"THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT" May 20, 2018

I Kings 19: 9-13 Ezekiel 37: 1-15 Acts 2: 1-21 Several of you have shared my own feeling, the last few weeks. I recall Doc’s Mother Anne Nichols questioning when we are able to again have the Meat and Potatoes of both parts of the Bible, rather than 2 helpings of dessert from Gospels! The last 50 days, following the 40 days of Lent, we have been in the Season of Easter. During these 3 months of the suffering, death and Resurrection of Jesus,,, Just as with the passing of our loved ones we wonder if/when we will ever find normal? This is the Day of Pentecost, meaning 50 days after, which actually far more than a Birthday for Christianity, or the day of Peter’s Sermon calling 5,000 to be Baptized, marks God’s Gift of the Spirit! The “Jewish Pentecost” marked 50 days after Exodus’ Passover, The Jewish Feast Day “Shavuot”, remembering God’s Gift of the Law and 10 Commandments through Moses on Mt Simai. There is importance, of what we read in concert with this Acts 2 Passage as to where we find our emphases. In Genesis 1, The Spirit brooded over the waters of chaos in the beginning. If read with Genesis 2, where God forms humanity and breathes life into the creature from dust of the earth, we focus of God’s Breath. Genesis 10 and the Tower of Babel, we are made to hear the dialects of language and diversity, first divided, so we will not settle building towers to ourselves as gods, now resolved in uniting the one true church and body of Christ! In Kings, we listen for the Spirit of God coming in the still small voice which challenges “What are you doing here?” Ezekiel 37 the hand of God leads us to witness Redemption, that even at humanity’s greatest hopelessness, when we are completely dead and cut-off, spiritually dry, God can Call Life, Faith, Hope and Love into Being. Taking our clue from the Biblical word “ruach” which occurs 10 times in Ezekiel, and 5 times in Acts, which simultaneously means Spirit, Breath of God, Wind, my prayer is that we will hear that we are each instruments of God bearing the Gift of the Spirit to others. Throughout Genesis, Exodus, Jonah and the Psalms, God speaks through Creation, through Storms, Stars, Mountains. God could have simply called Israel to new life; could have called all the people of dispersed languages together on Pentecost without the Apostles; God could have been present to Israel again in Lightning, Earthquake, Fire or Wind; but in every case, God chose to speak through using people like us, to question “What are you doing in life?” “Can lifeless bones live Call them to be! Call the Spirit to come and breathe life anew!” “A fire was lit under each to Go out into the world, living your faith, rather than locked away by fears!” We hear of 3 SPIRITUAL GIFTS: King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel have prostituted themselves and led the nation to bow down to foreign idols of Baal, or as I like to say worshipping the Golf Baal/ Foot Baal/ Basket Baal. Recognizing there is a competition for the hearts of the people, a contest between the 5,000 Baal Prophets, versus Elijah the prophet of God. Bowing down to the Idols they had made, making a show of their suffering, even causing themselves pain in order to attract attention, the 5000 prophets cannot get a response from their fertility gods. Elijah, 3 times has 7 jars of water poured over his sacrifice to God, washing everything clean, and standing in the wet clay of the earth, the man of God prays that God would make God’s Spirit known. Lightning comes down out of heaven, consuming the sacrifice, altar, and water! Then the Prophet of God decapitates all of the 5000 Baal Worshippers. After which, Elijah runs away, afraid not only of retribution from the Queen and King who worshipped Baal, afraid that he stands isolated and alone in his beliefs before the world, BUT also that he has scared himself by having power to call on the name of God and God responds! At times our successes can frighten us. Having succeeded once, can I do this again, is it expected? Did God use me, or do I have power to control God when I desire? Am I all alone in righteousness and power. To which the Prophet witnesses that he may see fire, lightning, earthquakes and wind, but God will not necessarily be in them when he wants. That his zealousness/ jealousy may not only be FOR God, but being Jealous OF God. AND that as much as the Prophet may assume he stands before the world knowing Right vs Wrong, knowing God, that God has 5000 other priests, too. The Second, takes place 400 years later at the end of the Babylonian Empire, after Israel lay in ruins, Chaldea, Egypt, Syria, Assyria, all the nations of the Ancient world were destroyed, DEAD, dispersed to the far ends of the earth, those left enslaved as Prisoners of War for generations; where you not only face devastating loss and exile, but even the touchstones of memory are cut-off. Fat, skin, muscle, sinew picked clean, your bones scattered. This is a dark place of Depression. Remember the scene in the Cartoon The Lion King, where Simba is cast away beyond the Place of Jackals, the Elephants’ Graveyard, the skies are black, and all hope has been sucked from the dried out marrow of your scattered bones. Ezekiel hears the question Can these bones live?, stated differently: Can there be Hope even generations after everything is cut-off and the reasons forgot? Forget the Mitch Miller song, forget Disney’s dancing skeletons, forget computer animation… Even after everything else, when a person of faith/the Son of man believes and asks scattered bones to re-assemble, organs, muscle, sinew and skin to appear; when the people pray and demand hope beyond hope, the Spirit of God can even resurrect the dead. 600 years later, under the oppression of the Caesars of the Roman Empire, months after the Betrayal, Abandonment, Arrest and Crucifixion of Jesus, when all the world knew Jesus dead, and 10 days after a small group of his own believers claimed to have seen him go away to heaven, those left behind were gathered in fear, when the promised Spirit worked through them to call together people from the four corners of the world to listen and believe. 50 days after, Passover, when God gave through Moses The LAW, God was gave us a relationship with God and one another. 50 days after Easter’s Resurrection of Jesus God was once again gave us relationship a Gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s motivation for us to hope and believe, to trust and to love, even 2000 years later, when intimidated by our own successes, when the dried marrow of our hope has been sucked out of our scattered bones, after the Savior, still to believe, and to take responsibility for acting in faith. Similar to the story of the Day of Pentecost when the diaspora of peoples were united as one, the second half of Ezekiel 37 is direction from God to take two sticks, writing on one Judah, and on the other Essau, names associated with the two Kingdoms of Israel, and that the sticks can be joined together. What the Professional Biblical commentators describe is that the Nation will no longer be divided, but reunited. The other day Jim Tracy stopped by and out of his truck extracted these 2 brass rods that he joined together as a Dousing Rod. This is not in any Commentary, but what I believe is that the joining of two together as one serves to direct the magnetism in our bodies to find what cannot be found alone. It occurs to me that individually, we each struggle and seek to believe, but joined together, like the two sticks of a Dousing rod, we can find what is hidden, the gift of God’s Spirit with us.