The First Baptist Church of Redlands
TA PE S T RY Woven Together In Love: Colossians 2:2
SEPTEMBER 2016
ISSUE No. 9
A MESSAGE FROM PASTOR SHAWN
What’s With the Goose?
A couple of weeks ago we had a goose in worship. It was not a live goose but what folks in the Midwest call a “lawn goose.” This goose was a part of a skit that the youth did to act out the story of the healing of the bent over woman (Luke 13:1017). The young people formed a tableau based on a picture of a stone carving depicting the story, which was displayed on the overhead screen. In the middle of the stone carving is some kind of bird and so we used the lawn goose as a part of our tableau. After worship several people asked why we had a goose. As it turned out, due to the lighting it was difficult to see the bird in the picture on the screen and so we have the picture here with this article. But the question, “What’s with the goose?” has a lesson for all of us. When I first found the picture of the stone carving a few years ago while searching Google I laughed when I saw the bird. The question came, “What is that bird and why is it there?” Beyond the initial jokes about it being the “Aflak Goose” of insurance fame, I knew that surely that bird was put in that scene intentionally. Finally, I decided that I would try to find out and so I went to that highly academic source of information, Google, and I began to ask the question, “Does a goose or a duck have some spiritual symbolism?” I found out in my initial search that in Celtic
scripture with inquisitiveness, we spirituality the goose or the duck can see something more each time can represent the Holy Spirit. So a we read a familiar passage or story. goose or a duck standing between Those who are new to following Jesus and the woman who is being Jesus or haven’t really read and healed could be the Holy Spirit and studied the scripture for themselves that could make a lot of sense. But are in for a great surprise when they was the stone-carved depiction of find out that not everything that the story of Celtic origin? And so I they have heard about Jesus or the looked further and found out that Bible is the end all way of looking the stone is part of a tomb from the at things. I will never forget when I mid-fourth century, in Rome. So, not Celtic. But I learned that the two realized that there were women who “beardless” characters are Jesus and traveled with Jesus and there were women at Pentecost. Nobody ever Moses and the bird is the rooster told me that! of St. Peter. Though Moses is not We also discover that named in the story, he stands for commentaries of scripture are not the Law, which Jesus seems to be breaking in healing the woman. The just found in books or sermons, but also in art, or in poetry, or in rooster? Well, I will let you ponder novels, etc. But we have to ask the why he is there. questions, what is the artist trying to So the lesson that can come tell us? Or “What’s with the goose?” from this is that we should ask the question, “Why is that there?” and “Why did they say it that way?” when we read scripture. Many of us who have grown up in the church have gotten so used to the things that we have read in the Bible that we don’t notice things that are there. If we approach Photo courtesy of Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University