Difference between revisions of "Sermon for March 31st, 2013"

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Ezekiel 36:26-28, 33-38

26A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. 28Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

33 Thus says the Lord God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the towns to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. 34The land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation that it was in the sight of all who passed by. 35And they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined towns are now inhabited and fortified.’ 36Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.

37 Thus says the Lord God: I will also let the house of Israel ask me to do this for them: to increase their population like a flock. 38Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed festivals, so shall the ruined towns be filled with flocks of people. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.

Resurrection Spirit

Over the past several months, I can't even begin to count the number of times someone has come up to me and talked about the "New Spirit" in the air here at First Presbyterian Church. Usually it's a member of our church, speaking from personal experience, but often it's someone from outside our community--a member or even a pastor of another church, who has heard about it from others, or participated in something we've done in the community.

I agree that there is a "new spirit" at work in our church. I feel it too. But when asked about the cause of that "new spirit" some people point to the new pastor, or now the new youth director, or some new program we've started. And I think that's a mistake. All these things, myself included, are not causes of a new spirit, but rather effects, results, or products of a new spirit. And that "new" spirit is really a very old spirit--God's Holy Spirit--which is simply doing a new thing, kind of like he did so long ago for the Ancient Israelites in today's scripture passage from Ezekiel:

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God."

So the "new spirit" is not because of the new pastor. Rather the "new pastor" is because of the new spirit." The Spirit was at work here before I was. But instead of asking "why" there is a new spirit here just yet (we'll come back to that question later), it might be helpful to ask "when." The word "new" by its very nature implies that something has changed, and recently, at that.

I don't know if I can pinpoint the exact time--God's spirit works through many people and situations all at once--but I can tell you when I first encountered it. Many of you have already heard this story, and knowing me, most of you will hear it a few more times after today, too.

It was Monday, July 11th, 2011 somewhere between two and three in the afternoon. Amy and I and the kids were here in El Paso visiting on summer break before my last year of seminary. Bob Reno was the pastor here at the time. I was getting ready for ordination exams later that summer, and so I came here every day to study in the church library. I had been studying all morning and needed a break, so I wandered into the sanctuary to pray for awhile. The air conditioning was off and it was pretty hot. I wandered up to the balcony, and stood for awhile at the top of the balcony, looking down at the empty pews. The wooden railing at the front of the balcony was dry and cracked, and as I prayed, I ran my hand over the wood, and I thought of the story of the dry bones in the book of Ezekiel. That image stuck with me, and so I came back downstairs and got out one of blue pew bibles, sat down, and turned to Ezekiel. The story of the dry bones is in chapter 37, but I never quite made it there, because my eyes came to a stop just a little before that point -- on the last two verses of chapter 36. I remembered this later, because I happened to be 36 years old at the time. This is what I read:

"Thus says the Lord God: I will also let the house of Israel ask me to do this for them: to increase their population like a flock. Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed festivals, so shall the ruined towns be filled with flocks of people. Then they shall know that I am the Lord."

I knew immediately that it was a beautiful message, a promise not just for Ezekiel's Israel, but for First Presbyterian Church as well. A beautiful message...but...not my message. Someone else's message. I put away the bible, left the sanctuary and went back to the library. I had ordination exams to study for, baby number three on the way, and far too many other things on my mind. I was a member of First Presbyterian Church at the time, but not the pastor. And besides...I had already informed God that I wanted to go into church planting...not church resurrection.

There's an old saying: If you want to make God laugh...just tell him your plans! Exactly one year and four days later, I preached my first sermon here as your new pastor. That "new spirit" didn't arrive when I did...it was already here, already at work when I wandered into the sanctuary that hot summer day. For that, and for the fact that God's plans are always better than ours...I am grateful.

Resurrection. It may seem strange for a pastor to preach a sermon from the Old Testament on Easter Sunday -- or "resurrection Sunday," as some churches are calling it now. The story of Jesus' resurrection from the grave is certainly the central story of our entire faith, and we proclaim it every Easter in our scripture readings, our liturgies, our hymns, and our anthems. And not just on Easter Sunday but for the next six weeks of the "Easter season" as well!

While the resurrection of Jesus is central, resurrection also happens to be a theme that runs throughout the entire bible. Beginning with Noah, whom God called out of the ark to bring life back into a world that had been destroyed, and then Moses who brought the Israelites out of slavery and captivity in Egypt, and into a new life in the promised land. The prophet Jonah was buried for three days and nights in the belly of a whale, before being raised back to land and life to take his message to Niniveh. Throughout the New Testament, the act of baptism is a symbolic death and resurrection, going under the water, and being raised again to new life.

In our scripture passage today, the prophet Ezekiel has witnessed the total death and destruction of Israel and the temple of Jerusalem. He, along with the other survivors, has been taken into forced captivity in Babylon, and it is in this grim, almost hopeless situation that he receives his vision from God, and prophesies about the resurrection of his people and the restoration of Israel's fortunes.

As Christians, we are a resurrection people. But this goes beyond the idea that when we die, like Jesus, we will be resurrected from the dead. As resurrection people, we believe there is hope for resurrection in our church, resurrection in our communities and in our governments, resurrection in our businesses and in our finances, resurrection in our lives and in our relationships. Wherever there is death and stagnation, wherever God seems the most distant or absent altogether...there we find hope in God's promise to Ezekiel:

"I will also let the house of Israel ask me to do this for them: to increase their population like a flock. Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed festivals, so shall the ruined towns be filled with flocks of people. Then they shall know that I am the Lord."