SERMON Rattle and Rush May 20, 2018 The Reverend Dr. Eric C. Smith
Acts 2:1-21 2When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs in our own languages we hear them speaking about God s deeds of power. 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? 13 But others sneered and said, They are filled with new wine. 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord s great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Rattle and Rush The two passages of scripture we heard this morning the passage about the valley of dry bones from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, and the passage about the day of Pentecost from the book of Acts both of these passages begin at moments when everything seemed lost. They are both stories about the low places we encounter in this world where everything has fallen apart, where all the hopes and dreams have failed, where all that is left to do is to survey the wreckage of what you thought was possible. In Ezekiel, the scene is a strange one, and it is a bleak one: it is a scene of a valley, a valley full of dry bones, a valley full of the bodies of Ezekiel s countrymen, Israelites, warriors and regular folk alike, Page 1 of 5
bodies, dead and desiccated. Just a few pages earlier in the book the reader had read the story of the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon; the reader had heard by now about how the armies of the great Babylonian Empire had conquered the city of Jerusalem and torn down the temple and how they had taken the king and the people off into exile, and how this nation, this people, had ended up as piles of bones in a valley where Ezekiel now stood. It is a sad, dreary story; it is a story of heartbreak and defeat. It s a story of standing at the end of everything, when everything is lost, and surveying the depths of your own loss. And as Ezekiel surveys this valley full of dry bones, he must have thought that it was the end. He must have thought that everything and everyone he had ever loved lay in front of him, their bones drying in the sun, and he must have despaired because all was lost. And God, it says, God led Ezekiel out among the bones and God asked a very strange question. God asked, Mortal, can these bones live? In the story from Acts there are two tragedies to see. One of the tragedies is obvious, and the other tragedy is harder to perceive. The obvious tragedy is that these people we meet in Acts chapter 2 were the followers of Jesus, and they were gathered there together without him, because Jesus had been killed. This is the aftermath of the crucifixion, this was the time when his disciples must have been living in fear and uncertainty, not knowing what would be coming next. They had gathered together to celebrate the Jewish festival of Pentecost, a spring festival that happened fifty days after Passover, but they had gathered without Jesus, and they gathered in his memory and in memory of the violence that had been visited on him. The events they had witnessed must have hovered over them like a cloud, a tragedy haunting their gathering. But there is a second tragedy looming in the text of Acts; there is another destruction hiding between the lines. And that is that while this passage is telling a story from the 30s, just after Jesus died, it was written much later, in the 70s or the 80s or maybe even the 90s, and it was written in the aftermath of another great destruction. In the late 60s, Judea rebelled against Roman rule, and for four years the Roman Empire poured legions into the province and systematically put down the rebellion. Finally, there at the end, the Romans encircled Jerusalem where this story from Acts is set and the Romans laid siege to the city, and when they broke through the walls, they destroyed whatever they could get their hands on. The same story that had happened in Ezekiel played out again, hundreds of years later, in the lifetime of the writer of Acts. It was another valley of dry bones. The city was destroyed. The temple burned and fell to the ground, this time for good, never to be rebuilt. All of this the author of Acts knew as he sat and wrote the story of Pentecost; he held it all in his memory as he wrote about this moment that happened in the city of Jerusalem when the temple was still standing and all the city s inhabitants still had hope. The author of Acts had likely seen the ruins of the city and the temple, or at least he had met those who had seen it, and so he wrote with a sense of loss hanging over him, even as he told the story of these disciples who met without Jesus, who met, most likely, in fear of what was coming, now that their rabbi was gone. These are both stories, then, about what happens when everything is lost. These are stories about the wreckage you find at the bottom, when there is nowhere lower to fall, when there is nothing left to lose, when everything is ash and dust around you. These are stories about what things look like at the dead end of hope. I just turned 40 last year, so I guess I m a grown-up now even if it doesn t always feel that way. And one of the big surprises of being a grownup, for me, is the realization of just how much suffering there is in this world. I guess I always knew about it on some level, I understood it intellectually or whatever, but it has been surprising to move through the world and experience just how much the people all around me are struggling, how much they are in pain, how much the people you meet and interact with every day carry burdens you aren t even aware of. It is surprising, or it has been to me anyway, just how many people know that ashes and dust place, that hopeless place, how intimate so many people are with Page 2 of 5
suffering. Sometimes it takes the form of dreams that never come true jobs that never materialize, finances that suffocate you every month, children who are never conceived, relationships that never form. Sometimes it takes the form of systems that conspire against you the ways people slowly destroy each other without even asking why, the sexism and racism and homophobia and other kinds of casual dehumanization that plague our world. Sometimes it s life itself, and death, and the way it accompanies us through life. Maybe I was naïve; maybe this is my own privilege talking, but I had not expected as much of this as I have encountered. I had not imagined that the world would be this full of pain, that people moved through this world with such burdens, that so many people were overlooking that valley of dry bones every day. Many of you know that valley well. It s hard to live very long in this world and not know that valley, that place where you find yourself where everything is lost and nothing seems good or right or true. I think most of us end up there at some point, some of us more than once, some of us much more than once, and some of us find it hard to escape. That question that God asks Ezekiel, can these bones live, that question almost sounds like a taunt. To people who are acquainted with that place, with that valley, can these bones live is a nonsense question, a meaningless question, an insult added to so much injury. I think Ezekiel s response is telling. Can these bones live? Ezekiel s response is basically, I don t know. You tell me. It s a shrug. It s one raised eyebrow. Maybe it s even a roll of the eyes. In the NRSV it s translated, O Lord God, you know, which sounds very pious, but I hear Ezekiel s answer in a defeated tone. Can these bones live? If you say so. It s hard to see past that valley of dry bones. But God gave Ezekiel words to say, in spite of his shrug and his eye roll, and Ezekiel said the words. That s what prophets do; they speak, even when the words don t seem to fit, even when the words feel like ashes on the tongue. Prophets speak. And so Ezekiel spoke. What happened next is strange. There s no getting around that. What happened next is a rattle. There was a rattling, the book says, and the bones came together, bone to its bone, in a rattling. And there was sinew. And there was flesh. And there was breath. And there was a multitude, standing in front of Ezekiel, a living, breathing multitude. There was Israel, made new, raised up, out of that valley of dry bones. Those bones could live. In Acts, the story happened differently. The despair, the hopelessness, is more in the background in Acts; you have to use your imagination more in Acts. There s no valley of dry bones to tip you off. But the story goes that when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And in your head you should add without Jesus, they were all together in one place without Jesus, because he was gone, and you can capture some of what the mood must have been like. They were all together in one place, and suddenly there was a rush. It s not so different from the rattle. It s that first sound you hear, it s the first cue that something strange is happening, it s the first sign you get that while you thought the story was going one way, it s actually going to go the other. They were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. And it filled the entire house. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. It s important to acknowledge that it doesn t always go this way. Sometimes the bottom never stops feeling like the bottom. Sometimes the valley always just has dry bones. Usually, there is no rush of violent wind that brings the Holy Spirit that rests on everyone. More often than not, miraculous deliverance escapes us. These are not stories that promise that no bad thing will ever happen, or that when bad things do happen, that God will always swoop in with a rattle and a rush and make them go away. That is not the point of these stories. Sometimes things go wrong and they stay wrong. Sometimes the pain is really real, and it Page 3 of 5
doesn t go away. These are not stories that tell us that we will never suffer, because we know better than that. We ve all lived a little while. We all know how the world works, and we won t be sold some false hopefulness or misplaced Pollyanna world. The struggle and the pain of this world are very real, and both of these stories, and in fact most of the stories in the Bible, begin with that fact. They begin by acknowledging how real suffering is, how much it can hurt to be alive and be here, how death can stalk us through this world. The Bible is very up front about all of that. No, these stories are not here to tell us that we will never suffer, that we will never grieve, that we will never fear, that we will never die. These stories are not here to sell us on some fantasy world that doesn t exist. These stories tell us that the world is what we think it is, that our experiences are real, that what we see is true, but they also tell us that sometimes sometimes something different happens. These stories tell us that sometimes dry bones live. Sometimes there is a resurrection. Even if it doesn t make sense, even if we don t want to let ourselves believe it, even when we roll our eyes and shrug, these stories tell us that life comes out of that valley, that a new spirit can move, that fire and wind can move where everything seemed dead and finished, that flesh can cover over the dry bones and life can live again. Pentecost, they say, is the birthday of the church, it s the birthday of the church, and I haven t talked about the church yet at all. That s on purpose, partly, because probably every Pentecost sermon you ve ever heard, including several from me, has been about how the church can be revived, I mean the big-c church, every Pentecost sermon you ve ever heard has been about how the church can live again, and after a while you just don t need much more of that. So I m not going to say a whole lot about it, because frankly I think you re all smart enough to get there on your own. We spend a lot of time at the church s bedside, we spend a lot of time wondering if it will get well again, we spend a lot of time asking if that medicine or this one will do the trick, worrying about what we will do when the unthinkable happens. Pentecost is about that, but you ve heard that sermon before, and you know my thoughts on it. I think those bones can live. I think that spirit moves. But today I want to talk about something just a little bit more personal. Today I want to speak into and out of that valley. Because I have been there, and most likely you have too, or else you re going there eventually. A lot of us are there right now. More of us than would like to admit it, can t remember any other place. That valley of dry bones, that place of loss and hopelessness, is somewhere that humans beings end up, that s just how it goes. And that lonely room where the disciples gathered, that room haunted by loss and fear, that place is another one we all know well. We know that place, and these days the church knows it, the big-c church knows it, that place between that one thing that happened that you can t get past, and that next thing that hasn t happened yet, that thing that sometimes seems impossible. Prophets speak even when they see no truth in the words they are asked to say. Prophets in the bible are often the most skeptical ones; they are often the ones who shrug and roll their eyes the hardest because they know that their words will have no effect. The prophet Ezekiel knew that. He must have mumbled those words. The bible says in Ezekiel s voice, so I prophesied as I had been commanded; not a lot of joy in those words. He said the words the words that ended with you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord he said the words. He said them and then he heard a rattle. The first inkling that something was amiss. In Acts, they heard a rush. The first sign that this time it was different. The rattle and the rush, the moment when you straighten up and listen, the moment when you lift up your eyes to see what must be happening. In Acts and in Ezekiel, in Jerusalem and in that valley of dry bones, it was a rattle and a rush that signaled that God was visiting that desolate and hopeless place. It was a rattle and rush that said that those bones could live. It was a rattle and a rush that meant that that fire could burn. Page 4 of 5
The rattle and rush meant that the spirit could move, that breath could breathe, that hope could live again. You see, we have a God who does this kind of thing. It s kind of God s thing. We have a God who shows up in those bleakest moments when hope is lost and asks us to speak a word to the world, we have a God who shows up in that valley and asks us to tell those dry bones to live. We have a God who knows exactly how much this world is not perfect, who knows exactly how many kids were shot in how many schools last week and how many species are erased every day and how many people got told in how many ways already today that they are not human and how many diagnoses were shared and how much it seems like the bones of this world cannot possibly live. I have to believe that God knows. God knows, even though we still visit that valley, God knows, so therefore God is in that valley too, God knows all the brokenness we know and God asks us to speak anyway. God asks us to speak our word to the world, to tell our truth, and to listen then for the rattle of bone and the rush of wind, because that is God s thing, making all things new, even when it s hard to see, even when it feels absent, God asks us to speak and listen. Amen. Page 5 of 5