Taking a Deep Breath

Graphic art I made (image source: Budi Satri Kwan at society6.com) inspired by A Brief Statement of Faith.

May 24, 2015 - Pentecost Sunday

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.”

Sermon: “Taking a Deep Breath”

I went to the Sunrise Theater the other day.  There was a Russell Crowe movie showing.  Now, I know for some of you, that’s all you need to know to have motivation to go see it!  The movie is called The Water Diviner.  All I knew was that it was a drama set in Australia and Turkey at the end of World War I, and that Crowe’s character was a father and a farmer, especially gifted at finding water in the middle of the Australian bush. 

I expected adventure, intrigue and, well, you know, Russell Crowe.  What I saw was much more than that: a harrowing depiction of the ways war shapes and takes lives.  It was the story of a man named Joshua Conner, whose three sons had served in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).  His sons were presumed dead after the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey.  (You’ll remember from our Pentecost reading that there were folks from what is now Turkey among those who first received the Spirit.)

Joshua’s wife, Eliza, couldn’t cope with the grief of losing her sons.  She told him in anger, “You can find water, but you can’t find your sons!”  Her sorrow ultimately overwhelmed her, and Joshua was left alone.  But he promised her he would find their boys, even if all he found was dry bones.

And so he travelled all the way to Turkey, and managed to bribe his way onto a fishing boat to Gallipoli.   ANZAC soldiers were there to find their dead among the thousands killed there.  (It reminds me of our Ezekiel text today: 

The 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…^.He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Joshua, with the help of a Turkish general who should have been his enemy, wound up finding his sons’ bones.  It was a heart-breaking and desperate discovery.  I’ve not seen war personally, but those of you who have can imagine that sort of horror.  I pray God brings you freedom from such images.

Joshua only found two of their bodies.  His other son was missing.  Knowing that his sons would always protect each other, he was confused by this.  Then the Turkish general found his son’s name on a list of prisoners sent to a Turkish work camp.  After more searching and risk, Joshua eventually found his son, holed up in an old monastery.  He was completely broken.  Not his body – that had mostly recovered from its wounds.  But his spirit, that was as dry as dust.  That’s what war had done to him.  He was alive, but not really living. 

Ezekiel was called to be a prophet to an entire people like that.  His nation had been destroyed – much like the Armenian genocide in WWI, or the Jewish Holocaust in WWII.  They were occupied, oppressed, broken.

But God promised to help them.  With a mighty army of angels?  No.  By bringing destruction and death upon their enemies?  No.  God promised them breath. 

It’s perhaps helpful to know that the word breath, ruah, in the Old Testament is also the word for Spirit or wind.  The wind that swept over the waters of creation in the beginning: that was God’s breath. 

The breath that God breathed in the second creation account of Genesis into Adam, that was God’s Spirit.

The same Spirit asks Ezekiel, as he looks out on a horrific battleground, full of dry bones, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Ezekiel says he doesn’t know.  The Spirit them tells him to prophesy to the bones.  To urge them to hear the life-giving word of God.  And he does.  Suddenly, there’s a rattling and bone joins to bone and flesh covers them.  They look alive.  But they’re not.  They have no breath in them.

We all know what that’s like, to look alive when you’re not really.  It’s like the moment you hear a loved one has died.  It’s like the moment your heart gets broken, or your life suddenly seems an endless burden.  You can’t catch your breath.  But God never leaves us that way.  God didn’t leave the people of Israel that way – God gave Ezekiel more to do.

This time, he was to prophesy to the breath itself.  Prophecy to the Spirit, to fill those empty bodies with life.  He does, and from the four winds, the corners of the earth, that breath comes and fills them.  They stand together, alive.  It is the promise that God keeps promises, that these broken, empty people will be brought out of the places of death, into a land of their own, and that God’s Spirit, breath, will be within them.  

All because of a deep breath from God.  A Pentecostal Spirit within their spirits, within their souls.  We did a lot of talking about our souls at Red Table last week (we do deep talking there, y’all), and discussed what exactly our soul was.  One of our young adults said, “our soul is the part of us that survives, the part of us that we use to communicate with God.”

We don’t think that much about our spirits, our souls, do we?  We think about our bodies, the ways we wish they were different: younger, stronger, thinner, taller.  We think about our minds, how we want to be challenged and grow, how frustrating it is when they let us down.  We think about our hearts, how we want to love and be loved.  But our spirits?  The part of us that speaks and listens to God?   We don’t often spend a lot of time thinking about them.

Pentecost reminds us that our spirits are everything.  They are the part of us that survives, because they are the part of us that connects us to our Creator.  When tomorrow, and each day, we remember those who have given their lives willingly for others, we also remember that their spirits live on.  When we feel dry and parched for hope, like people who are alive but not really living, it is our spirits that guide us to God’s Spirit like an oasis in a desert.

Today, we can talk about God’s Spirit: about how at Pentecost, the world was made one people as cultures and languages didn’t divide, but only enhanced the power of God’s story.  How the world was made one by a baptism of fire.  We can talk about how, once-upon-a-time, God breathed into the dry bones of an entire defeated people and made them alive again.  It’s worth talking about, but all of that talk keeps the Spirit of God at arm’s length.  It keeps the Spirit on the pages of a book and not burning within our very being.

What if instead, on this Pentecost Sunday, we talked about that part of us that makes us nervous with its raw honesty: our spirits?  What if we looked out on the places of our souls that have no life?  What if we confessed the ways we have neglected our spirits so much that we don’t know how to find them?  What if we admitted that we judge people by their bodies and backgrounds, their politics and allegiances, and fail to even see their spirits?

What if we confess that we have lost touch with our spirits, our souls?  If they are indeed the place within us that connects us with the Holy Spirit, we better find them.  Especially on Pentecost!  But how?

The funny thing is, we already know the answer.  Ezekiel gave it to us.  Remember that word: ruah, Spirit, wind, breath.  We simply stop, and take a deep breath.  

Not a rushed, anxious breath. 

Not a snoozing, lazy breath. 

But an intentional, from the core of who we are, breath.  In and out.  In and out. 

We breathe God’s Spirit into ours moment-by-moment, prayerfully, joyfully, until such breathing becomes automatic. 

And when we are breathing in the Spirit of God in each moment, we can’t keep it in.  Breath doesn’t work that way!  We must exhale: breathing that Spirit into a world of dry and dusty bones, a world of war and grieving families, of poverty and violence, of kidnappings and disasters. 

We already have all we need to do this: Pentecost already happened!  The Spirit was poured upon everyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality or status.  And so God’s Spirit is within our spirits already.

Take a deep breath and remember that all will be well.  Take a deep breath and remember that death never wins.  Take a deep breath and remember that God still speaks and acts.  Take a deep breath, my friends.  Not just with your body, but with your spirit.  Amen.