Prophesy to the Breath, May, 31, 2009

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Acts 2: 1-21

Across our Nation, around the world, believers have been searching for a time to compare this to in earlier history. Surely the world, humanity, the Church has had another time like this in all the thousands of years of history? Some have claimed this is a time like the Revelation, when the Empire is confronting those who believe, and congregations are like so many separate voices, each with their own problems. Others have claimed this is a period like the Old Testament time of Judges, when every person did what they believed right in their own heart, and afterward, after doing great harm by acting on what they wanted, the people of faith would return to the Lord. But of any day, I believe this is the Day of Pentecost! Like the Vision given Ezekiel, like the Disciples fifty days after the Resurrection, the world is without hope, dead the very marrow dried up and gone, leaders locked away in upper rooms for fear.

Like so many times in Christian History, we have been a Bi-Tarian people, as opposed to Mono-theistic or Trinitarian; in addition to God made known to us by Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, we have been brought closer to God, we have been redeemed by Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. But we often throw the Holy Spirit in with faith in the Bodily Resurrection, Virgin Birth, Communion of saints and holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, as if a hodgepodge of believing in other stuff we don't fully understand. Yet, this morning, on Pentecost, that is the fiftieth Day after the Passover, the fiftieth day after Easter morning, we are called to proclaim and to prophesy The Holy Spirit.

We live in a secular world, a world without faith, without hope. All around us are reports of death and dying, North Korea has launched 6 missiles in the last ten days in an effort to become a Nuclear power. The Stock market rallies, then panics. General Motors is restructured so as to go into bankruptcy. Real Estate is beginning to move, but we are cautioned that most of what are selling are low priced homes. We have come to entertain ourselves with forensic shows, Law & Order, NCIS, Bones, House, which begin with scenes of Death, violent crimes, dismembered parts of bodies. The first forty minutes of each episode is the Medical examiner piecing together evidence from piles of bones and corpses. Forensic science identifies this big toe and that left ear, until all the dead dry parts are assembled, only then to determine how the body died, then the cause of death, in order to determine who this once was. Like a soliloquy from Hamlet, we are familiar with handling death, we lift up a skull crying “Alas, Poor Yorik, I knew him!”

But all these Forensic police dramas, are about assembling the dead parts, making the identification, finding out when, how and why death occurred; what Ezekiel and Acts describe is what happens AFTER THE NEXT 20 minutes of the Episode. Like House and Bones and Ducky, we have mastered abilities at figuring out when and why death occurred, we have brought the bones together into skeletons, even through computer imaging theorizing what sinews, flesh and skin would look like on the person. But, still the dead are dead. In MEMORIALS, we sift through our grieving for good memories, for moments when we once shared joy. BUT what God commands of Ezekiel is something a great deal more and different, to PROPHESY TO THE BREATH, to Command and Name to God what we need for Life. The word for Spirit can mean Spirit, Breath, or Wind. Different from Commandments of Law, or Parables or Crucifixion, the Holy Spirit is about LIFE, life beyond death, to HOPE and TRUST and BELIEVE.

Thousands of years ago, the Nation of Israel, that great Nation built up by Kings David and Solomon into the greatest and most powerful Nation on the face of the Earth, was beaten down and destroyed. Their strongest were put to death, their best and brightest were deported, like some great battlefield Ezekiel was led amongst the piles of separated bones that had been bleached and radiated by years of decay and sun, and he was asked “Can these bones live?” There is no marrow left, there is not one bone left connected to another, Can there still be a body? And he prophesies to the Bones to come together, he prophesies to the sinews and flesh to come upon the bones, he prophesies to the skin to regrow and cover the corpse, but still like the scene at Genesis where God formed humanity out of dust, there is no life. And Ezekiel is commanded to PROPHESY TO THE BREATH, let your desires be made known, stand for what you most desperately need to believe, do not be limited by what seems real and what seems impossible. And out of all the piles of all the bones, out of all the dust, members are re-united, and there is life! The point being if these dry hopeless bones can live, why can we not hope?

Tragically, humanity has come to believe in RELIGION, in institutions, hierarchies and systems, rather than PROPHESYING TO THE BREATH. What happened on Pentecost was not SPEAKING IN TONGUES, not an unintelligible glossallalia, but people from every part of the world each hearing a call to faith in their own language and context, “as the Spirit gave them utterance”. This is the REDEMPTION OF BABEL, when the people sought to do what they wanted, to settle without God, and instead God sent them out with differing languages. On Pentecost, the disciples were locked away for fear, when the Spirit called them out to speak, and every person was able to understand from their own experience what God was doing.

Over the years, there have been many times when we took on what many believed to be impossible:
After 20 years of Civil war, can a stone aged people who never had the technology of the Wheel, can they possibly have Health Care to vaccinate against and fight preventable disease?
After 20 years of the Pipe organ not working, and music being conflicted, could our voices and purposes harmonize to provide arts and music in this community?
Or after years of people from the Northeast leaving to go South and the internal problems that are natural to people, that we would pledge multiple campaigns and repay them all before the economy shifted.
But the point has not been, creating a clinic in Sudan, or commissioning a Pipe Organ, but rebuilding hope and trust and faith.
If EASTER were only about Christ rising from the dead, it would suffice, to know that we are not separate from God, that God has forgiven us all our sins.
BUT EVEN MORE, what Pentecost is about, is not simply the birth of the Church, the birth of religion, but rather PROPHESYING to so many different parts to come together and to go out filled with HOPE, with TRUST and LOVE! All the many weddings and births and memorials, ordinations and confirmations and celebrations of years of leadership, have been CELEBRATIONS of FAITH, our Attempt to PROPHESY TO THE BREATH OF GOD: Holy Spirit fill these believers, take them up in the hand of God and use us.

When I was in Seminary, I recall a student who stood up to preach, and afterward the professor asked: How do you write your sermons? And the young man said, I research and write the first half, then I leave the second half for God to fill in. To which the Professor said “Congratulations, it is quite clear you have far surpassed Almighty God!” Too often, we try to fill every heartbeat, every scheduled moment of our lives, then exhausted and overwhelmed by difficulties, we expect God to enter in and provide faith, to rescue and give us spirit. The message of Pentecost, is that we need to speak plainly and regularly to God, naming what we need, what we hope to be part of. What are your Noble Goals? What would you want to be remembered for being used by God to do? Prophesy to the Breath, Speak into the Wind, trusting that God can use even you and I.