Experiencing the Spirit (The Day of Pentecost)
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Today’s first reading – the vision of Ezekiel in a valley full of dry bones – is a story that’s familiar to many of us. It occurs several times in our lectionary, including at the Easter Vigil. It’s referenced in many songs and hymns. And it’s just a really cool story about how the Spirit of God breathes life into dead, dry bones, and restores hope and life.
But to really appreciate the vision of Ezekiel, you need to understand the context of this vision. Ezekiel was a prophet during the time after the Babylonians had conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem. Most of the people had been deported to foreign lands. The Temple had been destroyed. Their community, their culture and their religion, all seemed to be dead and gone, not unlike those dry bones.
Things were bad. And things were getting worse. There really seemed to be no hope that any of this would change. After all, the Babylonians had destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel a hundred years before, and nobody even knew where those people were now.
And it’s in this context that the Spirit of the Lord gives Ezekiel this vision. He sees himself in a valley (a bad to place to be strategically); the valley is full of bones, and they’re so dead that they’re even dry and bleached …
So God asks the question, “Can these bones lives?” The answer, of course, is obvious. No, they can’t. There’s nothing that can be done, but Ezekiel is unwilling to give up on God. And so he says, “God, only you know if that could happen …”
And then Ezekiel is told to speak. And as he speaks the words God gives him, an unbelievable and remarkable thing happens – the bones come together and flesh covers them. But they’re still dead.
It’s only when Ezekiel prophesies to the breath (the Spirit) that the breath of God – the Spirit of God – enters into those dead people. And then they live and breathe and stand up again.
And then God tells Ezekiel what this vision is all about: these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, we’re no better off than these dry bones. We’re beyond hope. Nothing can save us, not even God.
So God tells Ezekiel to go and share this vision with the people, and to tell them that even though they think they’re as dead as dry bones in a valley, God can and will still act in their lives. In fact, God is going to restore them, to bring them home, and make them a people again.
To the people Ezekiel was sent to, it seemed impossible. And yet, throughout the Scriptures, in story after story, God’s Spirit brings hope and new life – even in impossible situations.
Sometimes, when Christians read the story of Acts, we think that the Holy Spirit was a new creation on the day of Pentecost. But that’s not true. Instead, on the day of Pentecost, the first disciples of Jesus experienced the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) in a new and powerful way that they hadn’t had while Jesus was with them.
In fact, God’s Spirit – the very life-giving breath of God – has always been present in the world. But as the story of Ezekiel and the story of Pentecost point out, the life-giving power of God’s Holy Spirit tends to be recognized and experienced by folks who:
- expect God to do something that they know they can’t possibly pull off themselves – this is why Ezekiel was sent to share the vision; this is why the first act of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the disciples on the day of Pentecost was to teach them to rely on God’s power to do what they never could by themselves …
- act together – notice that when God acts in Ezekiel’s vision, it isn’t to raise up one person – instead, the whole nation is restored; and on the day of Pentecost, it isn’t just Peter who can speak in tongues, but everybody in the house …
- are willing to do something in the real world – the Spirit doesn’t just restore Israel “spiritually” to God; they actually went home, rebuilt the Temple and became a nation again; and the disciples don’t just experience the Spirit in their hearts; they get outside the house and make a difference in the lives of people in their own neighborhood …
And these things are also important for us to remember, especially in difficult times, when things seem to be getting worse in the world, and when there often doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it. As modern disciples of Jesus, we may not experience the Holy Spirit in the same dramatic ways that Ezekiel did or the way the first disciples did on the day of Pentecost. But in fact, the power of the Holy Spirit is God’s power to give us hope in the face of despair; to give us strength in the midst of weakness; and even to give us new life in the face of death.
And Jesus promises us that the power of the Holy Spirit will always be at work in our lives, even if not in overly dramatic ways. But we, too, are more likely to recognize and experience the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives when we live as people who:
- expect God to act in our real lives and in our physical world – over and over again, God works in the lives of people in the scriptures, and people don’t see it because they don’t expect God to do much of anything, or they think there’s no way forward and give up even looking; the power of the Spirit to give us vision isn’t simply to see dry bones coming to life, but to be open to the ways in which God is calling us to look forward to a new chapter beyond the crisis of the moment…
- look for God’s Spirit to act within the context community, not simply privately and personally in our hearts – one of the problems Christians sometimes have is that we think of the Spirit as a personal, private experience. And that can happen, but it’s not what happens in either Acts or even in Ezekiel’s vision. People DO experience the power of the Spirit personally, but it’s often in the context of community and it’s always shared in some way for the good of others (and not just to show off!)…
- are willing to be active agents of the Spirit in our real world – the Spirit is God’s way of making his love and power real in the world around us, not a way of escaping the world; the Spirit’s power is most evident in the Bible not when people talk about their deep and powerful emotions, but when people are moved to make a real difference in the life of the world around them …
I always think it’s always a good thing when the Day of Pentecost falls just before Yard Sale, because it’s a good reminder that at our Yard Sale, we always get a chance to practice being a Pentecost people. We get the opportunity to get outside of the “house” of the church; to interact with a lot of people who often don’t speak our language; and to live a little differently than we usually do.
But if we want to do Pentecost right, we should also expect God to give us a bigger and more hopeful vision of our place in this community and in the world around us. We should look for the ways God’s Spirit is working within us to help us share the good news of God’s love and power through how we act and what we do together as a community of believers. And we should notice how, even in small ways, what we’re doing is being agents of the Spirt, through whom God makes a real and visible difference in the lives of people we meet.
Amen.