Pentecost Sunday
Gloria Dei, Anchorage, May 31, 2009
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Please join me in prayer: Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s lessons give us a classic snapshot of that old advertising gimmick: the before-and-after photo. A hundred years ago when I watched t.v. as a kid, it was primarily used in commercials for laundry detergents, household cleaners, and dust waxes, if my fading memory serves me well. But now, it’s painfully obvious that advertisers who use this contrasting-photos approach are aiming for a different hook to capture our attention.
So let’s conduct a little poll about the use of before-and-after photos in the world of advertisements today. What examples come to mind?
Weight loss: large to petite
Hair color: gray to gray gone
Hair loss: balding to beautiful
Hair care: dandruff/greasy/thin to healthy/clean/full
Muscles: flabby to ripped
Acne: pimply to perfect
Eye care: nerdy glasses to lasik surgery (When our son Mark was at the Air Force Academy, students needing glasses were all issued what they referred to as birth control frames: thick, basic-black, and ugly as sin!).
Teeth: crooked and yellow to straight and white
Aging: wrinkles to smooth
This may merely cause us to shake our heads at the folly of human nature and chuckle at our foolish attempts to deny or at least delay our designated dance with death. But listen to this: in some areas of the country, one of the most popular graduation gifts that parents give their children is plastic surgery. Nose jobs and breast implants top the list, and no one needs a doctorate to figure out which gender is the primary target.
Answer this critical question for me: What connects all of THESE before-and-after examples? What VALUE do they all share?
Says our culture—beauty truly is only skin deep. Each illustration addresses only the issue of how we look, how we measure-up to some societal standard of beauty, youth, happiness, and health that often has little to do with reality.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I see in our Bible lessons for this Pentecost Sunday another kind of before-and-after example at work. I love the Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel. The prophet is plunked down in the middle of a field of dry bones and instructed to preach them to life.
Well, he proclaims God’s Word and it kind of works—the bones assemble; muscles and tendons hold them together; the bodies are even covered with skin…but they’re still only good for a before shot.
What’s missing? The Spirit of God.
We hear nothing about how they look: bald or hairy, tall or short, young or old, tanned or Alaskan winter white—they’re just dead to the world. What’s needed to give them hope and meaning and purpose is God’s breath/wind/spirit of life. Now that’s a before-and-after photo!
We see something similar in our New Testament lesson. The Book of Acts, which is really titled “The Acts of the Apostles,” starts out with very little act-ion.
In Chapter 1, Jesus’ followers are still trying to figure out how to leave their dead lives behind and how to take God’s Word into the world.
For a great snapshot of their before picture, we have to go back a few weeks to the first Easter evening. Peter and John have seen the empty tomb; Mary has even spoken with the Lord; yet where do we find this un-merry band of women and men? Hiding behind locked doors, afraid for their lives.
Their great acts in the 50 days since Jesus rose from the dead? They venture out of their homes to worship in the Temple, and they pick a disciple to fill the vacancy left by Judas.
That’s it—that’s all they’ve got—that’s all they’ve done.
For all practical purposes, they are still dead to the world—just like those flesh-and-muscle-covered-bones in the valley with Ezekiel.
What’s missing here? The same thing: God’s breath/wind/spirit of life.
But, when that breath of spiritual fresh air blows into and through these people, then we get to see the after picture. AND WHAT A SHOT THAT IS!
Gone is the hopelessness that drained their spirit.
Gone is the fear that kept them hiding from the world.
Gone is the doubt that kept them silent and subdued.
Now they look and sound like people:
- who have been filled to overflowing with hope,
- whose chains of fear have been broken and thrown away,
- who, once lifeless and speechless, are now inspired and eager to share God’s good news with all the world.
…and isn’t that the same way that God often seems to work with us? It sure feels that way to me. How many times do we find ourselves as very good examples of these before-and-after episodes?
The death of a loved one, a struggle with our health,
a rocky relationship, financial troubles,
mistakes and missed opportunities that hurt others and leave us with a bitter sense of disappointment, depression, distress.
We know what it’s like to be flesh-and-muscle-covered lifeless bodies.
BUT HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS—as it was true for that valley full of dry bones, and as it was also true for those first followers of Christ, so it is also true for me and for you.
When we feel our deadest:
hopeless and hurting,
hiding behind all kinds of doors,
spiritually dry down to our very bones…
…that’s when—wonder of wonders—
we perceive the breeze of God’s beloved Breath;
we sense the stirring of God’s Holy Spirit;
we grasp a gust of the Wind of God that surrounds us, soothes us, strengthens us, and sends us back out into the world—filled with hope, filled with strength, filled with joy—to live, and love, and serve God’s people for the sake of Jesus Christ.
So, you and I are wonderful witnesses, perfect pictures of before-and-after people who have been blessed with God’s Holy Spirit. Think about it: through the likes of us, God offers this fallen world a get-to-the-point, cut-to-the-chase, aim-for-the-heart approach to life’s ultimate values.
Today God is calling us to be
critical thinkers, good-news-givers, good-deed-doers
and common-sense-speakers
to a world that is filled with dry and dusty bones. Amen.
Pastor Scott Fuller