5/23
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| Red is for Pentecost |
Time enough for coffee and a blueberry danish and the Sunday Times before church. Once again with my friends from Beverley in Brooklyn. And once again virtual from my dining room table. Here's what I had to say, ....
Hey, time to stop and catch your breath…It’s Pentecost ….and we’re going to talk about breath and breathing…
I’ve preached on Pentecost for 45 years. And almost always preached on the Acts passage…2: 1-21, you know the one that reverses Babel, where people are gathered from all over and all of a sudden there are ”tongues like fire” and everyone is hearing the disciples speaking in their own languages like “hey, now they’re talking my language, like they’re singing my song…” What I came to understand as a miracle of hearing, not of speaking.
But not this year. I felt this year needed something different. I checked out the assigned Gospel reading in John but once again it came across as circular and convoluted and not on the money. In the end, the only one that made sense to me was the “Old Testament” or Hebrew Scriptures or prophetic lesson in Ezekiel, you know, the “dry bones” passage as in Dem Bones Dem bones Dem dry bones….
Ezekiel was an almost unheard of combination of prophet and priest, called by God in a most difficult time for his people. Most likely between 593 and 591 BCE. In 587 Israel had fallen to Nebuchadnezzer and the Babylonian empire. Judah carried a way into exile and Jerusalem fallen. The whole people was a good as dead.
And Ezekiel has visions. Visions so trippy that ancient Jewish commentators said that no one under 30 years of age should be allowed to read the book. He sees his people as a defeated army in a Valley of death. So completely defeated that there’s no one left to even bury the bodies. All that’s left is a valley filled with dry bones.
Then follows that beautiful hallucinogenic vision where bone by bone then gets reconnected and sinew follows and muscles and flesh, All as Ezekiel prophesies to the bones. But what is really needed to bring them back to life is breath. And so he prophesies to the breath.
We are coming back to life slowly. Bone by bone. Bar by restaurant. School by stadium. (Churches lag behind.) We are venturing out slowly, fearful of giving up our masks. Vaccines are the magic potion. But it’s not enough,
It’s been a hard year. I don’t need to tell you how hard. We’ve lost over a half million of us. Nearly the whole earth a valley of bones. Most of us have suffered at least one personal loss. Most of us went without human touch for over a year. People like my mom in nursing homes and care facilities may as well have been incarcerated or sent to solitary confinement.
We’ve seen the very supportive structure of our democracy shaken and called into question. We’ve seen the ugly roots of our systemic racism exposed for all to see and yet denied by so many. We have survived individually but we cross the finish line like runners, here it is, out of breath,.
We’ve all heard those words “I cannot breathe” and know that chokeholds take your life by taking away your breath and ironically in the same way, this virus causes death, police violence another pandemic..I can’t breathe…prophesy to the breath, We need to catch our breath.
I can visit my mom in her residence now. And they don’t worry about time. I can even take her outside and wheel her around the lake behind where she lives. But since the pandemic, she now must have an oxygen tank. I too, in my late in life asthma, need to carry an inhaler. We talked about how what we used to take for granted is now precious, each breath a gift of God’s grace. (My new renter, a recent covid patient, came to my house with a portable oxygen tank)
Think of all our our words related to breath….we expire when breath...and life... leaves us, Respiration brings us back to life. There’s my favorite…conspiracy, which is literally breathing together. An inspiration enlivens us and leads us to create even as our creator created life by breathing on the water and separating the dry and form the water and then breathed life into Adam, earth man.
Pentecost comes 50 days after Easter. Ten days after the end of the risen Lord’s resurrection time on earth. It comes to inspire us to come together like those dry bones and continue the life of the risen one on this earth. This is the birthday of the church, we together are the body if the risen one. God is there to revive us, recreate us, even as breath began creation.
We need to catch our breath. We may not know how this happens but we know who. God is ever near to us as breath itself.
I’m not sure how you are. How dry you might feel. I’m not sure how Beverley Church is, how its bones are doing, I know our denomination, like so many institutions, is gasping for breath. Pentecost is our time to catch our breath. Jesus may not be here in the flesh, but he has left us the Holy Spirit, the spirit that has been there since the beginning of time,
It’s here. Now. It’s time to catch our breath, Breathe….
Let the people say, Amen.
Ezekiel 37: 1-14
1The 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. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I 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.“
7So 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. 8I 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. 9Then 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.” 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
11Then 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.’ 12Therefore 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. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I 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.”
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