Can These Bones Live?; Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 6:62-65

 

     When we look around us at the state of the world, we can get pretty discouraged.  Even when we look at the state of the Church, we can be discouraged.  Everything seems to be wasting away.  We wonder if revival is really possible.  We have come to the end of the Easter season.  We have been reminded again and again that we are an Easter people—a people of the resurrection.  But still, Jesus is ascended and we don’t always sense His presence.  I wonder if the disciples felt this way after seeing Jesus ascend into heaven.  They were experiencing the resurrection reality of the Christ.  They were meeting together and hoping for the fulfillment of Christ’s promise.  They devoted themselves to prayer as Jesus commanded, but there is still some remaining fear.  Certainly, the Judeans of Ezekiel’s day felt this way.  The people of Israel had been scattered and the people of Judea had been taken into captivity by the Babylonians.  They’ve been there already for a number of years.  Even though God through Isaiah had told them they would be there a long time—70 years, that they should get used to it, build homes, and have families, there was still discouragement.  Then God gives Ezekiel a great vision.  God transports him to the valley of dry bones.  It is the site of a battle fought long ago.  God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live again?”.  We may wonder the same thing.

            It is often too easy to look around and see only death, but we have been celebrating Easter and resurrection for the last 7 weeks.  We know well that we have new life in Christ Jesus.  We have already been given eternal life, but too often we fail to live into it.  The world weighs us down.  We fall into scarcity mentality.  Our bodies continue to weaken.  People we love continue to hurt us.  Too often we’re more like the walking dead, like zombies, instead of resurrected new creations of Christ.  We need not just to live, but to thrive.  Ezekiel was told, “Prophesy to the breath—Thus says the Lord God, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon these slain, that they may live.”  Ezekiel did so, and the breath came into the bodies, and they lived and stood on their feet—a vast multitude.  God said, “And you shall know that I am the LORD when I open up your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  I will put my Spirit within you and you shall live.”  Post resurrection, the disciples were living, but not thriving, but they trusted Jesus enough to wait.  As they prayed and obeyed God in worship, they Spirit fell on them with power!  And the Spirit didn’t leave.  Despite all the adversity they would face, even martyrdom, they lived and thrived.  God wants us to thrive, not just survive.  We aren’t meant to stop at the point when the bones have come together, sinew to sinew, with flesh covering them, standing upright and yet with no breath in them.  We are meant to live.  This is where the Spirit comes in.  It is the breath of the Spirit that gives life, that causes action!

            This week I finished up the new members classes with the Maples.  We looked at the church’s purposes of mission and fellowship and how they connect.  We saw how both go hand in hand for the purposes of developing relationships that result in human flourishing.  God calls us to human flourishing.  The expansion of the Kingdom of God is all about not just human flourishing but the flourishing of all creation.  If God calls us to work for human flourishing, surely God equips us with everything we need to make that happen.  This is what Pentecost is about—the pouring out of the Holy Spirit so that we can do the work to which God calls us.      

When we looked at the Nicene creed, we affirmed that the Holy Spirt is the Giver of Life.  In this Ezekiel passage, the Holy Spirit gives life to these dry bones.  It is the Holy Spirit who gives life to us as well. In John 6:62-65, Jesus says this very thing.  On our own, we can do nothing, especially when it comes to doing the will of God. It is the Spirit who gives life.  It is the Spirit who gives us faith.  And the Word of God is Spirit-filled, so we can trust God’s Word for direction and for wisdom.  As we continue to gather for prayer and preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, God’s Word breathes new life into us, so that like the mighty wind that moved over the waters at Creation, a new reality emerges.  Where there has been confusion and fear, now there is boldness and understanding.  Where there were only broken, dry fragments, a living presence is brought forth as the people of God spread the Good news that our God lives and abides with us in the Holy Spirit.         

            This past year, we have been praying that we would sail with the Spirit.  Last summer we engaged of 40 Days of Prayer to help us tune in to where the Spirit would lead us.  We don’t need to row in our own strength to make things happen.  Jesus said, “The flesh counts for nothing.”  Instead, we need to sail with the Spirit.  We are starting to see our prayers bear fruit.  When the session first started with Project Regeneration.  We were unanimous that what we would like to see is a partner to share our building space. Now it looks like that is coming to fruition with 5 Fold Ministries.  We prayed for new members, and God gave us the Maples.  But that doesn’t mean we need to stop praying!  God answers prayers so that we will be encouraged and enabled to do the work to which God has called us.  We are still called to make disciples and to grow the Kingdom of Heaven in Havelock.  We are still called to work for human flourishing where we are planted.  We are not just instruments of prayer, we can be answers to prayer! 

            Being Spirit directed is how each of us should live our lives every day.  When we sail with the Spirit, we don’t need to question whether or not we are in the center of God’s will.  However, there are times when the Spirit acts as a headwind instead of a tailwind.  Sometimes we run headlong into the Spirit’s force because we have fallen back into our own efforts of rowing where we think we should go, but as I read in a devotional this week, sometimes, the Spirit pushes us from the front even when we are trying to cooperate with the Spirit, because we are strengthened when we are challenged.  God doesn’t remove all our adversity; God is with us in adversity.  Just because things get hard or challenging does NOT mean we are not cooperating with the Holy Spirit.  Jesus Himself was always in perfect cooperation with the Holy Spirit.  He repeatedly said that He came not to do His own will but the will of the Father.  His life was full of difficulty and adversity.  To live by the Holy Spirit is to know that God is in control.  Despite our senses, when we feel like failures, when we know that we are being obedient to God, then God is pleased with us and the results are His.  When we are successful, God still gets all praise and glory, for without God we can do nothing. 

            Friends, we are not only a resurrection people, we are a Spirit-filled people.  AS the Bible says, we have not been given a spirit of fear, but a Spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.  God does not leave us hopeless, nor does God leave us powerless.  God gives us everything we need to accomplish the purpose that God has set forth for us.  We just need to discover His purpose and our part in it, and together we can.  The Spirit filled church steps out in faith.  It is not afraid to take risks because it knows the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Kingdom of God.  The Spirit who works in the Church is greater than that in the world.  In the Kingdom of God, there are no failures.  The Spirit-filled church is not afraid to stand in for Truth, because the Spirit is truth.  The Spirit filled church knows that the gospel has the power to transform lives and that the gospel must be shared with a hurting and dying world.  The Spirit filled church works for justice because it knows that God is a God of justice and righteousness—a God who is for the poor, needy, and downtrodden.  I love the ways that we have already seen God use us to promote flourishing.  Let’s keep praying and watch what God is going to do in and through us next. May we continue to listen to and live by the Holy Spirit.  May Trinity Presbyterian Church continue to be a Spirit filled church and may each of us live Spirit-filled lives.  May God cause us to thrive and flourish as we work for the flourishing of others around us. 

A Mother's Faith; Mark 15:37-16:7

 

            On this Mother’s Day and 6^th Sunday of Easter, we revisit the resurrection story.  In Mark’s account, we have quite a list of women who were at the cross and who went to the tomb early Sunday morning, while it was still dark!  Conspicuously absent is one particular woman.  We know she was present at the cross, because Jesus addressed her from the cross.  And yet, she’s not listed as one who followed Joseph of Arimathea to find out where Jesus was buried.  Nor did she go early in the morning to the tomb.  The absent woman of which I speak is of course, Mary the Mother of Jesus.  Why is she absent?

            Mary the mother of Jesus’s name is never just “Mary” or Maria in the Bible.  The mother of Jesus’s name is Mariam.  She is sometimes called Marias, but never Maria like the other Mary’s are.  In John’s gospel, she is not named at all.  She is only called Jesus’s mother.  And Jesus only addresses her as “Woman.”  Therefore, she is not the “other Mary.”  According to John’s gospel, this other Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses or Joseph, is also the wife of Clopas and seems to be the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus, unless the sister of Mary is also unnamed and the other Mary is an additional woman.  But even Mary’s sister is one of the women who stood at the cross and went to the empty tomb, and yet the mother of Jesus didn’t go. 

            Why?  Mary didn’t need to go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body and make sure that He had a proper burial because she believed what Jesus had already said.  Jesus wasn’t going to stay dead!  Mary had faith in her Son.  We have seen how Jesus told His disciples that He was going to be killed and rise from the dead multiple times.  He said it at least 3 times, at least one of which was on His final journey to Jerusalem through which we have been walking in our study of the gospel of Luke.  This is the journey that all these women took with Him.  They were part of Jesus’s huge entourage, and His mother was part of it as well.  We know from other Bible passages about her, that she always made an effort to attend the feasts in Jerusalem.  This Passover would have been no different.  She would have heard Jesus say that He had to die and rise again, and out of all the people who heard, she alone took Jesus at His word.  She didn’t try to stop His suffering.  She didn’t question.  She didn’t try to change His mind.  She believed.  She knew from Jesus’s infancy that He would suffer and she would suffer with Him.  Simeon told her that Jesus would cause the rise and fall of many, and that a sword would pierce Mary’s soul as well.  Gabriel had told her that Jesus would be the eternal ruler.  This is the woman who not only knew that Jesus could keep wine from running out, but that He would do so.  This is a woman who heard her 12-year son say that He was focused on His Father, meaning God.  So when Jesus said He would rise again, Mary believed.  She didn’t have to have proof first.  She wouldn’t be concerned about where Jesus was when the others found the tomb empty.  She would trust that her Son was doing His Father’s work.  And whenever He did appear to her, she didn’t try to keep Him.  She knew from Jesus’s words on the cross, that her life from now on would be different.

            We know that from the cross, Jesus entrusted John with the care of His mother.  John, like the rest of the disciples, tried to stay on the down-low after Jesus’s death, so that they too would not be targeted.  Most returned to the upper room.  Mary would have gone with John, and John would have done his best to comfort her and keep her safe.  At the same time, as the 3^rd day approached, she would have been a comfort to them because she did believe and wouldn’t have been so fearful.  Some of the early church fathers say that Mary didn’t go to the tomb because upon rising, Jesus appeared to her first in private.  This is taught by St. Anselm, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and also later by St. Teresa of Avila as well as others.  When the angel came to roll the stone away, the angel wasn’t letting Jesus out of the tomb, rather, he was revealing that the tomb was already empty.  It is possible that Jesus appeared to Mary first, while the others were still asleep, and Mary, in the way she was prone to do, would have kept this in her heart.  We know that Jesus had a private meeting with Peter, and we don’t know the details of it, so having a meeting with Mary is also likely.  I think it is likely that Jesus met with His mom first, though w we don’t know when.  Perhaps while the women were returning from the tomb.  Some say she would have joined in the telling of Jesus’s resurrection with the other women, and they wouldn’t have believed her either.  We know that John ran with Peter to the empty tomb, and he even was the first to go inside, and yet he didn’t believe right away.  But Mary did.  She believed before it happened. 

            We also know that Jesus didn’t waste His time after the resurrection trying to convince His naysayers and enemies that He was alive. Rather, He appeared to those who were His followers to encourage them and to commission them to spread the news that He is alive and that He is indeed Lord and the Savior of the world.  Since Mary, of all people, had faith in her Son, He would have appeared to her, but she didn’t have to go to the tomb with burial spices.  The idea that she would have been first is very believable.  Appearing to His mother first would have honored her as not just for being His mother, but for her faithfulness.  We know from Acts 1:14 that after the ascension, Mary was praying with the disciples in the upper room.  She probably had witnessed the ascension as well, and although Mary had already received the Holy Spirit, she prayed with the others for God’s will.  She was a committed follower of her Son, not simply His mother. 

            Though the Bible doesn’t tell us how or when Jesus appeared to His mother, what we want to remember on this Mother’s Day is her faith.  She took Jesus at His word.  She submitted to the will of God, even when it was most difficult.  This is what we take away today.  The example of this mother’s faith is not just for mothers.  It is for all of us.  Do we believe what Jesus says?  Do we believe what He says about Himself and what He will do?  How much proof do you require before you trust what Jesus says to be true?  Do we hold fast to His promises even when our circumstances tell us not to believe?  Do we believe when we are overcome by grief?  Do we believe when we are afraid, and even fear for our lives?  Do we believe Jesus’s warnings, that there are real consequences for our choices and behavior?  Do we take seriously the Lord’s commands?  We have seen that obedience is the measure of faith.  How does your life reflect your belief in Jesus?  We have also seen that faith is accompanied by prayer, just as we observe Mary in prayer with the disciples.  When we pray, it is good practice to pray Scripture.  We can repeat Scripture back to God asking God to complete what God has already promised in God’s Word.