I’ve always loved this passage from Deuteronomy, in part because it provides a female image of the Divine, and our typical expression of Christianity is quite lacking in that department. On this day, when we celebrate Mothers’ Day, it is a good opportunity (but certainly shouldn’t be the only recognition of the year) that our scriptures contain plentiful maternal imagery of God’s relationship with creation.
It starts right there in the beginning, and is connected by this description of God’s breath, a “Mighty Wind” “Hovering” over the waters. This unusual verb is only used 2 other places in the entire Bible, and one of those instances is Deuteronomy 32:11, when the mother Eagle “hovers” over the nest. I believe the two instances share more than a word. As is often the case, the use of an uncommon word or phrase thematically connects two pieces of scripture.
Perhaps you have a negative association with the word “hover.” Perhaps some children think of their mother “hovering” in unbearable overwhelming sticking your nose in my business helicopter parenting. For the purpose of this sermon, please drive those associations from your mind.
The phrase that precedes the description of the Spirit Hovering over the waters in Genesis is “in the beginning when God BARA the heavens and the earth. Ba’ra’ is a verb in the Bible that is reserved for instances when God is the subject. It refers to the creative activity of God that is unparalleled in our sphere of understanding. It is used elsewhere in the Bible for that creative activity that only God can accomplish—notably in Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart, O God. Psalm 102:18, “Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD: and Isaiah 65:18, “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.
Wind sweeping over the waters is repeated elsewhere as well. The wind sweeps over the waters in Genesis 8 when the waters from the flood begin receding.
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
The wind sweeps over the waters at another critical juncture as a slave people in Egypt are “born through the water” into a new people-- Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, (Ex. 14:21)
The “hovering” described in the metaphor of an Eagle hovering over her young is nurturing, transformative, and creative. It is what makes the difference between the watery chaos, or the “wasteland” as Moses describes in Deuteronomy and what comes after.
And what does come after? As an eagle stirs up her nest.
A. Why would she resort to such a practice?
1. She has taken such time and care to build a nest in some high lofty place so her young would be safe.
Nests: Are built to last; used year after year by the same pair of eagles & then passed
on to another pairing following their deaths; are made of large sticks with soft lining (leaves, etc.) for the baby eagles; additions are made every year, with some nests being as large as a small truck. Must be in a safe place – tall trees, sides of high cliff.
Egg Care: Mother eagles will lay the eggs & sit on them for as long as 50 days. Sometimes the father eagle will also sit on the eggs. Once the baby eagle starts “calling, it takes about 15 hours for him/her to peck through the 1st hole. Another 35- 40 hours to break completely out. Must rest after breaking out.
Flying: Once hatched, it takes the baby eagles 65-75 days to prepare to fly.3. However, all of a sudden she begins to rip out that comfortable lining with her mighty talons. Dissatisfaction with the present is sometimes the only way to illicit change. The eagle stirs up the nest and takes the comfortable fur and feather lining out, leaving the mud and sticks to jab into the side of the eaglets. And, if you ever watch any youtube videos of this kind of thing, you will see why. The eaglets by this point are as big as the parents. They, like many children, have difficulty leaving the comfort of the nest.
the mother eagle instinctively knows her young are not destined to remain in the nest.
1. They were not created for this purpose.
2. They were meant to soar into the heavens and to be the kings of the sky.
C. By stirring the nest the mother eagle is simply trying to produce within her young a discontent with the old life and desire to move out into the bigger and better world.
IN what ways has the world as it is left you feeling dissatisfied? Ponder that for a few moments, and you may answer for yourself what God’s hopes and plans are for you. At some point and time in the human life, there is discontentedness. Perhaps that discontentedness is God stirring the nest. Perhaps it is our own particular way of being prompted to fly.
It’s not just about keeping us safe—God’s creativity ultimately dumps us out of the safety of the nest into the exhilarating freefall—the only place where we can spread our wings and learn that we are BARA created in God’s image.
In Genesis it is creation and recreation, in Exodus it is freedom, in Deuteronomy it is flight. This image of a Mother Eagle teaching her eaglets to fly reminds me of the scene in Peter Pan when Peter visits the room of the children, has Tinker Bell give them some pixie dust, and then gives them the secret to flight—according to the Disney movie, it is simply “thinking a happy thought” and indeed the happy thought that God will not let us fall, that we will be borne up on the back of the mother eagle until we finally get it—is a happy thought. The book by JM Barrie puts things in a way that makes the application to our purpose even easier: Peter Pan simply says, “For to have faith is to have wings.”
Well some say life, will beat you down, break your heart, steal your crown. So I started out for God knows where. I guess I’ll know when I get there. Learning to Fly
Discussion Questions
- How does the imagery of God as a hovering mother eagle shift your understanding of divine care and guidance?
- In what ways have you experienced "nest-stirring"—a moment where comfort was disrupted to push you toward growth?
- How do the themes of creation, freedom, and flight resonate with different seasons in your life?
- What role does faith play in moments of uncertainty, when you feel like you're in freefall before you learn to fly?
- How does this passage expand your understanding of God's maternal imagery in scripture?
