May 23, 2021 – Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
The Spirit Moves Us Forward
Pentecost – May 23, 2021
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB‘
How on earth do we move forward as a community from this pandemic?
Easter Sunday was a day to think about moving forward.
And now, fifty days later, at the conclusion of the Easter season,
we are thinking again about God moving God’s people forward.
For Pentecost is also a day that celebrates God’s moving us forward.
In John’s Gospel we see once again the disciples with Jesus on their last evening together.
They are devastated at the thought of his going away.
He had stood by them and supported them and loved them.
He had protected them.
And now he was going away.
Nevertheless, Jesus is calling them to continue moving forward,
to make God visible in the world even as he had made God visible in the world.
Jesus has a lot of confidence in their ability to do this:
You will do even greater things that I have, he says to them.
Whoa!
But how on earth will they do that?
Today he tells them: he will send them an “advocate,” in Greek a parakletos,
that is, someone who will walk along beside them,
accompanying them in times of joy as well as in times of trial.
They will not be alone.
Jesus says this accompanying presence will be the Holy Spirit of God –
the very same Spirit that was at work in him.
And they will be able to move forward.
In Acts we see how Luke portrays the coming of this Spirit to the community.
50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, the Spirit came upon 120 of his followers in Jerusalem.
Instead of just looking back at their time with Jesus,
the disciples were now empowered by the Holy Spirit or loving energy to move forward,
to move out from Jerusalem to all the ends of the earth –
even to Sargent and Victor in Winnipeg, MB –
to do the same things Jesus had done.
In Acts, you will subsequently see the disciples of Jesus moving forward to heal the sick,
feed the hungry, forgive the sinful, and raise the dead.
The Spirit moves them forward.
In Ezekiel we see God’s people at a low point.
In 597 B.C., the Babylonians invaded Judah and deported their
religious and political leaders into exile, back to Babylon, including their king.
Among the deportees was Ezekiel, both priest and prophet.
Ten years later the remaining Judeans in Judah rebelled and this time the Babylonians
showed no mercy, razing the city to the ground, destroying the Temple,
and deporting yet more citizens.
All hope had been lost.
The people lamented.
They felt dead and as if their lives had come to a full stop.
But it is at this moment in their story that Ezekiel is given his grand vision.
The vision is of a battlefield filled with the dead.
Nothing remains of the dead but their dry-as-dust bones – it is a terrifying and bleak vision.
It is undoubtedly reminiscent of the recent destruction of Jerusalem.
God asks Ezekiel in this vision, “Can these bones live again?”
At a loss for words, Ezekiel replies that God alone can answer that question.
So God tells Ezekiel to proclaim to the bones that they will live – and sure enough,
they reassemble or “re-member” themselves into whole bodies,
covered in flesh and connected by sinews.
They exist again – but they are not yet living.
There is, as everyone knows, a large gap between simply existing and really living.
So God tells Ezekiel to speak to the Spirit
(or wind, or breath – it is all the same word in Hebrew) and then sure enough
the Spirit obeys God and revives the dead to life.
This vision, says God, is a word to the people in exile:
they will be restored to their land, and they will live again.
They will be able – by the grace of God and the good news of the prophet – to move forward.
This 2-part act of restoration is a reminder that it is possible re-assemble the form without
having the breath of live.
Existence is not the same as living.
For living, for real living, God’s Spirit, God’s divine loving energy, is key.
As Old Testament scholar Rolf Jacobsen says,
Without God’s spirit, existence is just flesh and blood.
But with it, there is life – and what Jesus called fullness of life.
Without the Spirit, Jesus’ disciples would have been just group of individuals with no hope.
But with it, they become a loving community dedicated to the healing of the world by
making visible the God of love.
There is so much that these stories conjure up for us, I think.
This Pentecost we do seem like the people in the stories today,
caught between the past and future:
in exile from so much, anxious for the future, and perhaps without hope.
Like them, perhaps we feel dead, cut off from one another and from those we love.
The pandemic landscape is littered with the physically and spiritually dead.
We long, with Ezekiel’s people, to be re-membered, to be brought together again,
to have our hope restored.
Can these bones live?
With Ezekiel, we hesitate to respond, feeling like only God could possibly answer that.
One day we will gather again – of that I am certain.
But will we be just a collection of individuals or will we continue to become a community?
Or, to restate my question at the beginning:
How on earth do we move forward as a community from this pandemic?
I think on this day of Pentecost the answer is clear: if we ask God to make us a community,
God will send the Holy Spirit to make us truly one people.
I think on this Day of Pentecost, if we ask God to make us a community,
God will send the Advocate to stand with us and
help us stand with one another through thick and thin.
I think on this Day of Pentecost, if we ask God to make us a community,
God will send the Diving Loving Energy to help us make us make God visible
in the world through the life of the church.
God will move us forward.
As things are is not how they always will be.
From despair to hope, God moves us forward.
From apathy to love, God moves us forward.
And from individuals to community, God moves us forward.
God has done it before: in exile, in an upper room on the night before Jesus died,
And in a house 50 days after he was raised from the dead.
And God will do it again.
Like the prophet Ezekiel, we are called to participate with God in this process:
it simply won’t happen without us.
Who knows why, but in Ezekiel human participation is essential to the life of the people.
“Speak!” says God to Ezekiel, and despite his reservations he speaks, and life moves forward.
Even in our time of exile from one another, there are ways of speaking and moving forward,
of moving from being a group of individuals to being a community.
Virtual Sunday School is fostering this and for that I am grateful.
Zoom Youth Church is fostering this and for that I am grateful.
Zoom Young Adult Gatherings are fostering this and for that I am grateful.
And FLC Zoom Happenings on Sunday morning are fostering this –
and for that I am really grateful.
These ways of sharing with one another are how we come to understand and love one another.
They are the ways in which we move forward as a community at this particular time.
Jesus has not left us alone.
For Jesus has sent the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Loving Energy to accompany us and
energize us and empower us and move us forward. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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