also in adults who pretend they’re not like this but they are. We are inflexible; we want what we want; and we will drag our feet when we things don’t go our way. And if we’ve ever seen a pigeon in a city – especially New York City – we notice that they act this way too. They are everywhere; they eat everything; they run into the road; they take over sidewalks; they don’t seem very clean; and they’re everything we try to avoid. We’d rather celebrate a hawk or a cardinal or a blue jay. But a pigeon is just too much – and something we want to avoid.
Yet in today’s reading about Jesus – we’re going to hear about how, nearly 2000 years ago, the holy spirit – God’s energy – God’s force – the feeling of God’s presence in the world – showed up as a pigeon. It won’t use the word “pigeon” in our Bible – it’ll call it a DOVE. But a DOVE is just a pigeon! We just pretend that it’s not. We think of a dove as all white and graceful and peaceful and wonderful and holy and innocent. But a DOVE is a pigeon – and can act like every other pigeon too. And I wonder if that is a good reminder of what the Holy Spirit is like. The Holy Spirit is sometimes wild, unpredictable, and full of big emotion. The Holy Spirit pushes us – like it does this pigeon – into new experiences where we get to make God’s love real in the live of others. The Holy Spirit comes to transform us from being this kind of pigeon that tells God no or pretends that God doesn’t want us to be as kind or as caring or as sacrificial as God wants us to be. The Holy Spirit is a pigeon that transforms us when we are like this pigeon who doesn’t realize just how big God’s story can be. But like the pigeon in the books, what the Holy Spirit does by pushing us to be kind, to love, to serve, to form new relationships, and to not our own wants, ego, or needs get in the way of our ability to recognize everyone around us as beloved children of God – the Holy Spirit is what helps us grow fuller into the person God knows we can be.