God enliven(s) us!

Pentecost Sunday ● May 19, 2024

Pastor Jeff Wells © 2024

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/R3aknGFZ5ro

Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 37:1-14 (Inclusive Bible)

The reading text is provided at the end of this sermon.

So, you may know that today is Pentecost Sunday. This is the day when Christians celebrate what is usually referred to as the “birth of the church.” The story occurs in the Book of Acts not long after the Romans crucified Jesus. The followers of Jesus were gathered together in Jerusalem, when they had an experience of the Spirit of God so intense that the author of Acts recorded that they heard what sounded like a great wind and felt as if tongues of fire were alighting on each one of them. Peter gives a dramatic speech and 3,000 people get baptized and join the movement. Well, there is your summary. But we are not going to talk about that story today. Instead, as you have just heard, we are going to reflect on another, much earlier, story in which God’s Spirit showed up to a man named Ezekiel.

A whole book of the Hebrew Bible records Ezekiel’s life as a prophet. We are focusing on just one small part of that book – Ezekiel’s dream of a valley full of dry bones. What a picture he paints in a relatively short passage! 

What a mind Ezekiel must have had. I don’t mean to say God did not inspire Ezekiel’s imagination and his purpose in creating and proclaiming this vision. I believe God always tries to influence our imaginations. But God cannot just impose ideas or dreams or visions or plans on us. We have to respond to God’s lure and then creatively collaborate with God in coming up with perspectives and visions that move us in one direction or another. 

How we exercise our creativity is also influenced by our past experience. While Ezekiel was growing up, Judea enjoyed a brief 21 year period of freedom from national oppression – between the decline and collapse of the Assyrian empire and the invasion and takeover by the Babylonians. Then, following two failed rebellions against Babylon in 597 and 586 BCE, the Judean royal family, priests, scribes, and others – most of the leadership of the Judean people – were forced into captivity in Babylon. Ezekiel offered his prophetic judgment and vision while living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571 BCE. So, Ezekiel tasted freedom for the Judean people and then their humiliating oppression by Babylon. Out of this life experience, the experience of his people, Ezekiel gained a sharp perspective on the history and circumstances of the Judean people. Out of God’s inspiration combined Ezekiel’s own fervent hope for the freedom of his people, arose a beautiful dream that God could and would bring life to their dry bones.

The passage Sarah read today is from the last quarter of the Book of Ezekiel, which contains the prophet’s longer recitation of his dream of hope and salvation. The dry bones in chapter 37 represent the people of Judea in exile. Ezekiel describes hearing a call from God to call upon the four winds – that is calling forth the power of the Spirit – and to prophesy to the bones that God will bring forth life in them again. In this powerful vision, Ezekiel is telling the Judeans in exile not to lose hope – that they will yet live again and not only live, but return home to Jerusalem and Judea. In reality, that took a while. It was another 33 years before the Persian King Cyrus allowed the Judeans to go home. You can imagine many of them would have died or lost hope in the meantime.

It is impossible to read the Book of Ezekiel and miss the sense that the prophet was extraordinarily attuned to the Spirit and felt the divine presence almost continually. There is a reference to God’s Spirit on almost every page. He frequently says, “the hand of YHWH was upon me” or “the Word of YHWH came to me….” And he often portrays God saying, “I will put my Spirit in you” or “I would pour out my Spirit on all humankind,” or similar phrases. He sounds like an open and relational prophet to me! For Ezekiel and for us, God is present and accompanying and leading us every moment. Of course, that does not guarantee everything is going to go well. Sometimes we fail. And often, it takes a long time to repair or resolve challenging circumstances.

This feels like such an important message for us today. Both that God is always with us and that we must not lose hope when justice seems to be taking a long time coming, when it feels like hate is winning, when a spirit of love eludes us, when the landscape is littered with dry bones. 

In my personal life, given everything Diane and I have endured over the past 7 years and more, especially the past year, it would have been understandable if we fell into despair and lost hope of ever again getting to a period of less pain and suffering in our lives. It has made all the difference that we felt the divine presence with us and were always surrounded by our chosen family in this caring faith community and by a group of loving friends who supported us. 

Also, I think about Ezekiel’s message in light of the 52 years of struggle and pain we have experienced in the United Methodist Church over anti-LGBTQ+ exclusion, homophobia, and transphobia. I have been in this struggle for only 24 years, yet, at times, I did feel, especially since the depressing 2019 General Conference, like the church would never change – that we would never be able to get the horrible, hateful language out of the Book of Discipline; that those of us who wanted to be fully loving and inclusive would have to keep fighting and put up with living in a sick denomination or leave. I admit that I had lost hope in the denomination and was primarily focusing on helping the Church of the Village to survive and thrive, regardless of what happened to the UMC. Yet now, it has happened very quickly – and surprisingly for many of us. Of course, this is only a beginning – removing the language and adding some affirming language merely opens the door for us and so many others to get back to work on transforming the UMC in the loving, inclusive way of Jesus. But we know we do not do this on our own. The powerful, ever-present Spirit of God is with us – leading, inspiring, calling us forward, and bringing life into our dry bones. That doesn’t assure our future success, but we have witnessed what God can do with our help, even if it takes 52 years. And it’s not just language that changed over those long years of love and struggle. Thousands of hearts and minds changed over that period of time. In many positive ways, we are a very different denomination than we were in 1972.

This message of how God enlivens us and of our need to hold onto hope has been on my mind a lot lately as I contemplate the future of our own community of the Church of the Village. We are trying hard to listen to the divine presence among us and to feel the ways God is enlivening us. I know COTV might already feel pretty alive to you, but our community faces some big challenges. First, how to remain financially sustainable. And second, how to attract enough people to do all we would like to do to care for one another, connect deeply with God, and get the message out to the world of God’s ever-present uncontrolling love. 

At the Vision & Ministry Council this week, we initiated a visioning process for our church that will involve every person in the congregation. This process will last about six weeks and will engage the question, “Who is God calling us to be?” In the end, after connecting with all of you and you with each other, we will create a clear vision statement to inform, inspire, and energize who the Church of the Village is and is becoming, now and into the future. This is going to be a very exciting journey. We have invited Rev. Lea Matthews of St. Paul & St. Andrew UMC to lead the process. She already came into the meeting on Thursday with great ideas, a plan, a timeline, and a lot of enthusiasm. So expect to hear from her over the next few weeks and expect to be invited to share your thoughts in small groups, large groups, and in a survey.

In addition, many of you know that we have been working on exploring our options for using our building to assure the survival and thriving of our community. As always, the conversation around the building and finances is only a vehicle for our spiritual thriving, our mission, and ministry. So, when our Building Exploratory Team reported on the state of our work to the Council meeting, we began, first, with our team’s vision for the church. Let me quote part of it for you: 

“The Church of the Village (COTV) identifies as a progressive, radically inclusive, and anti-racist faith community. We live into this identity imperfectly, but with resilience, courage, love, and deep listening for God’s leading. We strive to be a place in which everyone who enters our virtual or physical “doors” can be seen, celebrated, and loved for just who they are. In all of this, we try our best to follow the way of love Jesus taught and modeled for us. We are a small congregation with big dreams.” 

We are determined to listen to God’s call and be open to all the ways God is working to enliven us into a future with hope. In Ezekiel’s vision, God says, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I think one answer to that is, “Not without your constant love, Spirit of God. Without your persistent leading every moment, we could do nothing. But with your constant call, we might yet live and contribute greatly to the thriving of all life in the way of Jesus. Enliven us, oh God! Enliven us!”

Ezekiel 37:1-14 (Inclusive Bible)

The hand of YHWH was upon me,
and it carried me away by the Spirit of YHWH
and set me down in a valley – a valley full of bones. God made me walk up and down among them. And I saw that there was a vast number of bones lying there in the valley, and they were very dry.

God asked me, “Mere mortal, can these bones live?”
I answered, “Only you know that, Sovereign YHWH.”
And God said, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them:
‘Dry bones, hear the word of YHWH!
Sovereign YHWH says to these bones: I am going to breathe life into you.
I will fasten sinews on you, clothe you with flesh, cover you with skin,
and give you breath. And you will live;
and you will know that I am Sovereign YHWH’.”

So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied,
suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and all the bones came together,
bone to matching bone. As I watched, sinews appeared on them,
flesh clothed them, and skin covered them. But there was no breath in them.

Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the wind; prophesy, mere mortal, and say to it: ‘Thus says Sovereign YHWH: Approach from the four winds, Breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ ”

I prophesied as I was commanded, and breath came into them; they came alive, and stood up on their feet – a vast multitude.

Then God said to me, “Mere mortal, these bones are the whole House of Israel. The people keep saying, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is gone, and we are doomed.’ Prophesy, therefore, and say to them, ‘Thus says Sovereign YHWH: I am going to open your graves and raise you up from the dead, my people. I will return you to the land of Israel. When I open your graves and raise you up, you, my people, will know that I am YHWH.
Then I will put my Spirit into you and you will return to life, and I will settle you back on your own land. Then you will know that I, YHWH, have spoken and made all this happen, says Sovereign YHWH.’ ”