Pentecost Sunday 2012
Ezekiel 37
What does God have to do to get your attention?
Sometimes, the Bible is just plain weird. We are used to it. We’ve heard Ezekiel 37 and Acts 2, which were read earlier in our service, before. They are familiar stories, so we miss how weird they actually are. In my research on Ezekiel 37, I read that a bunch of people who have read Ezekiel have concluded that he was actually abducted by aliens and is writing what he is seeing. If you’ve never read the beginning of Ezekiel, in the early chapters right after God calls him to be a prophet, God essentially ties Ezekiel up so he can’t move, and makes him lie on his side for 390 days, as a prophetic sign. Then God flips him onto the other side for 40 days. He tells Ezekiel to pre-measure out some water to drink and a few rough grains to bake into bread which He is only allowed to cook by burning human dung. Ezekiel protests, so God relents a little: Ezekiel can cook his bread on cow dung. Later on, as we read in the passage earlier, God picks him up and plants him in the middle of a mass graveyard, commands him to talk to the dry bones, then he watches as those bones grow new muscle and tissue, then skin, then stand as a mighty army but still dead. It is weird stuff.
Fast forward to the day of Pentecost. Again, weird stuff. Tongues of fire, people speaking in languages they have never heard, crowds looking at them as if they are completely drunk. Weird.
Why? Is it that God is weird? Nope, that is not it. Is it that God is just so different? Well, maybe getting closer. Actually, when we look a little deeper at the passages, it is God trying to get people’s attention. That’s why Ezekiel did all that strange stuff. God was trying to get the people of Israel’s attention. Same story at Pentecost.
So that begs the question: what does God have to do to get your attention? Will you pay attention if it is not some weird super-natural phenomenon? Jesus spoke to that kind of faith that seeks after experiences rather than seeking after Him in the passage that follows the passage that Brian spoke on last week, when Jesus feeds the 5000. The crowds follow Him, and Jesus says Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. John 6:26-27.
As I read Scripture, there is this strange back-and-forth: God does miraculous things to get people’s attention and invite them into a life-changing reconciled relationship with Him, and then calls us to a long obedience through trials and tribulations where we sometimes wonder where God has gone. Jesus feeds 5000, then chastises the people who chase after Him looking for more miracles. What is going on here?
Complicating all of this, we have a preconceived notion of the spiritual life as this: if I am walking in obedience and with a pure heart, God should bless me. And by bless me we mostly mean with stability, comfort, needs met, and without a lot of struggle. If we experience other things, the subtle (and wrong) message is that God is not blessing us, so struggle and trial become things to escape, things to ask God to save us from or deliver us from or remove us from so that, once again, we might see evidence of God’s blessing. When I say it that bluntly, most of us resist because we know better, but think of it this way: who would look at all we have experienced as a church these past 10 months and say wow is God ever blessing Laurier Heights Baptist Church?
I’ll tell you who has that perspective: Ken Spillett. You may have read in the bulletin that we had an issue this past Wednesday after the rain, with water where it should not be. I started to freak out, but Ken showed up and said praise God! Ken had a much better perspective than I did. He looked at it and said we found a problem before more work was done that got wrecked; we can see that the system we thought would manage the water is not working; we have time to figure out exactly what it is and then what has to be done to fix it properly and permanently.
See, the point is this: that is a picture of spiritual maturity. Could God fix everything in our lives with a snap of His fingers? Sure. He can do all kinds of miracles. And sometimes He does. And we interpret those as God’s blessing. But maybe that is the easy way out. And maybe that is not God’s deepest blessing.
What does God have to do to get your attention? Turn Himself into a galactic wish-granter, a heavenly santa clause, a miracle in your pocket if you just send a cash donation?
See, the problem is that if our spirituality is dependent on a supernatural manifestation, then our relationship with God is one based on Jesus as the spiritual equivalent of an ATM with a recurring balance, available whenever we want so long as we have been behaving. Well I don’t think that is the kind of relationship Jesus wants to have with us – do you?
It certainly does not fit with what I read of Jesus’ calls for us to follow Him. They are full of promises of blessing, absolutely. They are full of promises of power, completely. The call to follow Jesus is right beside the promise that we will have life and have it to the full.
But that is not the promise of life to the easiest, most comfortable, or most problem-free.
The call to follow Jesus and receive blessing is to first lose our lives, that we might then find them. And find them in a new adventure, not of our own making, and not of an easy safety, but rather one of risk, selflessness, sacrifice, discipline, and also of joy, significance, power, and a love that is so valuable that in Jesus’ words, one might go sell everything he or she has and buy the field with the one pearl in it.
It generally starts, or re-starts, with some profound experience of how real and loving God is. Like the disciples at Pentecost, like Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones come back to life and then breathed into by the Holy Spirit. And it culminates, at the end, in another great, mountaintop experience.
But what is in between the life-granting beginning and the thrill of standing at the top of the mountain? What is in between the starting line and the finish line? What happens between the excitement at the beginning of the journey and the thrill of arrival? If you are hiking in the mountains, it is a lot of small, sometimes hard steps. If you are travelling by plane, it is boring hours sitting cramped in a seat. If you are running a race, it is mile after mile of heart-pounding, sweat dripping, muscle cramping strides. The beginning is often exciting; the planning and the preparation and the anticipation. The ending is often rewarding; the view from the mountaintop, the arrival at the holiday destination, crossing the finish line and making it. But in between, it is often hard work.
Why do we expect it to be any different with our spiritual journey? Why should we be discouraged when it is hard work? Sometimes we have to walk through the trees before we get to the amazing view, sometimes we have to spend hours trapped in a plane before we get to our destination, sometimes we have to pound the pavement, literally, with stride after painful stride before we cross the finish line. But in all of those cases, we keep going. We keep going because it is worth it. The same is true of our spiritual journey. We keep going because it is worth it.
And, even more amazingly, we keep going with one significant difference: the God of the Universe has befriended us, promised to walk every step right beside us, and gives us strength for every hard step of the journey. And this, I believe, is the deepest blessing. Far deeper than the miraculous, supernatural manifestations that make obvious His presence with us.
Here it is, Pentecost Sunday, and I’m talking about the hard work in the middle instead of the mighty power of God displayed in the miracles. Is that out of place? Did I get my weeks mixed up? Not if you hear me correctly.
See, on the flip side, if our spirituality is devoid of supernatural manifestation, then we are living in isolation from God and probably doing most of it on our own. If there is nothing that demonstrates God is living and active and powerful in our lives, what (aside from our hope of eternal life after we die) makes us any different from anyone else in our world? If this is true, our relationship with God is one based on a one-time meeting a long time ago, which we haven’t ever followed through on or kept up. Like a high school friend, someone that was important to you once a long time ago, whom you still think fondly about, but who has absolutely no relationship with you today.
It is just this: what kind of supernatural manifestation are we seeking? The easy, God snaps His fingers and fixes everything instantly kind? I’m suggesting, instead, that the experience of Pentecost, namely the filling of the Holy Spirit, needs instead to be normative. Meaning daily. The daily miracle of life and breath. The daily miracle of grace. The daily miracle of people who love us for who we are and accept us in community. The daily miracle of a perspective that sees difficulty not as evidence that God is not present or not blessing, but that rejoices in that no matter what is occurring outside of us, the inner presence of the God of the Universe inside of us is so much stronger and more beautiful that we walk through anything and everything in each day as children of the heavenly King, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, with the fullness of the Spirit pulsing inside of us.
See, I love the stories of Pentecost and of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones. I love the stories of today where people see the hand of God in miraculous ways. I love it when I see God grab people’s attention and draw them into a new or deeper experience of His love. I’m just not sure those things are supposed to be the norm. I’m not convinced that walking in step with the Spirit, as Paul commands, is really about bouncing from one supernatural miracle to the next.
Here is what I believe it means to live as citizens of God’s Kingdom: it is a daily journey, whether we are coasting downhill on a bright sunny day, birds chirping, gentle breeze flowing, ice-cream cones waiting; or whether we are slogging through snow and mud up to our knees, wondering if we have strength for the next step, wondering if we will ever reach the place of warmth and relaxation again. Kingdom living, to me, is rejoicing in either of those, and everything in-between, with the fullness of the Spirit pulsing inside of us, and us attuned to that deep, powerful, inner presence of God.
This daily journey of which I speak is one of discipline. We must choose to fix our minds on Jesus, we must choose to work at prayer, we must choose to use our time to place ourselves where we might hear God speak. This daily journey is one of choice and discipline, and also one of receptivity: we must be receptive to God’s gifts, be they easy roads or hard. We must be receptive to God’s voice, be it words of encouragement or words of challenge. We must be receptive to God’s miraculous intervention, whether that instantly solves our problems or quietly reminds us that God is with us.
I read Ezekiel 37 and Acts 2 again. Here is what I noticed. The people of God’s only role was to remain obedient. God did the rest. Ezekiel said what God told him to say. The disciples were just meeting and praying, and then Peter just told people what was going on. God put the muscle and skin on the bones. God created the sound like the mighty roaring of a windstorm that made people come running to see what was going on. God breathed life into that which had been dead and dry, and God breathed life into the disciples of Jesus and through them into the crowds who came running.
The job is to remain obedient. Every day, the days of Pentecost and the years of wilderness wanderings. Every day, seeking God. Every day walking in step with the Spirit. Every day, every day, every day.
It is easy, in the middle, to lose sight, to plod on mindlessly, to be distracted by lesser pleasures, to drift from the path set before us especially if an easier one appears, it is even easy to sometimes just stop and sit down and refuse to budge. But this is not what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That is not discipleship. Being a follower of Jesus, being a disciple, is an everyday journey.
I close with a call and a challenge. In all that goes on in your life, in your everyday, is Jesus the centre? Are you seeking first the Kingdom of God? Are you walking in step with our culture or with the Holy Spirit? It is Pentecost Sunday. Perhaps the miracle we need starts with a renewed choice to obey, to be a disciple of Jesus everyday, to get back on the straight and narrow path.
And then, perhaps, it will be followed by a new breathing of the Spirit upon us as it was for Ezekiel, as it was for the disciples in Jerusalem, as it was for us at the beginning of our faith journey when we first responded to Jesus’ invitation to follow. May it be so again.
