Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, Year B, "On Fire or Burned Out?" Acts 2:1-12, Ezekiel 37:1-14

 Sermon 5/23/21

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21  

Pentecost: On Fire or Burned Out?

I’ve been thinking about how we’re going through our seconds of a lot of things in this global pandemic. Last year, congregations made their way through Lent and Easter and Pentecost in the midst of a fairly new pandemic. We were afraid and figuring things out and so sad not to be together, but I was so moved by how quickly pastor and church leaders and congregations pivoted to find new ways of doing things, ways to continue to serve the community, ways to continue to be in relationship with each other in the Body of Christ, ways to continue praising God, journeying in Lent, proclaiming resurrection, and feeling full of the Holy Spirit despite all the struggles. The persistence and faithfulness of God’s people was impressive and inspiring. 

And here we still are. Yes, there are so many signs of hope about the pandemic, as things open in new ways, as vaccines roll out, as healing and recovery of all kinds begin. But there’s also an incredible fatigue, and a sense of finally really taking stock of the toll the pandemic has had on all aspects of life, including, very much including faith communities. Last June, after 17 years of ministry in the local church, I stepped away from pastoring, wrapping up my time as the pastor up in Gouverneur and North Gouverneur to go back to school to work on a PhD. My plans to go back to school were made well before I ever heard of Covid-19. But although I felt some guilt about stepping away from my congregation during such a global crisis, I’ll admit I also felt relieved about responsibilities that would no longer be mine. I wouldn’t have to figure out how to pastor during a pandemic anymore! But so many of my friends, so many of them pastors - they’ve been doing this - figuring out how to lead a church through a pandemic - for more than a year now. And congregations - they’ve been working hard to figure out how to keep it together for more than a year now. And frankly, I think everyone is just exhausted. Done. Drained. How much more can churches take? The list of retiring pastors this year in our Annual Conference is huge. The number of churches in our conference that are closing? - also pretty large this year. And I’ve heard from congregational leaders and members who have stuck it out all this time a sense of fear and foreboding: Yes, things are opening up, slowly. But will anyone come back? And if they don’t, how can we keep going? We’ve hung on for so long, but how much more can we take? 

I don’t say all of this to overwhelm or depress anyone, or to make things seem hopeless. I say it to acknowledge and recognize and face the reality of the state of our well-being as the Church. I say it, because when I first thought about preaching on Pentecost, and I thought about all the metaphors for the day of being “on fire” for God, my sermon title immediately popped into my head. On Fire? How about Burned Out! Last year we could summon the energy to feel On Fire despite all the challenges, with a sense of “we’re in this together.” Can we still? Or have we used up all our energy and creativity and we’re just really tired and really done with all of it, and really scared about how we feel. Burned up, not on fire. 

So that’s why today, in addition to the traditional Pentecost text from Acts 2, we’re also reading an alternate Pentecost text, from the prophet Ezekiel. In Acts 2, the traditional Pentecost text, the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem, waiting. They’re waiting because just recently, Jesus returned to God’s home, leaving earth, at least physically. He’d been with the disciples for forty days after his resurrection, and undoubtedly they wished he’d just stay with them forever. But he leaves, promising them that he’s going to send the Spirit to help them, to empower them. It must be hard to believe, though, and they must feel somewhat like everything they had with Jesus is sort of over. But on Pentecost, a harvest festival that is part of the Jewish faith, the disciples are gathered together, when suddenly this sound like a violent rushing wind fills the air. The spirit rests on them each like tongues of fire, and they suddenly find themselves proclaiming the good news of Jesus and God’s reign on earth in many languages, so that they are understood by all who hear them. At first many think the disciples must be drunk, but Peter gives a fiery sermon, quoting the prophet Joel, and speaking about the dreams and visions that will come to all through the Spirit - young and old, men and women, slave and free. And in the rest of the chapter, after the section we hear today, Peter calls the crowds to repent - and they do! And three thousand are baptized on the spot and commit themselves to discipleship. It is a truly amazing story. It’s so amazing in fact that it feels unreal. The disciples were on fire and the results of their passion for God were immediate, tangible, huge, and transformative. 

I think many of us find our discipleship, even when we feel on fire for God, rarely so immediately and quantitatively transformative. And so sometimes - for me at least, but I’m guessing you might feel this way too - it’s a little hard to relate to Pentecost. On fire? Maybe. But the fire has fizzled, and we’re burned up now. But Ezekiel? I get Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a priest living in exile in Babylon, along with many other Israelites during the 6th century BC. I think it is hard for most of us to imagine our whole community being conquered and living in exile in a foreign land, but this season was Israel’s most devastating experience since their slavery under Egyptian rule. They were a people whose religious roots were deeply tied to their land – the Promised Land – and living in exile represented the results, the consequences of their turning away from their faithfulness to God - they were separated from their land.

Ezekiel describes in this passage an image God brings to him that represents what the exiled people of Israel look like emotionally – like a valley of dry bones – skeletons. “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. [The Lord] led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry,” we read. Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is smart, and says, “You know, God.” God tells Ezekiel to prophesy that God will breathe into the bones and cause them to be covered with flesh and come to life again. Ezekiel does as he’s told, and it happens just as God describes, and the bones live again, given flesh and breath. These newly living beings don’t just spring back to vibrancy though. Instead, they say that their bones are dried up and their hope is lost. But God responds to them: “I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord … I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil.” Ezekiel knows that God is faithful, even when we are not, and so Ezekiel knows that Israelites are not abandoned. Eventually, Israel does come home from exile, and slowly, they come back to life, and reclaim their identity. 

I’m guessing you know exactly what it feels like to be dry bones. Some of you know because that’s what you feel like right now, with the weight of this enduring pandemic and all that it has taken out of you, your family, and our world over the last year. But you probably know just what it's like to be nothing but dry bones from other seasons in your life too, or from other seasons in our world. You might know because you’ve experienced the pain of being mistreated by others, consistently, in ways that wear you down and break your spirit. You might know because you’ve struggled with losing your way, choosing things that drew you away from instead of closer to God, even though you meant to make different choices. You might know about being dry bones because you’ve tried again and again, so hard to be faithful, so hard to share God with others, so hard to be full of hope, so hard to look for growth, so hard to see signs that you were on God’s path, and been unable to find anything that looked promising, until eventually you felt - like dry bones. Burned out. 

As I said, when God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I think Ezekiel responds so wisely. “God, you know.” It’s a wise answer because it acknowledges both that God does know and the implied converse: Ezekiel does not know. And that’s ok. Because God does know, and Ezekiel - and the dry bones - are listening to God. And actually, the disciples on Pentecost were in much the same situation as Ezekiel. They, too, didn’t really know what was going on, as much as Jesus had tried to prepare them. But God knew. And the disciples were listening, and heard the Spirit, moving on the wind. 

Church, can these dry bones live? We do not know in the midst of being dried up and burned out if there is any life left. But we don’t have to know, because God does know. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go on a retreat day for clergy with Church of the Wild, a new church start based at Sky Lake, one of our conference camps down in the Southern Tier. Church in the Wild is focused on sustainability and care for creation. The focus of the retreat was on figuring out what the next step was in God’s call on our lives. We took a walk around the lake, stopping at spots along the way, reflecting on questions in a guided meditation. On one segment, the leaders asked us to pay attention to nature, to creation, and to think about what lessons we found there when thinking about what God is calling us to in our next step. As I walked along, and noticed everything that was teeming with life in these warm days, I also noticed how much is dying all the time - crunching leaves from last year’s fall, pine needles, trees that didn’t make it through a windy storm or that succumbed to something or another. And yet, all of these dying things were an integral part of the lush life that was unfolding. The dying things made fertile soil for new life to unfold in very literal ways. And so I found myself wondering what in my own life has “died” to make way for new life, and what I need to let go of, in order to embrace what God has in store next. And I found myself thinking about the seasons when I was sure I was burned out and burned up and had nothing left. But God knew better, planning unforeseen joy. 

Church, can these dry bones live? God knows. It’s ok if you’re feeling burned out right now. Because it turns out, God can work with dry bones. If you can’t figure out how to revive and renew and refresh, and if the idea of trying to work for a new vision and new hope and new start sounds exhausting, and if you feel like you’d rather have a good long nap than a bout of the Holy Spirit, and if God birthing something new in the Church universal, and in this particular congregation, and in your individual life sounds too good to be true, or like it means too much hard work, or like you’d rather just be left alone, or like you’ve got nothing left to give, take heart. God is just asking this: that you trust that God knows if we’ve got life left in us or not. And if God knows, God also equips. God also makes a pathway. God breathes life into us. And sometimes that Holy Spirit - literally Holy Breath - looks like a violent rushing wind that has results we can count, and grasp and measure. And sometimes that Holy Spirit - Holy Breath - is just reminding us that there is life where we thought there was only death. And while that might not be a gift we can measure, it is a priceless treasure all the same. God knows what can live and work and move among us, and God is ever faithful, to on fire people, to burned out people, to me, to you. Thanks be to God. Amen.  

Sermon, "Back to (Bible) School: Prophecy," Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon 10/1/17

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Back to (Bible) School: Prophecy

            This week is the last week in our series studying the kinds of literature we find in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. We’ve looked at the Law, the history books of the Bible, and poetry or wisdom literature in the Bible. And today, we turn our attention to large chunk of the Hebrew Scriptures that make up the writings of the prophets. I think prophecy as a biblical genre is probably the most misunderstood, because we use the word prophecy to mean many different things.

            What first comes to mind when you hear the word “prophecy”? Often, people think immediately of predicting the future, a kind of fortune-telling. We seem to have a fascination with anything that suggests we could accurately predict the future. I saw some posts going around on facebook in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, I think, linking the dates of the storm and certain verses from the gospel of Luke. Some folks might be avid readers of their daily horoscope, astrology, the thought that the position of the planets and the time of our birth shapes the events of our daily lives. I used to read mine pretty regularly when I was a teenager, waiting for predictions of true love to come my way! Taurus is my astrological sign, and here’s my horoscope from yesterday (from one website at least!): “A couple, perhaps friends, could visit today. Perhaps you've moved into a new home or redecorated and want to show them around. They'll be impressed and you'll enjoy the company.”[1] I’m sorry to report I had no visitors yesterday, and I haven’t moved or redecorated, unless you think of cleaning diligently before the Trustees walk-though of the parsonage as redecorating!

            What’s the appeal of trying to predict the future? Why are we fascinated by anything that appears to be a prediction of future events? I can only imagine that it is our general anxiety over things unknown, and our general dislike of things that we can’t control that makes us want to believe that something, someone, somewhere can predict the future with accuracy. Otherwise, we have to live with the unsettling reality that things outside of our control, like disaster and illness, can just come on by and bring upheaval to our lives with there being nothing we can do to stop it. The idea of predicting the future, I think, is about control and security.

            That’s not, however, what the prophets in the Bible were all about. Prophets are truth-tellers. Prophets are truth-tellers, particularly when no one else wants to say how things really are. You know what I mean: Everyone knows what’s really going on, but no one wants to speak unwelcome truths out loud. A prophet is the child who tells the emperor he has no clothes, when no one else is brave enough to say so. A prophet tells it like it is, says how bad things really are, talks about where the path we are on will lead if things don’t change. But a prophet doesn’t necessarily want what he or she speculates about to come true. Instead, a prophet wants people to stop and repent, wants them to get back on God’s path before things go too far the wrong way. In its simplest version, you might think of prophecy like this: a parent tells a child that if they don’t get their grades up, they will flunk out of college, live at home for all of their days, and never get a real job. The parent isn’t predicting the future, even though this might be exactly what happens. Instead, they’re truth-telling. If you don’t change, this is the probable future consequences of your current actions. Prophets are visionaries too – they don’t only tell the bad things that might happen if we don’t get our acts together, they also try to hold before us the truth of the potential good that might come if we do change our ways. Think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”[2] King was a prophet: a truth-teller, calling us to account for our racism, and holding before us a vision of what could be, a world where his children no longer faced discrimination and prejudice. He certainly was not predicting the future. He was offering up a vision of the possible paths we might take as a nation. A prophet.

            In the Bible, there are what we call “major” prophets and “minor” prophets. These aren’t more or less important prophets. Rather, the designation refers to the length of the book in the Bible. We have long writings from prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel, and just tiny entries from those like Obadiah and Nahum, books you might not even have heard of! The books of prophecy in our Bibles are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

Today we’re looking at a passage from the prophet Ezekiel, a passage known as The Valley of Dry bones. Ezekiel was a priest living in exile in Babylon, with other Israelites. I think it is hard for most of us to imagine our whole community being conquered and living in exile in a foreign land, but the time of exile, in the sixth century BC, was Israel’s most devastating experience since their slavery under Egyptian rule. They were a people whose religious roots were deeply tied to their land – the Promised Land – and living in exile represented a great turning away from faithfulness to God.

Ezekiel describes in this passage an image God brings to him that represents what the exiled people of Israel look like emotionally – like a valley dry bones – skeletons. “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. [The Lord] led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry,” we read. Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is smart, and says, “You know, God.” God tells Ezekiel to prophesy that God will breathe into the bones and cause them to be covered with flesh and come to life again. Ezekiel does as he’s told, and it happens just as God describes, and the bones live again, given flesh and breath. These newly living beings say that their bones are dried up and their hope is lost. But God responds to them: “I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord … I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil.” Ezekiel knows that God is faithful, even when we are not, and so Ezekiel knows that Israelites are not abandoned. Eventually, Israel does come home from exile, and slowly, they come back to life, and reclaim their identity. 

Some of you may have seen that I asked some questions on facebook in a couple places; I asked three questions about this text. First, I asked 1) When have you felt like "dry bones?" 2) When/how/did you experience some way of God breathing new life into you? And 3) What does that phrase “in your own soil” bring to mind - what's your soil? People seemed to know exactly what it means to feel like dry bones – not in body, but in spirit. Folks shared that there were “too many” dry bones times in life “to count,” or talked about years of struggle trying to have a baby, or how it felt like dry bones to be inundated with hateful words and messages online. One pastor, retired in the last few years, said trying to find a new identity after years of ministry sometimes felt like dry bones. Some felt like they were “dry bones” right now, and it was hard to imagine an end to it. What about you? When have you felt like you could fit right in to that Valley of the Dry Bones? Have we ever been “dry bones” as a congregation? Community? Nation? World?

            Many folks have experienced new life, finding direction, finding a calling, a purpose. I asked Dede Scozzafava if I could share her response in particular. She wrote, “Sometimes I feel like "dry bones" when I am just going through the daily motions of living. Almost like functioning on auto pilot...going from point A to point B and not really taking the time to think about the what and the why of the action. But sometimes God reminds me that I need to take a deeper dive than wading through the superficial surface waters. God directs me to see through different eyes and listen through different ears ... sometimes that interface changes my course and makes me evaluate the purpose of my actions. My soil is my faith ... sometimes growing...sometimes thirsting...sometimes looking to be nourished...sometimes nourishing others...sometimes balanced...other times unsteady...” We know what it is like to be dry bones, don’t we? I hope, too, that we also know what it is like to have God put flesh on our dry bones and breath into us God’s Holy Breath, Holy Spirit, Holy Wind. But I hope for us it is more than just a passive thing. I hope we aren’t just dry bones laying around, waiting for a breath from God, a word of hope from a prophet, when we already know that we serve the God of Resurrection and Life.              

            What do we do when we’re feeling like dry bones – as an individual, a community, a people? This is a question we can we can work on answering together. But here’s what struck me. Ezekiel kept his trust in God, listened for God’s voice, and did whatever God asked, even though he, too, was in exile, just like all those souls in the valley. Ezekiel seemed to have no doubt in the power of God to make dry bones live again. In The United Methodist Church, we still have in our Book of Discipline something called “The General Rules.” They were the rules that guided the early Methodists, when they met together with John Wesley, founder of the movement. Look them up this week, and read them in full. But here’s the gist: First, do no harm. Second, do good. And third, “attend upon the ordinances of God.”[3] These ordinances are practices or disciplines that help us stay connected to God. Wesley lists being part of the worshiping community, sharing in communion, praying alone and together, studying the Bible, and fasting as ordinance we ought to practice to ground ourselves in life with God. Even when we feel like dry bones, these practices help us stay ready, stay faithful, stay listening for God’s voice, ready to let new life and God’s breath fill our hearts again. It’s watering and tending the soil in which God seeks to plant us, digging deep. And eventually, in God’s right time, they’re the practices that make us ready for new life. Can these bones live? God knows. And with God, the answer to the question of new life is always yes. Amen.  

           

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[1] https://www.horoscope.com/us/horoscopes/general/horoscope-general-daily-today.aspx?sign=2

[2] King Jr., Martin Luther.

[3] http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/the-general-rules-of-the-methodist-church

Sermon for Third Sunday in Advent, "His Name Shall Be Called: Everlasting Father," Ezekiel 34:1-16

Sermon 12/11/16

Ezekiel 34:1-16

His Name Shall Be Called: Everlasting Father*

            And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. This week we turn to what is perhaps the strangest of these four titles for the Christ-Child, the Messiah. Today, we think about what it means to think of Jesus as Everlasting Father. We’re familiar, of course, with thinking about God as a parent. Jesus frequently speaks of God as Father, even Abba, Dad, a familiar, intimate title. But how can we think of Jesus, the Son in the Father-Son relationship, the Son in the Trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit, as Everlasting Father?

            When Isaiah was writing this oracle, when he was hoping and longing for a ruler for Judah who would redeem the people. They are headed for war. They are perilously close to being conquered, overthrown, driven from their homes and their way of life and the practice of their faith. But Isaiah has this hope, this vision of what a ruler might be. And when Isaiah calls the ruler Everlasting Father, he’s using language that would have resonated with his audience. In a patriarchal society, the father was the traditional head of the family. The father exercised the most power and the most responsibility. (34) But the role and responsibility of the father is all based on the way God operates in the world. In other words, God is the model, the true Everlasting Father, and earthly parents embody true parenthood in as much as they emulate the character of God, Everlasting Father.

            So what is God like as Everlasting Father? Everlasting means reliable care and protection.  You can depend on something that is everlasting. It isn’t wavering, there sometimes and missing others. It is a constant, enduring force. God, and God’s care for us, love for us, is everlasting. In a world of short attention spans, God’s everlastingness is a precious treasure. As a parent, God can get angry, when we hurt each other, when we don’t listen, when we walk away from God. But, our kinship with God – that is, because we’re God’s family, God’s anger is “not the last word.” (37) And God’s role as our parent is also to protect the most vulnerable. Throughout the scriptures, we find that God has particular care and compassion for what is sometimes called “the quartet of the vulnerable” – the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. God takes action, again and again, through the law, through God’s leaders, through the work and words of the prophets, to highlight protection of the most vulnerable. This is what God, Everlasting Father, does.

            And God expected that the kings, the rulers of God’s people, would have been about this work as well. The task of the king was to emulate as much of God’s character as possible, to be a servant leader. And so a king was meant to be Everlasting Father too, because they “[guarantee] the well-being of the family, clan, or tribe, and eventually the state.” (39-40) A king’s task was to make sure that the society was prospering and flourishing, and that couldn’t truly happen unless the needy and vulnerable were protected too. (40)

But, there’s been a failure. The kings of God’s people have not been doing their fatherly duty. Instead, they’ve been self-indulgent, self-interested. (41-42) And so, God, the true Everlasting Father will step in and do what has been left undone. That’s where we find ourselves in our text from Ezekiel today.

Ezekiel is writing in the time of the Babylonian exile. This comes after the times of Isaiah, but it’s all tied up in the same narrative. Since Isaiah’s time, Judah hasn’t really been in control, in power, and has instead been open to foreign attack and invasion. Now, Babylon had invaded and occupied Israel and the people of Israel were scattered – what Ezekiel calls scattered sheep. Ezekiel spends the proceeding chapters of his prophecy criticizing the history of bad royal leadership Israel has had. When humans have tried to be king, we have done a pretty bad job at it.

Ezekiel shares the word he says he received from God: “Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.” God says the shepherds of Israel – that is the kings, the rulers – they’ve been feeding themselves, but not feeding the sheep. They’ve been failing in their most basic purpose. “You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool,” we read. “You slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.” The result of this neglect? They sheep are scattered when there is no shepherd, and they become easy prey for wild animals. Metaphor for exile and conquering. No one is left, writes Ezekiel, to search for those who have been lost.

            But there is hope yet, because God will step in as shepherd where the rulers of earth have failed. “Thus says the Lord God,” says Ezekiel, “I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them. For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.” I will rescue them from where they’re scattered, says God. I will feed them. I will be the shepherd. “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”

            Later, after our text for today, Ezekiel goes on to say that God, Shepherd, will judge between sheep and sheep. This is because some of sheep eat their fill but trample down the rest of the good grass so others can’t have it. Some of them drink clean water, but then stick their feet in the water and make it dirty for others trying to drink. Some of them push the other sheep, and butt at the weaker animals, pushing them away from the rest of the flock. “I will save my flock,” God says. I will judge the sheep, and no longer will they be ravaged. God, Everlasting Father, will become the Shepherd where the rulers have failed to do so.

            And suddenly, it becomes a little clearer how Jesus, the Son, can be Jesus, Everlasting Father. Because we know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep … I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” We’ve talked about Jesus being Ruler of the Impossible, about Jesus, Mighty God, creating pathways of new life. And just what Jesus, Good Shepherd, Everlasting Father speaks about: I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.

Jesus embodies the Good Shepherd that the kings of earth could never be, and at the same time calls us to follow his example. Jesus is in the orphan business, just like his parent is. (46) He calls for the children to come to him, and calls us to enter God’s kingdom like they do. (47) He is the “carrier of the family promise,” (48) showing Father and Son in solidarity. In Jesus we hear the words of Ezekiel fulfilled: “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” That’s just what Jesus does. Jesus, Good Shepherd, Everlasting Father.

As always, that brings us to the so what. So what does it mean for us? First, I think, if the role of the shepherd is beyond us, then perhaps our first task is to learn to be better sheep, better members of Jesus’ flock. Remember, God says that not only were the shepherds not taking care of the sheep, but also some of the sheep were showing little in the way of concern for their other flock members. They weren’t taking care to make sure that there was good food and clean water for all of the sheep, and they were even hurting each other. What kind of job are we doing as part of God’s flock? Are we only concerned with making sure we get ours? Making sure our needs are covered? Are we keeping an eye out for those who are getting shoved to the side in life? Or are we the ones doing the elbowing? Let’s try to be good sheep, keeping our eyes on the Good Shepherd, listening for the voice of Jesus, and following where he leads.

But we can also strive to win back the responsibility of sharing in shepherding, being God’s servant leaders. Walter Brueggemann writes that one of the reasons we can see Jesus as Everlasting Father is because Jesus so closely identifies with and emulates the Father that they share the functions of parenting, of shepherding. (49) In other words, Jesus is so full of God that Jesus also shares the responsibility of God, the Great Shepherd. That should be our aim as well – not that we can be God – but we can be full of the Spirit of God. We can be imitators of Jesus. We can make sure that we, too, are champions for the quartet of the vulnerable – the poor, the orphan, the widow, the foreigner. We, too, can seek after the lost, those who have strayed. We, too, can work for justice for those who are oppressed.

In this season of Advent, the great surprise is that the tiny babe born among us is also the parent who longs to protect us, and the Good Shepherd who longs to guide us, willing, even, to lay down his life for us. We give thanks to the Everlasting God for this gift of comfort and joy. Amen.

* All references are drawn from Chapter 3, “Everlasting Father,” of Names of the Messiah by Walter Brueggemann.

Sermon for Second Sunday of Easter, "Resurrection Stories: Dry Bones," Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon 4/27/2014

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Resurrection Stories – Dry Bones

            Last week, as we gathered on Easter Morning, we heard The Resurrection Story – as we lingered with Mary at the tomb long enough to experience the resurrected Christ, as we pondered the difference between resuscitated lives and resurrected lives. But the celebration of Easter isn’t a one day event. As we sang last week, we are indeed Easter people, and every day to us is Easter because we always live in the promise of the victory of life over death. And so we always celebrate Easter, but we also have a liturgical season of Easter that is fifty days long – lasting from Easter Sunday to the day of Pentecost. These days represent the forty days that Jesus remained on earth after the resurrection, and the days leading up to the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit, which we’ll celebrate in June. Fifty days of Easter. During these fifty days, we’ll be lingering, so to speak, sticking with this Resurrection Story – as we seek out and listen to and learn to tell our own resurrection stories. The scriptures are filled with stories of resurrection – the victory of life over death, hope over despair – in many different forms. Each week, we’ll look at a different story of resurrection from the Bible, and we’ll think about what it means for us, and what resurrection looks like in our own lives.

            Many of you know that I was blessed to spend part of this past week with our Red Bird Mission team in rural Kentucky, where 18 of our youth and adults worked hard to repair homes, make improvements to ministry buildings, and do other projects to aid in the outreach work of Red Bird Mission. I knew I’d have to work on my sermon a bit while I was there with them, so I decided to take advantage of my captive audience, and I spent some time asking the trip participants questions about our scripture text today. I didn’t get to interview quite everyone, but I got many responses, and I’ll let you hear some of their answers, as we enjoy this way to be connected to them, even as they travel home today. They got to be my guinea pigs, since I am hoping that eventually we’ll all be more able to think about and share about God’s resurrecting power in our own lives.

We start our study of resurrection stories with a passage from the prophet Ezekiel, known as The Valley of Dry bones. Ezekiel was a priest living in exile in Babylon, with other Israelites. I think it is hard for most of us to imagine our whole community being conquered and living in exile in a foreign land, but the time of exile, in the sixth century BC, was Israel’s most devastating experience since their slavery under Egyptian rule. They were a people whose religious roots were deeply tied to their land – the Promised Land – and living in exile represented a great turning away from faithfulness to God.

Ezekiel, then, describes in this passage an image God brings to him that represents what the exiled people of Israel look like emotionally – like a valley dry bones – skeletons. “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. [The Lord] led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry,” we read. Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is smart, and says, “You know God.” God tells Ezekiel to prophesy that God will breathe into the bones and cause them to be covered with flesh and come to life again. Ezekiel does as he’s told, and it happens just as God describes, and the bones live again, given flesh and breath. These newly living beings say that their bones are dried up and their hope is lost. But God responds to them: “I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord … I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil.” Eventually, Israel does come home from exile, and slowly, they come back to life, and reclaim their identity.  

This passage is popular passage in the Bible. If you know anything from Ezekiel, chances are this is the story you know. And I think it’s so popular because of how easy it is for us to relate to the image of dry bones. How often have you felt like dry bones, piled up in the valley, no life in you, no hope in you? I asked our Red Bird folks to talk to me about the dry bones imagery.

Eric Holmes shared that he thought of dry bones as a metaphor for what happens when you don’t live the life God wants you to live. It’s like the “old boots in the closet that dry out and age,” he said. But then “you find them, and then you find the boot rub ointment, and bring new life into the old boots and bring them back to what they’re meant to be used for.” Marybeth talked about the hustle and bustle of life. When you get caught up in what other people are saying, when you feel useless, overwhelmed by stress, like you are at your lowest point. Kay Phillips said dry bones are when you feel like there’s nowhere to go. Like you might as well just die. “Have I ever felt like that?” she said, “Yeah! But when I start to feel like that, I look back over all the different times that I’ve felt like that where God has turned it around, so I know that [God will turn it around] again.” Dry bones come, she said, when we try to do it on our own instead of with God’s help. Mike Nortman talked about dry bones as “desolation. Isolation.” Sika said dry bones are when “you are sad and you don’t have anything to fulfill you and you don’t have anything to interest you and you don’t have anything to dedicate your heart to and you’re are stuck and you don’t feel well and you feel empty inside.” Sakari equated dry bones with that feeling you get when you’ve worked so hard that you’ve used up every bit of energy you have. Dominique, our animal lover, said dry bones make her think of bird’s bones, many of which are hollow. Dry bones are when it feels like our bones are hollow, she said, even though they aren’t supposed to be – that hollow, empty feeling. Emma talked about a recent challenging health struggle, where her long recovery kept her out of school for months and she had to sleep and sleep to recover. She felt like dry bones. Bill Mann talked about a time when he was a child and his uncles were fighting in World War II, and he lost sleep, worrying that they would never come home. Others talked about struggles with depression, or watching loved ones face that struggle. It seems like we can all relate to dry bones. Have you ever felt like dry bones?

            So I next asked folks what it felt like to have God’s breath breathed in to you. What does it feel like when you’ve been feeling like dry bones, and suddenly, God brings you to life again? Mike Nortman talked about climbing a mountain and how it feels to reach the summit and see the view. “I think it is because of the expanse of the view,” he said. “It’s huge yet comforting to be there, which is how I feel about God.” Kay said it’s like a brand new morning. “You see the sun and hear the birds and you know it’s gonna be all right.” Marybeth said it feels like a cleanse, refreshing. “I know when I’m doing something through God it just feels right – not high or low – just right.” Paula Lamberson said it’s “a feeling I know I can’t get on my own, no matter how hard I try to do it on my own – it’s not the same [on my own.]” Daija Dowe said she feels God breathes life into her when she helps other people. Lexie Ryan talked about building new relationships and working hard feeling like a new start. Dominique talked about “all the little things that fill us up that we may not even [realize].” Elliott Lawrence talked about his work with the Conference Youth – “[You feel] really good, like you are surrounded by people who care about you who also have God’s breath in them and you can feel God’s presence all around you.” Eric talked about getting involved with the LIFE Youth program, remembering how Mike and Janet Ehrhart convinced him to come: “All you have to do is be there. You don’t have to do anything.” And now he’s one of the primary youth leaders here. What about you? When and how have you been brought back to life by God’s holy breathe filling you up? What did that feel like? What made your experiences so life-giving?

            Finally, I asked folks about the verse in this passage that really caught me. God talks about planting the newly God’s-breath-filled people on “their own soil.” Of course, this language is literal – God’s talking about bring the people back to Israel from Babylonian exile. But it is also rich in metaphor. What does it mean to have God plant you in your own soil? That’s what I asked our Red Bird folks. Kay said her own soil is when she’s doing something for someone else. Kay got injured on the worksite on the first day at Red Bird. She ended up with 38 stiches and quite the story to tell, but remained in her irrepressible good spirits throughout the whole adventure. Kay said that her biggest frustration with her injury was that it disturbed the work folks were there to accomplish. She wasn’t there to be helped but to help! That’s her own soil. Marybeth said, “It makes me think of the word confident – confident God has me, that I can go out into the world, that I’m protected.” Mike said his own soil is when he’s at home – not necessarily the physical place – but when he feels at home. Bill feels like he’s on his own soil when he can help others, especially if he can do it without them knowing about it. He’s on his own soil when he can use the gifts and talents God’s given him to help others. Paula said it’s when you have that knowledge that you are where you belong, not wandering anymore, not frustrated, not on an island alone. A peace. Elliott said being put on your own soil is developing your own self, your own self-image, your own uniqueness, being different, but with God and others to support you. Dominique said being on your own soil is being “in the element that [God] created us for – like how Marybeth [is] an EMT – that’s her soil, she’ knows what she’s doing, confident, happy, to help people. With me, with animals is where I can help – that’s what God wanted me to do. [It’s] what we can really find ourselves in.” Emma said being on your own soil is when you are serving God. She’s noticed that since she’s committed herself to serving God, opportunities keep appearing in her life to do just that. Daija spoke of being set on solid ground. Sika talked about the soil being God’s plan for our lives. Eric said it’s being in the place you are supposed to be. Lexie said being planted on your own soil is being “somewhere where you belong and fit in and [you’re with] people who belong with you – like a chain – like this link belongs next to this link – these links go together. [Being in your own soil is being in] the right place for your link.” What’s your own soil? Where is God placing you, so that you’ll grow and live and feel God’s breath coursing through you, resurrected, hope renewed?

I felt like I should let some of my youth write my sermon more often. Some deep wisdom from all those youth and adults. I feel blessed by their stories. They all knew what I meant by dry bones. But they also all knew what it meant to have God breathe new life into them. They knew something about the feeling of being placed on their own soil. What about you, Easter people? We’ve heard Jesus’s resurrection story. We’ve heard Ezekiel’s story, and the story of the exiled Israelites. We’ve heard from some of our mission team. Now it’s your turn. What’s your story of new life? What story of God’s resurrection power will you share? Amen.

Sermon for Reign of Christ, Year A: Fed with Justice

Sermon 11/20/11

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

            This time of year always brings us an interesting conjunction of church events: today we celebrate Thanksgiving Sunday – it isn’t really a liturgical holiday – Thanksgiving isn’t on the church calendar exactly. But it certainly makes sense that we focus on Thanksgiving in worship – being thankful for all we have is hardly something we do enough of! It is also the last Sunday of the liturgical year today. As the church calendar goes, next Sunday is our New Year's Day. Today is then sort of a liturgical New Year's Eve as far as Sundays go. And on the church calendar, today is Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday. It is a day when we consider how Jesus is King, how Jesus is ruler of our lives. How is Jesus king? It’s kind of an interesting question for us to ask about Jesus, who shunned titles like king at every turn in the accounts of ministry. And yet we call him the King of Kings. There is a tension there. Not a king, and yet the most high king. On this Sunday, we explore that tension.

            For 21^st century Americans, we have to figure out just what to do with kings anyway. Our own history shapes our views of course. In our history, people carried out a revolution to end living under the rule of a king that could make decisions for them without their input. We have never had a king. We want a say in who leads – not rules us – and how they lead. And if they don’t do it in a way we appreciate, we want the chance to elect someone new. This spring we observed with varying degrees of anticipation, indifference, distaste, or excitement as Prince William married Kate Middleton. Even in Europe, the royal family has limited power. They don’t rule, not in the absolute ways of days long past. And we aren’t quite sure what to make of it all, are we? What do we mean by saying that Jesus is king?

            We don’t often focus on readings from Ezekiel. You might be most familiar with the passage about the valley of the dry bones. But I find our text today particularly compelling for Reign of Christ Sunday. Ezekiel is writing in the time of the Babylonians exile. Babylon had invaded and occupied Israel and the people of Israel were scattered – what Ezekiel calls scattered sheep. Ezekiel spends the proceeding chapters of his prophecy criticizing the history of bad royal leadership Israel has had. When humans have tried to be king, we have done a pretty bad job at it. We are bad at being shepherds, Ezekiel says, and we aren’t even very good at being sheep. He writes, ʺYou pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide.ʺ Without a good shepherd to follow, we aren’t even good sheep! In imagery that Jesus will draw on centuries later when he speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, Ezekiel speaks of how God shepherds us.

Here is what God as shepherd-king does for us, says Ezekiel: I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. I will bind up the injured. I will strengthen the weak. I will feed them with justice. This is how God is king. And if God is king by shepherding us better than any human leaders, God can draw out of us our best sheep-behavior. We are the flock when we hear God's voice and follow Jesus our shepherd-king. What would it look like if we partnered in God's work?

            God seeks us when we are lost. How can we help those who feel lost, in the many ways we can feel lost in this world? I can’t tell you how significant being a listening ear can be for people. In my years of ministry, some of the kindest words of thanks I have received are from people who I visit for one reason or another. I find myself always wishing I had more time to give, more time to stay, because it clearly means too much to people. People who are lonely, or depressed, or struggling in some way – they need to know that someone is with them in the midst of their pain. We rely on knowing that God is always seeking after us, always calling to us, always longing to draw us closer in relationship. So in turn, how can we draw closer to one another in faith, hope, and love?

            God brings back the strayed. You might think being lost and straying away from God are the same thing. To me it is a bit of a nuanced difference. Being lost is something that usually happens by accident. We feel lost and alone without knowing how we got there exactly. Straying from God – well, that is a little more purposeful. Have you ever witnessed or experienced this: a child is walking quickly and deliberately away from a parent who is yelling more and more loudly, ʺCome back here!ʺ Or a child is not supposed to walk too far ahead, ride a bike too far ahead of parents, but keeps pushing the limits, going just a little farther? That is straying, and I believe we do that with God. We don’t start out intending to disobey God or test God. But somehow one small questionable action on our part leads to one more and one more, and pretty soon we are living in a way that we aren’t proud of. God brings back the strayed. There is no distance – no distance that you can stray from God that is too far for God to close the gap. We are not very open in our society to others pointing out when we seem to be straying from God. And we try to mind our own business when we see others doing something that we know will be harmful to their spirits. We think it is between us and God, them and God. While we are called to not judge one another, we are also supposed to help each other keep from stumbling, and be open to someone else helping us stay close to God.

            God will bind up the injured. I believe God can heal us. I think we have all witnessed God's healing – physically, emotionally, spiritually. Some of us may have witnessed miraculous healing. Or we may have witnessed the slow and steady healing that God works over time. But Jesus was a healer – he was known far and wide for his healing, and it was the reason why people flocked to him at first, only to then find their souls were healing along with their ailments. We are in need of healing, aren’t we? We pray for healing for ourselves and our loved ones. In fact, prayer is one way we partner with God in healing. How often is prayer our last resort, instead of a tool of healing that we use with intention and purpose? I pray for healing for you and me, for our congregation, for our nation, for our world. We so need it. God binds up our wounded hearts, and makes us whole

God strengthens the weak and feeds them with justice. God is not into survival of the fittest. God is into the thriving lives of each precious child in creation. This week we focus on giving thanks, but we also might spend a lot of time focusing on what food we will have on Thursday (and Friday and Saturday), right? I have been part of very few Thanksgiving meals where we didn’t indulge and indulge some more. God says we will be fed with justice. What an image! In the scriptures, justice and poverty, concern for those who are weak or low in society often go hand in hand, as the prophets envision God's world as a place where all have enough and no one suffers at the expense of others. We can certainly be partners with God in feeding justice as we reach out in mission. Last night I had the true privilege of handing out food baskets to folks in need in our community. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy seeing the expressions of shock on people’s faces when they realize how much we will be able to give them. And it is just one way, one part of what we can do. It is to our human shame that we throw away about 50 million tons of food each year when 900 million people are hungry. We know something is wrong and needs to be corrected, brought to right. That is what God means by justice – bringing things to rights. How will you partner with God to feed justice until all are filled?

This Jesus, God on earth, come to us, we celebrate as a king. But he is a king like no other – a king who seeks the lost, who protects, who returns strays to the right path, who heals, who strengthens the weak, who feeds us with justice. This is a leader worth following. Let us give thanks, today and always. Amen.