Year B
 Ezekiel 37:1-14
 Psalm 104:25-35, 37
 Acts 2:1-21
 John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Today’s reading from Ezekiel…  is one of the readings often associated with Pentecost……  the prophet describes a vision of God breathing new life into dry human bones…  bones which lie scattered on the floor of a valley…  and these dry bones eventually gather life and create new bodies complete with muscle…  flesh…  and skin…  and these words…  this image was intended to give hope and sustenance…  specifically to the people Israel…  as they languished during the Babylonian Captivity…  and waited for…  hoped for… new life as a people of God…

But it’s important to notice… that in today’s reading… in the conversation between God and Ezekiel… God asks questions that really…  only God can answer… but God engages Ezekiel…  invites him to take an active role…  as God needs all of us to take an active role…  ] so God folds Ezekiel into the process…  and the first thing that God tells him… is that breath will enter the bones…  but as we see…  breath is actually the last thing to enter them… ] Spirit…  is the last thing to enter them…  God ends…  by saying that God will put God’s Spirit within them… 

This Holy Spirit is the same Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters before creation… she is the same Spirit described in both Ezekiel and today on Pentecost…  and she is still living and breathing in us…  and can help us gain a deeper understanding of the dry bones in our own lives…

And today…  we have two different accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit… in Acts…  we have a splashy…  bold…  public display…  there are people speaking in different languages… and they recalled the prophetic words of Joel… that God would pour God’s Spirit out upon all flesh… and there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind…  and divided tongues of fire rested on each one of them…

Now fire is often regarded as a symbol of awakening…  and many sacred texts…  including the Bible…  refer to fire as a symbol of the vital life-force that can be called upon for transformation…  for re-visioning…  or for renewed meaning…  the divided tongues of fire over the disciples are an expression of that internal and external change…  and the non-splashy version…  happens just a few verses after today’s reading…  in John 20:21…  when Jesus simply came and said…  Peace be with you…  As the Father has sent me…  so I send you…  and when he had said this…  he breathed on them and said…  Receive the Holy Spirit…  that’s all there was to it… quick… simple…  natural and effortless…

Many Christian denominations affirm that God is still speaking…  one meme that I’ve seen says…  Don’t put a period…  where God puts a comma… and if that’s true…  then what God said to Israel… God is also saying to us…  so one thing we need to ask ourselves…  is whether we hear God… or whether we hear ourselves… one thing we need to ask ourselves…  is whether we can silence our own internal monologues…  let go of our own agendas…  our own judgements…  and can sit in silence long enough… even when it may feel uncomfortable… to sense God’s Holy impulse…  because if God is the thought…  then Jesus is the Word made flesh…  and the Holy Spirit is the breath…  so if there’s no breath…  then the Word can’t be expressed…  it becomes locked in our throats… and without the Word…  the breath has nothing to say…  and the Holy Spirit has a lot to say… 

For the Jewish people…  Pentecost is Shavuot…  known as the Feast of Weeks… it occurs fifty days after the Passover and commemorates the wheat harvest in Israel… but mostly…  Shavuot commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to Israel… while they were all assembled together at Mount Sinai…  ]  on Passover…  the Israelites were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh…  on Shavuot…  they became a nation committed to serving God…

In this morning’s Gospel…  Jesus tells the disciples that it’s to their advantage that he goes away… because without his death…  resurrection…  and ascension…  the cosmic changes that began with his incarnation would be incomplete…  without his departure…  the old order of the world remains in place…  but with these things…  the old order is judged…  and the rulers of this world…  death and evil…  are overcome…  ]  just as God made order out of chaos in Genesis…  the breath of God makes order out of chaos here… and peace and joy remain… 

And we heard Jesus tell the disciples…  I still have many things to say to you…  but you cannot bear them now…  but the Holy Spirit will guide you into all Truth…  the Greek word that’s translated as bear…  also means to understand a thing and receive it calmly…  so there’s more that Jesus has to say to us… but the disciples are too stirred up to receive God’s truth all at once…  but God’s revelation continues…  even if we can’t bear all of it…  now…  but the Holy Spirit will continue to guide us…  will continue to remove the veil which separates us from Truth… the veil which allows us to look only in a mirror dimly… and the Holy Spirit will help us to not simply know…  but to do… 

As Bp. Satterlee recently said…  the Holy Spirit is not our teddy bear…  she blows people where they don’t want to go…  she testifies to Jesus…  and exposes us when we testify to something else…  Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Advocate…  but she doesn’t advocate for me…  or you…  or the church…  she advocates for Jesus…  and this reference to the power of the Holy Spirit repeatedly throughout Scripture cannot simply be limited to the intellect…  the Holy Spirit does not work by abstraction…  but by action…

Disciples are those who have a discipline…  a discipline…  like a Rule of Life…  can help keep us on track…  can provide a structure and direction for our growth into holiness… can help keep us listening for God’s Word… and there’s a poem that I think captures the challenge of discipline… 

Deep in the wintry parts of our minds,
we are hardy stock
and know there is no such thing
as work-free transformation.
We know that we will have to
burn to the ground
in one way or another,
and then sit right in the ashes
of who we once thought we were
and go on from there.

As disciples…  we can burn away who we thought we were by reading scripture… praying for guidance from the Holy Spirit to help us understand it… and discerning what meaning it has for us in our lives… this is part of our formation… this is the gift of being ourselves…  the love of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit are as close as our own breath… all we need to do is breathe…  and wonder… maybe even aloud…  How do you and I breathe new life into our dry bones…