Breathe Upon These Slain
Sunday, June 4th, 2006
Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Ezekiel 37:1-14
I suspect that there might be one or two in the room who would eagerly nod “Yes, Please!” to the question. But most of us, I think, would be a little more hesitant to answer.
In part, I imagine, our hesitation would be due to the underlying question ‘IS there any such thing?’ – let’s allow for a minute that at some point, perhaps in the near future, we will once more venture into space and the likelihood of there being something out there that has not been seen before increases exponentially as we move away from the earth.
But, IS there something outside THAT realm – in other words, here on earth, that’s TRULY never been seen, or done, or experienced before?
One of the things that really hit me while living in Spain was the sense of history about the land. The first year I was there I lived in the northern part of the country, in Oviedo, Asturias, in the foothills of the Cantabrian Coastal range of mountains – the ones that keep the clouds and moisture from crossing into the central plains from the North Atlantic. The two missionary families I worked with had developed a routine over the years. Fridays were free days – ‘off’ days – at least the afternoons and evenings. Weather permitting, that almost always translated into an outing of one kind or another, either to the mountains or to the beach – not necessarily to go swimming – the water was pretty much constantly too cold for that – but just to be outdoors. Several times we went on hikes – serious hikes – into the mountains, and there never failed to be a reminder that where we were walking people had been walking and hiking for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rocks that protruded along the trail were worn smooth by the passage of tens if not hundreds of thousands of feet of … hikers … over the centuries.
During my second year, in Denia, on the Mediterranean coast, the road I walked to get to the retreat center and the home of the missionary family I worked with THERE was 700 years old. The ruins on the little hill in the middle of town date back to Roman times. Denia has been an inhabited location since at least 4000 BCE. The name of the town itself derives from the name of the Roman Goddess of the hunt, Diana. Her Greek counterpart, Artemis, was the same Goddess we learned about in our study of Acts, when Paul was in Ephesus his proclamation began to cut into the income of the artisans who made their living off selling figurines of the goddess, since Ephesus was the center of worship for her.
All that to say, you’ve heard the saying “the seven last words of the church are ‘we’ve never done it that way before,’” and to be honest, Virginia has a rep of being somewhat … shall we say, “Traditional” in its outlook. There’s a joke I heard shortly after we moved here: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Five: one to change it, and four to talk about how much better the old light bulb was. I think I’ve shared that with you before. If I have, please forgive the rerun. But it applies, doesn’t it? J
The point is this: Virginia has one of the longer histories of the states of the Union; certainly one of which to be proud for many, many reasons. We are, after all, getting ready to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the first settlement at Jamestown next year, so we do like to refer to ourselves as the Old Dominion. There is something to be said for carrying a sense of self from where we’ve come. Having that, we can tend to venerate it a little too much. Yes, there’s a place for tradition, but it needs to be a PLACE, not the center.
And there’s almost always a downside. While there are things to be proud of in our history, there are likewise things we would prefer not to be reminded of from the same source, things, we’d rather leave unmentioned in the history books. And to a degree, that happens. It is, after all, the victors who write history. We would rather not dwell on the treatment of the Native Americans who inhabited these lands centuries before the English and other settlers arrived, or the treatment of slaves and former slaves before, during, and after the civil war. Or, for that matter, the racism that lingers even today in our society. History has another name: Legacy. It is that part of our past that directly affects us. We also use the term to refer to what WE leave for those who come after US.
Legacies can be good or bad, invigorating or debilitating, uplifting or a heavy burden.
So we come to the realization, just as Ezekiel did, that the task before us is one that cannot be initiated, cannot be engaged, and cannot be completed, apart from intervention on God’s part. Anything less will mean that the bones of our ancestors will continue to be just that – dry bones. We may dress them up in flesh and skin and perfect hair, and dress them well, but unless the spirit of God moves through these bones, they remain a rattling, white cage.
Today we celebrate Pentecost, the commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit on those disciples and followers of Christ who were gathered in Jerusalem 50 days after the resurrection and shortly after his ascension.
In that one event, the followers of Jesus began to realize exactly what ‘newness of life’ truly meant. We read in the second chapter of Acts that people from all across the Roman Empire were present in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, and when the Spirit came upon the disciples and other followers, they began to speak to each in their native language.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be present on that day?
Imagine the city teeming with people, many more times the people who would normally be there, and as you walk through the crowd, you hear conversations in so many different languages that you simply lose count. It is almost too much to take in. There’s a part of you that wants them to all just go away. For things to go back to being the same people who are there year in and year out, the same faces, the familiar ones, the ones who talk and act and think like you. But it just isn’t like that anymore. Since travel became so much more DO-able – fewer bandits on the roads and pirates on the seas, with Rome’s ever-present punishing presence lurking around every corner and in every cove – people have been coming in droves to the annual feasts and high holy days. While on the one hand you can certainly understand that the people coming from hundreds and thousands of miles away are coming for the same reason as the folks who live just down the hill from the city, it is still more than a little discomfiting to have so many new people to keep showing up. They may be a fellow pilgrim, but they are SO different!
Then, in a rush, this THING happens. You’re not sure what to call it, but it’s something you’ve never experienced before, something you’ve never seen before, something you’ve certainly never DONE before. You find yourself talking to the man in front of you about what amazing things God has done in your life – about Jesus, and what he’s been teaching and showing you, and about life – NEW life – life unencumbered by the expectation of following the same rules you and everyone else in your family had followed since the time of your grandfather’s great grandfather’s ancestors, so many years, so many rites. And you suddenly realize that for the last several minutes you’ve been talking to him, this is a man with whom you’d not been able to communicate at ALL just an hour ago.
And you stop for a moment and look at each other and the realization dawns in each of you that this is truly something new.
So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
Jerusalem is still a part of that Pentecost. The language we worship in was most likely NOT one of the ones spoken on that day. In fact, the vast majority of the languages of the world were not represented at Pentecost. So how is it that the Gospel is preached in over 200 languages around the world on any given Sunday?
It was in the sharing on that first Pentecost that the followers of Christ realized that what they had was a message for the whole world, not just for their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Jesus had told them shortly before that they were to go into Jerusalem and Judea. They were probably expecting that. But then he extended the command to Samaria, which was not where anyone DECENT would even WANT to go, and then to the ends of the Earth. Who knows WHAT you would find THERE?
So Jerusalem is looking around at the ends of the earth. That’s us. That’s where we are. We’re not at the center of the universe. We are, admittedly, the center of OUR universe, almost by default, but we dare not lose sight of the fact that there is a world out there waiting for us to bring the Gospel to them, UNKNOWINGLY waiting, maybe UNAWARE of the need. Aware of the emptiness and loneliness, but not sure how to fill it. That’s where we come in.
It’s not a question of THEM finding their way HERE, it’s a question of OUR stepping out THERE to meet them, to speak their language, to communicate in terms that don’t sound stilted or dated, that would cause an almost immediate shut-off of the hearing mechanism in the brain.
If God was willing to go from communicating through a high priest and the ritual sacrifice of animals to communicating face to face through God’s incarnation in Christ Jesus, it’s the least we can do to consider changing the way we speak to the world today so that we will be understood.
We have the capacity, we can modify all kinds of things – our music, our dress, even our language, if needed, but do we have the will?
The message will remain the same. The Gospel is the same – God is seeking to reconcile the world to God’s self through Jesus Christ. That will never change.
Will you pray with me and seek God’s direction in how Jerusalem can look at an old story in a new way? As we move into our invitation, let the invitation become a dialogue over the next few weeks, one where we will work together and pray together to follow God’s leading – to explore new ways of doing things – to treasure the past, to find that which we want to keep, and find that which we want to risk – that BIG thing that we will risk for something good.
Let’s pray.
Sunday, June 4th, 2006
Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Ezekiel 37:1-14
To see something that’s never been seen before. To DO something that’s never been done before, to EXPERIENCE something that no one has been through before … does that appeal to you?1 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3 He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.
I suspect that there might be one or two in the room who would eagerly nod “Yes, Please!” to the question. But most of us, I think, would be a little more hesitant to answer.
In part, I imagine, our hesitation would be due to the underlying question ‘IS there any such thing?’ – let’s allow for a minute that at some point, perhaps in the near future, we will once more venture into space and the likelihood of there being something out there that has not been seen before increases exponentially as we move away from the earth.
But, IS there something outside THAT realm – in other words, here on earth, that’s TRULY never been seen, or done, or experienced before?
One of the things that really hit me while living in Spain was the sense of history about the land. The first year I was there I lived in the northern part of the country, in Oviedo, Asturias, in the foothills of the Cantabrian Coastal range of mountains – the ones that keep the clouds and moisture from crossing into the central plains from the North Atlantic. The two missionary families I worked with had developed a routine over the years. Fridays were free days – ‘off’ days – at least the afternoons and evenings. Weather permitting, that almost always translated into an outing of one kind or another, either to the mountains or to the beach – not necessarily to go swimming – the water was pretty much constantly too cold for that – but just to be outdoors. Several times we went on hikes – serious hikes – into the mountains, and there never failed to be a reminder that where we were walking people had been walking and hiking for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rocks that protruded along the trail were worn smooth by the passage of tens if not hundreds of thousands of feet of … hikers … over the centuries.
During my second year, in Denia, on the Mediterranean coast, the road I walked to get to the retreat center and the home of the missionary family I worked with THERE was 700 years old. The ruins on the little hill in the middle of town date back to Roman times. Denia has been an inhabited location since at least 4000 BCE. The name of the town itself derives from the name of the Roman Goddess of the hunt, Diana. Her Greek counterpart, Artemis, was the same Goddess we learned about in our study of Acts, when Paul was in Ephesus his proclamation began to cut into the income of the artisans who made their living off selling figurines of the goddess, since Ephesus was the center of worship for her.
All that to say, you’ve heard the saying “the seven last words of the church are ‘we’ve never done it that way before,’” and to be honest, Virginia has a rep of being somewhat … shall we say, “Traditional” in its outlook. There’s a joke I heard shortly after we moved here: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Five: one to change it, and four to talk about how much better the old light bulb was. I think I’ve shared that with you before. If I have, please forgive the rerun. But it applies, doesn’t it? J
The point is this: Virginia has one of the longer histories of the states of the Union; certainly one of which to be proud for many, many reasons. We are, after all, getting ready to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the first settlement at Jamestown next year, so we do like to refer to ourselves as the Old Dominion. There is something to be said for carrying a sense of self from where we’ve come. Having that, we can tend to venerate it a little too much. Yes, there’s a place for tradition, but it needs to be a PLACE, not the center.
And there’s almost always a downside. While there are things to be proud of in our history, there are likewise things we would prefer not to be reminded of from the same source, things, we’d rather leave unmentioned in the history books. And to a degree, that happens. It is, after all, the victors who write history. We would rather not dwell on the treatment of the Native Americans who inhabited these lands centuries before the English and other settlers arrived, or the treatment of slaves and former slaves before, during, and after the civil war. Or, for that matter, the racism that lingers even today in our society. History has another name: Legacy. It is that part of our past that directly affects us. We also use the term to refer to what WE leave for those who come after US.
Legacies can be good or bad, invigorating or debilitating, uplifting or a heavy burden.
So we come to the realization, just as Ezekiel did, that the task before us is one that cannot be initiated, cannot be engaged, and cannot be completed, apart from intervention on God’s part. Anything less will mean that the bones of our ancestors will continue to be just that – dry bones. We may dress them up in flesh and skin and perfect hair, and dress them well, but unless the spirit of God moves through these bones, they remain a rattling, white cage.
Today we celebrate Pentecost, the commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit on those disciples and followers of Christ who were gathered in Jerusalem 50 days after the resurrection and shortly after his ascension.
In that one event, the followers of Jesus began to realize exactly what ‘newness of life’ truly meant. We read in the second chapter of Acts that people from all across the Roman Empire were present in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, and when the Spirit came upon the disciples and other followers, they began to speak to each in their native language.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be present on that day?
Imagine the city teeming with people, many more times the people who would normally be there, and as you walk through the crowd, you hear conversations in so many different languages that you simply lose count. It is almost too much to take in. There’s a part of you that wants them to all just go away. For things to go back to being the same people who are there year in and year out, the same faces, the familiar ones, the ones who talk and act and think like you. But it just isn’t like that anymore. Since travel became so much more DO-able – fewer bandits on the roads and pirates on the seas, with Rome’s ever-present punishing presence lurking around every corner and in every cove – people have been coming in droves to the annual feasts and high holy days. While on the one hand you can certainly understand that the people coming from hundreds and thousands of miles away are coming for the same reason as the folks who live just down the hill from the city, it is still more than a little discomfiting to have so many new people to keep showing up. They may be a fellow pilgrim, but they are SO different!
Then, in a rush, this THING happens. You’re not sure what to call it, but it’s something you’ve never experienced before, something you’ve never seen before, something you’ve certainly never DONE before. You find yourself talking to the man in front of you about what amazing things God has done in your life – about Jesus, and what he’s been teaching and showing you, and about life – NEW life – life unencumbered by the expectation of following the same rules you and everyone else in your family had followed since the time of your grandfather’s great grandfather’s ancestors, so many years, so many rites. And you suddenly realize that for the last several minutes you’ve been talking to him, this is a man with whom you’d not been able to communicate at ALL just an hour ago.
And you stop for a moment and look at each other and the realization dawns in each of you that this is truly something new.
So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
Jerusalem is still a part of that Pentecost. The language we worship in was most likely NOT one of the ones spoken on that day. In fact, the vast majority of the languages of the world were not represented at Pentecost. So how is it that the Gospel is preached in over 200 languages around the world on any given Sunday?
It was in the sharing on that first Pentecost that the followers of Christ realized that what they had was a message for the whole world, not just for their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Jesus had told them shortly before that they were to go into Jerusalem and Judea. They were probably expecting that. But then he extended the command to Samaria, which was not where anyone DECENT would even WANT to go, and then to the ends of the Earth. Who knows WHAT you would find THERE?
So Jerusalem is looking around at the ends of the earth. That’s us. That’s where we are. We’re not at the center of the universe. We are, admittedly, the center of OUR universe, almost by default, but we dare not lose sight of the fact that there is a world out there waiting for us to bring the Gospel to them, UNKNOWINGLY waiting, maybe UNAWARE of the need. Aware of the emptiness and loneliness, but not sure how to fill it. That’s where we come in.
It’s not a question of THEM finding their way HERE, it’s a question of OUR stepping out THERE to meet them, to speak their language, to communicate in terms that don’t sound stilted or dated, that would cause an almost immediate shut-off of the hearing mechanism in the brain.
If God was willing to go from communicating through a high priest and the ritual sacrifice of animals to communicating face to face through God’s incarnation in Christ Jesus, it’s the least we can do to consider changing the way we speak to the world today so that we will be understood.
We have the capacity, we can modify all kinds of things – our music, our dress, even our language, if needed, but do we have the will?
The message will remain the same. The Gospel is the same – God is seeking to reconcile the world to God’s self through Jesus Christ. That will never change.
Will you pray with me and seek God’s direction in how Jerusalem can look at an old story in a new way? As we move into our invitation, let the invitation become a dialogue over the next few weeks, one where we will work together and pray together to follow God’s leading – to explore new ways of doing things – to treasure the past, to find that which we want to keep, and find that which we want to risk – that BIG thing that we will risk for something good.
Let’s pray.
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