Do you follow football? I know some people do. I don't, personally, but it's actually quite difficult to be totally ignorant of it! For instance, I do know that last week, Chelsea were playing Bayern Munich in the final of the UEFA cup, and Chelsea won on penalties. And I remember another UEFA cup final some years ago, which also starred Bayern Munich, who were playing, I think it was Manchester United. Anyway, Bayern Munich were winning and winning, and the poor Manchester United fans were quite despairing, and then suddenly, in the final moments of the game, Manchester United scored twice to win, quite unexpectedly. Somehow the spirit had come back into the team, and they were able to turn certain defeat into victory.
Also last Saturday it was the final of the
Heineken Cup, and because Ulster were in the final, Robert treated
himself to a ticket and went, but Ulster were never going to win, and
were, in the end, very soundly thrashed. Robert said that the Ulster
fans were leaving in droves before the match had even finished. The
spirit had gone out of them.
It was like that for the field of bones in
Ezekiel's vision. No spirit. Not even any flesh.
Can you imagine a field of
bones? We’ve all seen skeletons on television, of course, and some
of us may have visited ossuaries on the continent, which are usually
memorials to soldiers who fell in the first world war, and they put
the bones of soldiers who have got separated from their identity into
the ossuaries to honour them. And the older ones among us may
remember seeing pictures of a huge pile of bones in Cambodia after
the Pol Pot atrocities of the 1970s.
I think Ezekiel, in his vision, must have seen
something like that. A huge pile of skulls and bones…. “Son of
man, can these bones live?”
And, at God’s command, Ezekiel prophesied to the
bones, and then he saw the skeletons fitting themselves together like
a jigsaw puzzle, and then internal organs and tendons and muscle and
fat and skin growing on the bare skeletons. I’m sure I’ve seen
some kind of computer animation like that on television, haven’t
you? But for Ezekiel, it must have been totally weird, unless he was
in one of those dream-states where it’s all rational.
But once the skeletons had come together and grown
bodies, things were still not right.
It must have been a bit like those television
programmes where they take someone's skull and build it up with clay
to show you what they might have looked like – they never look very
like anything, because they are not alive. There is no life in their
eyes, no spirit.
And when they first started doing those CGI
programmes about dinosaurs, the models were never very alive or
realistic, although they've improved in recent years. But the early
programmes had no life in them.
And that’s what Ezekiel saw in his vision –
there were just so many plastic models lying there, no life, no
spirit. Ezekiel had to preach to them again, and they eventually
came to life as a vast army.
And then Ezekiel was told the interpretation of
his vision – it was a prophecy of what God was going to do for
Israel, which at the time seemed dead and buried. God was going to
bring Israel back to life, to breathe new life into the nation, and
put His Spirit into them.
Of course, the reason why this has been chosen as
the Old Testament reading for today is that it is Pentecost. The day
we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. The birth of the Church.
It was, of course, a Jewish festival. Even today
it is still celebrated – they call it Shavuot, and according to a
Jewish friend of mine, what you do is eat cheesecake – don't know
why you should do that, but it is apparently the tradition to do so.
The festival celebrated the coming of the Torah, the Law of Moses so
it was a very appropriate day for the Holy Spirit to come.
But I wonder what it would have been like, up
there in the upper room. They'd been told to wait, but they had no
idea what they were waiting for. They had said a final goodbye to
Jesus; they knew that if and when they would see him again, it would
be very different. And they had been told that the Holy Spirit would
come. I wonder what they thought that meant. Perhaps some gave up
and went home, in despair. But a good 120 of them waited and waited,
and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, the Spirit came.
It must have been a pretty dramatic visitation.
The tongues of flame, the rushing mighty wind. And the immediate
explosion of praise, and when they ran out of words those other
words, words of praise that, in this instance, turned out to be words
in "in our own native language?
Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and
Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and
visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs –
in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of
power." Thus the bystanders. They might not have seen the
tongues of flame, or heard the rushing mighty wind, but they
certainly saw the results.
Some were puzzled – were these people drunk, or
what? So Peter, glorious, wonderful Peter, who never used to be able
to open his mouth without putting his foot in it – they used to say
he only opened his mouth to change feet – Peter jumps up and lets
out this terrific bellow which shuts everybody up, sharpish. "No,
no, no, no, no, no, no," he goes, "we're not on the sauce –
come off it, it's only nine a.m., what do you take us for?"
And he goes on to explain that this is what Joel was talking about,
this is what they'd all been expecting. And, as you know, he
preached so powerfully, and God's presence was so overwhelming, that
three thousand people got converted that day alone!
Thus the story. We know it so well, don’t we?
Every year, this passage from the book of Acts is read. We could
probably quote a great deal of it off by heart, and the bits we can’t
quote – all those nationalities, I can never remember them without
looking – we know what they say, even if we don’t know the words!
One way of seeing it
is that it’s the Church’s birthday. The day we celebrate the
anniversary of the explosive growth from a tiny handful of believers
– barely over a hundred – to several thousand, and on down the
millennia to the worldwide organisations and denominations that is
the Church today. But there again, that’s just history, rather
like we celebrate our own birthdays.
Pentecost is more
than that. I think that much of it is one of those things that
doesn’t go into words very well – what is officially called a
“mystery” – the Church’s word for something that words can
never fully explain.
After all – a
mighty wind, and what looked like tongues of fire? We know the
damage that both wind and fire can do; we've seen it all too often.
1987 was a long time ago now, but I still remember clearly the
devastation caused both by a fire at King's Cross Underground Station
and a huge gale that destroyed vast swathes of woodland. Even today
you can still see traces of the damage it caused, if you know where
to look.
But the wind and
flame from God were not sent to destroy, but to cleanse, to heal, and
to empower. Some of the empowerment was pretty spectacular – the
speaking in other languages, the healings, the preaching that brought
thousands to Christ in one go.... some of it, of course, would have
been less so. And then there were the other side-effects – the
changes in people’s character to become more the people God meant
them to be. The fruit of the Spirit – Paul, in his various
letters, reminds us both of the various gifts he saw in use (the
tongues, the prophecies, the healings and so on) and the fruits he
saw develop in people’s characters: "love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control".
But above all, the Spirit gives life. Jesus said
“I am come that you may have life, and have it abundantly!” In
Ezekiel's vision, the Spirit of God breathed into the dry bones and
both clothed them with flesh and then brought them to life.
For Ezekiel, it was a vision that God would
breathe new life into the people of Israel.
This year is so horrendously difficult for us all,
having to leave the churches that have been home to us for so many
years. We don't know what the future holds, nor where or how we
shall celebrate next Pentecost. Except I think I shall eat
cheesecake – I like that idea!
But seriously, God is still God. The Holy Spirit
still gives life. It's so sad, and scary and horrid – but God
hasn't gone away. And the Spirit that inspired Peter's preaching
that sunny morning in Jerusalem will lead us and guide us and give us
life. God knows where we are needed and wanted, and will lead us
there. Amen.
