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See the Undying Spirit of the Church

            It usually has to be a pretty slow spring for graduations to make the national headlines.  Yet when you considering the tough news that we’ve been hearing this spring, suddenly the graduations are the headlines. And it seems like there is a theme behind many of the commencement addresses. This year, graduation is about ‘attitude.’ “Don’t quit, graduate. Don’t let the tough economy beat you. Keep going. Never say die. Even for graduates of a Lutheran high school, who face spiritual challenges as well as economic ones, an undaunted spirit is as important as ever.

            I think it’s beautiful that the Festival of Pentecost falls into the graduation season, because so many of the encouragements that we give to our graduates are encouragements that we need to hear as a church. We face difficulty, and we need to keep our spirits up. As a Church, the Spirit that we have is much more than an attitude, our Spirit a Person: the Holy Spirit, who guides throughout our lives. When we take a close look at first lesson that we heard from the lectern, when we stand shoulder to shoulder with Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, we are going to see just how incredible the Spirit is. This morning, we will See the Undying Spirit of the Church!

            In order for us to understand what we mean by “the church” we have to wind the clock back a little bit. Way back before Grace church was situated on the corner of Broadway and Juneau, back before there was a Lutheran church in Germany, before Pentecost—that’s before there was a ‘Christian’ church, 600 years before Jesus, God had a group of people that he called ‘Israel.’ We could call them ‘God’s Old Testament Church.’

            And way back then, 600 years before Jesus, God’s people were stuck. They were stuck in a land that they really didn’t belong in. They were stuck in the land of Babylon, because the kings of Israel had gone toe to toe with the Babylonians and had lost. So there they were, hundreds of miles from their homes in Jerusalem. God sent men to look after his Church, and one of those men was a named Ezekiel.  Ezekiel was more than a pastor or a teacher; he was a prophet, a man who was given messages directly from God to preach to God’s people. Most times Ezekiel spoke those messages, but there are four times in his book he saw those messages in a vision. These verses from chapter 37 are one of those visual messages. Look at what Ezekiel wrote:

The Spirit who Made the Church Live

            The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.

            God dropped Ezekiel in the middle of a wasteland and showed him the results of a terrible battle.  And this wasteland that Ezekiel saw was just as depressing as the spiritual wasteland that the Children of Israel had been through. Not only had they lost their spiritual identity, they were losing touch with God’s Word. They were oppressing the poor and stealing from each other. They were sliding into idolatry. God’s OT Church was as good as dead. So God, even though they hadn’t done anything to deserve it, came up with a rescue. And he wanted Ezekiel to see it first-hand. First up, who’s going to fix this,

            He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” God lets Ezekiel make his point. “Who’s going to fix this one, Ezekiel?” “You are, Lord. The only person who can fix this is someone who can rebuild dead bodies. And that person is you, Lord.” In the past, God had used his strength to make a nation, and he was going to use that strength to remake them. God himself would bring that Old Testament church back to life

            God said to Ezekiel “Prophesy [that is, proclaim] to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!” and Ezekiel did. And that’s when the vision got interesting. You know the song! Bones started flying around and knocking into each other, tendons and ligaments formed to hold them all together, muscles and tissue, and skin, all in the right order… but suddenly the whole process came screeching to a halt! You can almost hear the anxiety in Ezekiel’s voice. “but there was no breath in them!”  “Now what? God, you left out the most important step!”

            Are you CPR trained? Do you know the three most important things to look for when someone is introuble? A-B-C: Airway, Breathing, Circulation.  These three simple things are absolutely vital: they keep us alive! And if you’ve ever been lacking in one of those three, or had to help someone who was, you know how quickly things can get desperate. I imagine that Ezekiel felt pretty desperate: “God, you have rebuilt these bodies, but if going to live, they are going to have to start breathing; otherwise, they are just going to stay dead!” And wouldn’t you know it, God saw to it personally.

            Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

            If you think that Ezekiel was desperate to see these bodies breathing, think of it from God’s point of view. For years, he saw his people lying there, struggling for breath, and God was working, and working, and working to bring them back to life.

            Even after God brought the nation of Israel from their captivity, even after he put them back together as a nation, even after the temple was rebuilt, and new kings started ruling, the Old Testament Church still had trouble “catching a breath.” God sent Jesus, who taught them and taught them, and still nothing. And so Jesus started some intensive care. He gathered disciples and their numbers grew. And Jesus started putting a church together piece by piece. But their breathing seemed a bit shallow. And things were getting desperate. Not because God was powerless but because God was waiting for the right moment. And suddenly that moment came. The Spirit came.  When the day of Pentecost came they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

            That’s the church that we belong to, and no matter how bad things might seem, our church is not dead, or dying. Our church is alive, just as God promised! The Holy Spirit has arrived in the midst of God’s people and he has not stopped working since day one. Do you know what makes the church tick? Let me tell you. God himself makes us tick. The Holy Spirit, the Third Member of the Trinity, never stops working in the life of the church.  He calls us, he gathers us, he enlightens us, and he keeps us in the one true faith. He does that by counseling us in the truth. And in all of those tasks, he does not fail like we do. He is not limited by time or space, he does not get tired, he does not get weak, and he will never die. That’s the Spirit that the church has. That’s the Spirit that you have as a member of that Church. The Holy Spirit, God’s own self, is the Church’s undying Spirit.

The Spirit who Makes the Church Bold

            God showed Ezekiel that he could turn the lives of his people around, and now he tells Ezekiel why he did it. He wanted to turn their attitude around too. God summed up the attitude of the children of Israel when he told Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’  Israel was ‘down in the dumps.’ There’s a lot of anguish in what they said. “Woe is us! We are done for!” What was it that stole all their confidence? They were afraid of what the future held. They were separated from their homes, they had no city to call their own, and worst of all, their temple had been destroyed. For the Jews, losing the temple meant that they had lost everything, and until they got it back, they just wouldn’t be themselves again.

            That’s why the promised day Pentecost would mean so much for them. Pentecost would be God’s answer to their anguish.  God said, a day will come when I will bring you back to life as my people, a day when I will give you a promised land to look forward to, a day when you will know just how bold my people can be. Israel had to wait a long time, almost 600 years for that promise to come true. And they would have to completely reconsider what God meant by a ‘church’—not a temple of stones, but a temple of people—but in God’s mind, this promise was already a ‘done deal!’ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’ ” Israel, quit the pity party! You have nothing to be afraid of!

            Every now and then, do we join the pity party? How often don’t we fall into the temptation to think the Church is worse off than it actually is? Even though we look into the pages of God’s Word and see that fact that the Holy Spirit came, just as God promised, we still end up looking around and noticing that our church or our church body doesn’t always seem so lively, and it certainly isn’t bold.  We fall into bad attitudes too.

            One of the attitudes that keeps us from being bold is disappointment: we see a church body that calls back missionaries, a church with big plans and projects that don’t quite take off, we throw up our hands and say, this church body is looking pretty desperate! Or the excuses of doubt and hesitation might creep in: we look at a church that faces budgets that don’t often leave us with as many options as we’d like, and we end up paralyzed with fear.

            But we find other excuses not to be bold. One of them is apathy and indifference. We might be tempted to think “the church has gotten along fine without my service and my contributions, why should now be any different?” And we can grow timid and even ashamed of our church. Why should I be bold in telling others what I believe and who my Savior is? It’s rough out there and God’s people face enough heat as it is! We don’t have an attitude of despair as much as an attitude of excuse.

            That’s why Pentecost means so much to us too. Pentecost is God’s answer to our attitude.  Do you know what God said to his on Pentecost? “My dear church, you have nothing to be afraid of. I have brought you back to life.” On the day of Pentecost, God brought his promise to completion. The Spirit’s arrival made this prophetic vision of life an accomplished fact. God says, “I have given you someone who will continue to breathe life in you from this day until the last day. I will send you a Counselor who will lead you into all truth; the truth that there is forgiveness for you mistakes, the truth that I have a plan for you in every situation of your life, the truth my Word will work, whether or not you think it will!”  The Holy Spirit brings blessings of comfort, joy, anticipation. He reminds us that we have an eternal promise, eternal life and an eternal home to look forward to You have no reason not to be bold, people!  Why be timid in our convictions? Why be hesitant in our confession? What more could you need?

            And so we celebrate. We celebrate the day that God’s Holy Spirit came and breathed life into the Church. We celebrate Pentecost for two reasons: Not only has God enlivened the church, he has also emboldened it! God has removed our excuses and replaced them with exhilaration.  God has shown you his Spirit. So don’t give up, don’t give in, never say die. Whether in visions like Ezekiel saw, or in tongues of flame like the disciples saw, or in words of fact, you have seen the Spirit that the Church has: God has shown you his Holy Spirit, the undying Spirit of the Church. Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on May 31, 2009

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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