June 4, 2006

Pentecost Day

A few years ago, AT&T had a major snafu in NYC.  They had an agreement with the city that, when electrical demand peaked, AT&T would switch to their backup generators.  One day they did that, and something went wrong.  When they switched over, the resulting power surge blew a number of rectifiers.  It knocked out NY’s phone service, and disrupted communications for air controllers at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark airports. Over 1000 flights were affected! Usually, technicians could fix this kind of blackout quickly.  But that didn’t happen this time.  While the alarm bells rang unheard, the technicians were – believe it or not – attending a training session on how to handle… an emergency!

Does something like that happen in the church?  Christ has called us to serve the world for which He died.  Bible Study and worship is that time when we strengthen our spirits for service in the world.  It’s when we get equipped and motivated to bring the life to others that has been brought to us.  But when Sunday mornings become only an end of themselves, we are not being what Christ has called us to be.  We are not being the church that began on Pentecost Day – fired up with the Holy Spirit to bring life to people.  We need to be shaken from our sanctuaries and into the streets!  We need to come to life and bring it to others!

Speaking of the lack of life, was there ever a more graphic picture of the lifelessness of death than the valley of dry bones that the Lord showed Ezekiel?  (Read 1&2)  These bones symbolize the lifelessness and hopelessness of people who have been cut off from God.  They symbolized the people of Israel, who at the time were in captivity in Babylon.  They despaired because they thought they would never see their home again.  Their hope was gone.  But even worse: they were spiritually dead.  Dead as dry bones!

I think that the Lord could show us a similar thing nearby.  Take a walk through your community.  Look at our city and tell me what you see.  People not keeping commitments.  People going back on their word.  Marriages torn apart and kids suffering from it.  People caught up in the stress of life, the quest to acquire more, but less time to enjoy it.  Children tossed aside like another unmet commitment.  People gossiping and complaining about others in an effort to make themselves better.  People struggling for acceptance and doing anything to be accepted.

What do you hear and see when you walk down your street?  People looking for happiness and fulfillment in the bottom of bottles?  Drugs?  Material wealth?  Affairs?  People fleeing from community to the comfort and seclusion of TV, internet, and video games?  What else do you see as you drive through our city?  Suggestive signs selling things we shouldn’t have?  Dirty videos to rent?  Advertising promoting selfishness, laziness, and lovelessness?  Neighbours fighting?  Spouses fighting?  Kids being brought up with no guidance?  Young people looking for acceptance in the wrong places?  Cell phone ringing, pagers beeping?  Constant noise?  Radios turned up way too loud in cars?  No quiet time to hear the voice of God?

And then you show up on Sunday morning and see half-empty churches.  If 5% of Mississaugans went to church on Sunday morning, there wouldn’t even be room for them.  It all adds up to dead people!  Nothing but bones!  Bones that are “very dry.”  In the last five years, we have had 731 different new people walk into these doors.  How many of those are here?  80?  Where are the other 650?  People who were once alive, once interested in their relationship with God?  Are they now dead as dry bones in a scorching valley? And where are the other thousands of people who live our neighbourhood?  Are they dead?  Bleached white, dry bones, cracking under the hot sun?  Are we living right in a valley that is full of them?

As you look at all the bones in Ezekiel’s valley, and Mississauga’s “valley,” you have to ask: “What happened to all these people?”  How did they die?  Why did they die?  What could have caused all this death?  Well, it wasn’t a war, a famine, or a disease.  What filled this valley with their bones was sin.  James 1:15 says: “sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”  When we don’t have God in our lives, we are dead.  Dead in sin.  Dead in separation from God. 

It didn’t happen all at once.  People don’t wake up one morning and decide, I am not going to follow God anymore, but I want to be a heathen!  Spiritual backsliding is more gradual than that.  Spiritual death happens as people allow themselves to grow cool towards God.  They start missing Sunday School.  It becomes too much trouble to attend.  Then so do devotions at home.  Maybe even prayer at the dinner table ceases.  Life habits go out the window.  Pretty soon they are only Sunday morning Christians.  Then attending church once a month.  Next thing you know, they become “Chreasters,” visiting church only on Christmas and Easter.  Eventually even that will cease.  They will be lying out in some valley with no life and less sense than it takes to realize it.  Sin is so cunning, so subtle, so fatal.  Without God in our lives, we are dead as bones.

And friends, it wasn’t just “those” people out there.  Listen to Ephesians 2:1: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air.”  Our dead bones once occupied a spot in the Valley of Death.  We were once dry as dust and dead as bones in our spiritual life.

The question the Lord asked Ezekiel is: “Can these bones live?”  The answer: Yes, they can!  How?  By the power of God.  Only when God breathes life into them.  Only when the Word of God comes to them.  “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! … I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life... I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.”  Dry bones, souls who have lost God or rejected Him or slid away from Him can live again!  How?  By the power of God!  By the working of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God!  By God breathing life into them as He once did with Adam and Eve.  God can make our souls alive!

God makes people alive when He sends his Holy Spirit to work through his Word and lead a person to trust in Him.  God made you alive when He led you to faith that Jesus saved you with his death and resurrection!  You are alive, my friends, because Christ made you alive!  Your bones rattled, came together and stood on the floor you once laid on, alive in Christ!  Ephesians 2:4 says: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.”
Your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus Christ.  You have been made alive by the Holy Spirit breathing life into you through faith.  And this is what Pentecost, the birth of the church, is all about.  Celebrating the work of the Holy Spirit!  Rejoicing that we have been brought to life through the Spirit of God!

Many symbols have been used to illustrate the mystery and power of the Holy Spirit.  Maybe the most unusual symbol is the one used by the unique brand of Christianity found in Ireland.  The Celtic Christians chose the wild goose as a symbol for the Holy Spirit.  It might sound strange to us, who are more used to the image of the Holy Spirit as a dove.  True, Scripture says that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove.  But we see another picture of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, don’t we?  When you hear of the Spirit descending like a heavenly dove on you, you hear harps and strings softly playing and you get that nice, peaceful feeling.  That image and feeling might be so familiar to us that we pay little attention to it anymore. 

But the image of a wild goose descending on you is a different matter altogether!  A wild goose is a noisy, bothersome bird, that jars us out of our complacency!  A wild goose stirs up feelings that are quite extraordinary.  Like the Holy Spirit did on Pentecost Day as He stirred up the disciples to action for the dead world around them!  Do we need to be shaken out of our complacency?  We need to be shaken from our sanctuaries and out into the streets.  We need to be taken to see the valley of bones.  It’s easy to use church only as a retreat.  Maybe the image of the wild goose will correct our overly safe and sweet image of the Holy Spirit.  True, the Spirit comforts us with the sweet forgiveness and peace of God.  But then, He wakes us up with his wild honking and wants us to get going, and to be the church of life in the world around us!

A boy named Mark was walking home from school one winter day, when he saw that a kid ahead of him had tripped in the snow and dropped all of his books, two sweaters, a soccer ball, and a tape recorder.  Mark knelt down, helped the kid pick up his articles, and – since they were going the same way – offered to help him carry his burden.  Mark discovered that the boy’s name was Bill.  He loved video games and history, but was having lots of trouble with his other subjects and had just broken up with his girlfriend.  Mark said, “Man, that must be really hard.  If you ever need somebody to talk to, you can always talk with me.  You can even come to church with me if you like.”  When they arrived at Bill’s home, Mark was invited in for a Coke and to watch some TV.  The afternoon passed quite pleasantly, but, after that day, the two boys only saw each other occasionally.

Years went by, until, a few days before high school graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could have a few words together.  “Mark,” he asked, “Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that winter afternoon?  You see, I was cleaning out my locker so I wouldn’t leave any mess for anyone else to clean up.  I’d been storing up my mom’s sleeping pills, and I was going home that day to kill myself.  My insides were broken up into a million pieces, but that afternoon you helped me believe that maybe they might come together.  And you know, if the offer still stands, I think I’d like to go with you to that church of yours.”

There are people around us with all kinds of needs, but how will we know those needs if we do not know them?  There are dry bones all around us that need life, and they need us to share God’s message with them: “Come to life!”  We need to be shaken from our safe relationships and into contact with people who need Christ.  From a nominal faith to one that has a real impact in the world.  And that’s where a wild goose Pentecost can help us.  Maybe we are in a spiritual rut, or our faith has become routine.  We are going through the motions, but our heart isn’t in it.  We need to come to life and become the “army” of living people of God sent on a mission.

When the Holy Spirit came upon the followers of Christ in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost, they were totally shaken out of their complacency and apathy.  Suddenly they understood their mission and they embraced it.  They became a force to be reckoned with.  They became a fellowship unlike any the world had known before, and they were determined to share the message of Christ to bring life to people who weren’t alive.  Let’s come to life too!  Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit will come over us like a wild goose!  I believe I hear it honking now.   Amen.

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