Fr. Jacob's June 2014 Newsletter Message

"O Lord God, you know"

The hand of the Lord came upn me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know." Ezekiel 37: 1-3

The prophet Ezekiel lived at a time of desolation and destruction. Approximately 600 years before the birth of Jesus, the marginal existence of the small kingdom of Judah, caught between the ancient superpowers of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt, was brought to a cataclysmic end. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, invaded, besieged and twice sacked Jerusalem. The king of Judea was blinded and Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed. The centers of the political and religious lie of the kingdom, Temple and palace, were burned, along with every substantial building. The walls of the city were systematically torn down, and the surviving population of the city, from king to commoner, were carried into exile in Babylonia. Corpses, butchered or starved, lay unburied in its streets and fields. The city lay, filled with the ruins of the kingdom that since was, uninhabited for more or less the next one hundred years.

It was in the context of this catastrophe that the Spirit came upon Ezekiel the priest, and led him to prophesy.

Ezekiel found himself, at the end of it all, carried in a vision to the most extraordinary of sites. The Spirit granted him a vision of power of death and the vast scale of its destructive power. A dusty valley in which lay thousands upon thousands of unclean, unburied corpses. Bones bleached by the sun. Lives crushed in the destruction of war or famine and the faith of the people dead too, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely." (Ezekiel 37:12).

It's here - the vision of the omnivorous violence that crashed up Judah - that the Old Testament offers more reference to the Spirit, eight in a few verses, than any other place.

And yet - in a clattering vision, the people will be gifted life. As John Levison says in his book "Filled with the Spirit", "Israel will again be inbreathed, re-created again, once more filled with the Spirit. There will be a grand rattle of recreation, an astounding inbreathing of the spirit, and the formation of Israel anew." The Spirit who has granted Ezekiel a vision of the power of destruction, will grant life. Life that is beyond human initiative. Life that comes only as an astonishing, unimaginable gift of the Lord. On the other side of the violence and faithlessness of the world, comes the rattling, gasping, renewal that the Spirit gives.

And the Spirit promises more that a re-assemblage of the world in which all was lost - with its foolish leaders, violent oppression, murderous strife and its faithless and impure scattered people. Instead the Spirit will re-create - a people made holy, re-gathered into community, a covenant of peace, and a life lived in intimacy with the Gift and the Giver, "A new heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you". (Ezekiel 36:26).

In Christ this vision has come to be. The destructive violence of the world threw itself at the Lord of all, the foolish faithlessness and murderous fear hammered the nails into his flesh and thought it had consigned him to the cold slab of the tomb. But beyond our nails, beyond our fears, beyond our imagining, the Lord rose triumphant and sits at the right hand of the Father in glory.

The clattering re-creation of the world has begun in and through Jesus Christ as he pours out his Spirit upon his people, a people bound to the living God in a covenant of peace. And the Spirit that brought Ezekiel to the place of death and granted him a vision of resurrection life, is at work within the Lord's people now, granting that clattering, unimaginable renewal, faith and life.

But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8: 10 - 11

The Spirit is perpetually pured out upon the Lord's people throgh Christ. Granting life, a life on the other side of our own murderous fears and brokenness, bringing holiness and wholeness.

We celebrate this gift, the mighty breath of the Spirit, the storm of the Lord's life, at Pentecost, June 8th 2014.

Perhaps you wonder like me, about your life, about the Lord's creation, about his people, "can these bones live?" Then hear the promise made to Ezekiel, a promise kept in our Lord Jesus Christ, "I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live" (Ezekiel 37:14).

Have a wonderful Pentecost,

Fr. Jacob