Pigeon Feathers and the Sermon on the Mount

It was a happy coincidence, really, my reading the story by John Updike and memorizing the Sermon on the Mount along with my students in the same year. This was the only year since the early 1980s that I've taught English, so I haven't really thought much about short stories and literary motifs since then.

But as I taught English last year, I heard of the Updike story and read about a farm boy named David who has become afraid of death. His father tells him to get rid of the pigeons infesting the barn, so David shoots them. As he buries the half-dozen dead birds, he is fascinated by the exquisite coloring of their feathers, the slate blues, the lilacs, the white bird with the salmon at its throat. He is astonished that "these birds bred in the millions and were exterminated as pests" should be so beautifully colored.

And then he has his epiphany, and the fear of death fell away from him. David suddenly knew "that the God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would not destroy His whole Creation by refusing to let David live forever."

Surely Updike was thinking of the words of Jesus: "Look at the birds... look at the flowers of the field. If your Father feeds them and clothes the grass which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more take care of you?"

How amazing it is that to assure us in our anxieties ("What shall we eat? What shall we put on?") Jesus points not to God's astonishing generosity nor to his all-encompassing wisdom but to his artistry. This God, who pours such exquisite beauty into the appearance of wild flowers and the color of pigeon feathers, this God can be trusted with my life, my worries. He is not careless, He is boundlessly attentive to the smallest detail of his creation. He can be trusted.