Connected (Sermon May 24)

Scriptures:  Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27,

John 15:26-27, 16:1-15

“The foot bone connected to the ankle bone / the ankle bone connected to the leg bone…..”

No, I’m not going to sing that song again – you’re welcome - though it may crop up from time to time during the sermon.  Today is Pentecost, one of the key festivals of the church.  On Pentecost, the church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early believers, as described in the book of Acts.  However, Pentecost is derived from the Greek term for the Jewish festival Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.  While Shavuot has ties to the harvest, it is also celebrated to commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  For Christians, we could say, what the law is to those of the Jewish faith, the Spirit is to Christians – God’s presence among us to guide and empower us. 

And there really are strong parallels – those who have gone to a synagogue service on Shabbat may remember that when the scroll of the law is brought out, it’s passed around among the congregation, and congregants kiss it and dance with it…from the time the scroll is taken out of the ark until it is returned to the ark, it is treated like a beloved, dearly-missed friend, with great joy when brought forth and a tinge of real sadness when returned to the ark.  And, of course, when the Holy Spirit was let out of the box, so to speak, its arrival among the earliest Christians came with the rush of a mighty wind, and with divided tongues of flame appearing on the heads of the believers – and with the ability to speak and hear in other tongues, with mutual understanding.

 “The leg bone connected to the knee bone/the knee bone connected to the thigh bone….”

Beyond the light and sound show spectacle described in Acts is the phenomenon of Jewish believers from all those countries – “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia…” and so forth – being together in one place, in Jerusalem.   The listing of countries in Acts basically represents all the countries in the known world of the day, and maybe even one or two countries from the past that no longer existed as such.  All of the races and tongues in the world were in the house that day, we’re told.  And with the coming of the Holy Spirit, these people of many different races and languages could hear the apostles, all from Galilee, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus in their own language.   It’s easy for us in our day to miss the full meaning of the phrase “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans.”  Yes, it was a geographical reference to people from Galilee, but since the geographical area in question was a rural area some 90 or so miles north of Jerusalem, most of whose residents were uneducated and illiterate, the question also has the sense of saying “How can these country bumpkins, these hicks, these hayseeds -– how can we be hearing these refugees from the show Hee Haw preaching the gospel to us in our own languages?”

“The thigh bone connected to the hip bone / the hip bone connected to the spine bone…..”

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to bring the church together and to hold the church together, to connect us to the church and keep us connected.  On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit undoes the disconnection created at the Tower of Babel, when we’re told that God confused the languages of those building the tower.  On that day, in order to stop willful humankind in its tracks, God brought disconnection.  On the day of Pentecost, God brought new connection to humankind through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.  The vision of Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones gives us a sense of what this looks like – dry, separated bones brought together, connected with sinews, covered with skin, and animated with breath.  For Ezekiel, this vision represented the renewal of the people of Israel, whom Ezekiel viewed as being as lifeless as a pile of dry, separated bones, brought back to life by the Spirit.  For us as Christians, the work of the Spirit in the church looks very much the same, bringing our individual, disconnected lives together into the body of Christ, Jesus being the head, and breathing life into us so that we can love and serve God and neighbor.  Those connections are local – and I love seeing members of Emanuel helping and supporting one another, love seeing comments back and forth on FB from members of our congregation.  And those connections are global – we are connected to fellow believers all over the world, as, for example, through our UCC Global Ministries, we are connected to Rama, the four-year-old Palestinian girl at the Rawdat al Zahur school in East Jerusalem, a Global Ministries partner.  Before, we may not have paid much attention to the unrest in Israel/Palestine, but through our church, we’re connected to a four-year-old girl who lives in the middle of all that turmoil.  We’re also connected to rescue workers in Nepal, and to churches trying to bring real and lasting peace to divided communities across the country and around the globe.  And I don’t mean this just as a plug for our denomination’s global ministries; as members of the body of Christ our lives are connected to the lives of other Christians around the globe, regardless of religions denomination or nationality or race or gender or any other identifier.  And as members of the body, we are to love and serve our neighbor, regardless of faith tradition or lack thereof.

“The spine bone connected to the neck bone/the neck bone connected to the head bone.”

The Holy Spirit keeps us connected to one another because the Holy Spirit is God’s connection to us.  Jesus said that when he departed, he would send the Holy Spirit, which he named with the Greek word “Parakletos” – paraclete.  This is a Greek word for advocate, like an attorney.  Jesus tells us that the message from the Holy Spirit will be the same as the message Jesus brought, and that both come from God the Father.

Jesus uses some language that may have been clear to his disciples – certainly to the writer of John’s gospel – but obscure to us.  According to John’s gospel, Jesus said, “And when he” – that is, the Holy Spirit – “comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of the world has been condemned.”  So I’d like to unpack this a little.  Jesus came into the world, teaching and healing and speaking about the reign of God.  Jesus came into the world as the perfect expression of God’s infinite love – and the powers that be in the world killed him.   And his death came, not just as an act of random street crime or such perpetrated by those at the bottom of society, but as the officially sanctioned verdict of the Temple religious leadership and the leaders of the Roman government, the most advanced civilization of its day – and this leadership is what Jesus is pointing at under the heading of “the world” or using the Greek word, “kosmos”.  The best God could offer – Godself, coming in perfect love and ultimate humility – was killed by the best that humanity, acting apart from God, could offer.  Jesus is saying that in so doing, the Temple leadership and the Roman leadership is bringing judgment and condemnation, not on Jesus, but on itself.   And so the Holy Spirit will prove the world –about sin, because they looked at the divine, life-giving love of Jesus and treated it as sin worthy of death, of righteousness, because they thought that in killing Jesus, they were doing God’s will, thus showing how far they themselves were from God’s will – as it was Jesus who would be going to the Father, not them – and of judgment, because in condemning Jesus, they condemned themselves.  The sense is that the world’s judgment backfired, condemning itself rather than Jesus. 

This is a hard teaching, but it reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us discern what in our culture is of God, and what isn’t – because, just like the Roman culture in Jesus’ day, much that our culture – our political leadership, our media, even our popular religion, as expressed by the televangelists – is diametrically opposed to what Jesus did and taught, is not just mistaken, not just off-base, but is utterly and blasphemously sinful, and much that our culture despises is evidence of the working of the Spirit.   God still works through men and women of God who of course are not perfect, but reflect God’s love in the midst of their brokenness, and the world still kills these men and women – and today is the 35^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero, who was gunned down saying mass –he had just raised the bread and said the words “This is my body” when the bullets rang out – gunned down by representatives of a military dictatorship – a military dictatorship supported and even trained by our own US government at the School of the Americas by the way - for the crime of advocating for the poor of El Salvador – and that’s just one of countless modern day examples. And, of course, Archbishop Romero has just been beatified.  Our culture has us looking at reality as if in a funhouse mirror, calling evil good and good evil, inflating the value of things that are meaningless and shrinking the value of things that are eternal.  And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to correct our vision, to give us a God’s-eye view of reality.  And, Jesus warned his disciples, and warns us, when we live according to the vision of the Spirit and the values of the Gospel, we will be opposed. I’m talking about the reality of sharing God’s love in concrete ways with the poor and sick and possessed, as Jesus did, really getting down in the trenches as Jesus did with the poor and dispossessed to empower them, in ways that threaten our society’s myth of prosperity.  And when we threaten society’s myths, society will threaten us, as Archbishop Romero threatened the myths of the El Salvador government of his day, and was killed by them – and yet his example lives on, and was just lifted up by the church.

So why do it?  Why bother?  Why not just go with the flow?  Because living according to the Spirit is like being on fire – remember those tongues of flame on the heads of those gathered at Pentecost.  Living by the Spirit not only clarifies our minds, but empowers us at the core of our being, giving us energy to do things we never thought possible, bringing out qualities of endurance and generosity and compassion within us we never knew were there. Living in the Spirit is not just about going to heaven – about pie in the sky when we die, though there is that, and I’d like mine a la mode.  But living in the Spirit is being on fire for God now, today, this moment, and every moment thereafter.   As St. Catherine of Siena said, and as Dorothy Day reminded her followers, “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way.’” And yes, sometimes our bodies can’t keep up, and yes, we’ll still get tired and cranky now and then….for me, this whole weekend has been a struggle between my Spirit saying “yes” and my body saying “no more”….but the Spirit gives resources, prayer, Scripture, the fellowship of believers – to revive us.

“Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones hear the word of the Lord”.  May we at Emanuel Church also hear the word of the Lord, that we may be connected with the sinews of being in relationship with our sisters and brothers in Christ, covered with skins to protect us from evil, and filled with the Spirit of the Lord, empowered to live lives on fire with love for God and neighbor.  Amen.