Ezekiel 37:1-14
I want to tell you a story about something that happened last week. Friday was my day off and I was at home. I was puttering around – doing laundry, putting things away – the kind of things you do on your day off. That morning I saw a news alert come across my phone: a shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. Santa Fe, Texas – it didn’t ring any bells for me. It barely penetrated my awareness.
Later I turned on the TV and there was coverage of a shooting – the one that had flashed on my phone earlier. It turned out Santa Fe was near Galveston. It happened in the high school, again. They were still waiting to find out how many were dead. It was all very familiar. I just didn’t give it that much attention.
It wasn’t until sometime that afternoon that it finally broke through for me. I looked up and saw a girl being interviewed on TV. She had long dark hair, but I couldn’t tell you what her face looked like because she never looked up. She kept her head down, not looking at the reporter asking her questions, not looking at the camera – like she couldn’t face the world.
The reporter asked her: was there any moment during all this that you thought “this can’t be happening, this can’t be real?” And she said no. there was not. there was not even one moment that morning when she thought this could not happen, because she knew it could – and it would. She said, it’s happened so many places. I figured it would happen here eventually. I wasn’t surprised. I was just scared.
I wasn’t surprised. I was just scared.
I wasn’t surprised either. But neither was I scared. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t mourning. I wasn’t feeling anything. Until the moment I looked at this girl with her head down saying, “I wasn’t surprised. I was just scared.”
I don’t have to go through the litany of statistics about the numbers of school shootings, the rates of violence, and so on. We all know it already. And we are all tired of this. Really tired, yet we feel helpless to change it.
I had a sermon ready for today, about the miracle of Pentecost that involved language, right at its center, when the apostles, all Galileans, were suddenly able to speak different languages. When the Holy Spirit blew in and took over and spoke through them, enabling the multitudes gathered in the streets of Jerusalem to hear the message of the gospel.
It’s a good message, it’s a great story – one that we need to hear every year to remind us who we are. We are a people who break through barriers. Powered by the Holy Spirit of God, we break down barriers.
But today I just feel the heaviness of these barriers that are killing us. All of us. Some kind of barriers are making us helpless to stop children from killing other children.
Some kind of barriers are making it impossible for us to get out of this paralysis and move forward. Some kind of barriers are preventing us from knowing what kind of life experience makes someone want to take a bag full of guns into school and shoot as many people as you can shoot.
We say “Who would do something like that?” “Why would anyone do that?” We say, “Can this really be happening?” and it takes a 14-year-old to tell us, “Yes, of course it’s happening. Why would you think it couldn’t be happening?”
What I was going to say today about the Pentecost story just seemed hollow in the light of Friday. But there was one little part of the story that I kept thinking about. There is one little thing that always strikes me as funny; I always notice this detail and never quite know what to do with it. But after Friday, it has been on my mind.
It’s something that happens after the Spirit breaks in and settles like tongues of flame over each one of the apostles’ heads, and they begin speaking in tongues that were previously unknown to them. They are heard by the multitudes in the streets below, who are able to understand, because they are hearing the gospel proclaimed in their own native languages.
And everyone was amazed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They’re drunk.”
I always pause over this little detail because it doesn’t make sense. How does drunkenness give you the ability to speak a new language? It doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense to say this. Yet, it’s a classic example of what we do when we are confronted with a reality that is new and unexpected and, perhaps, unacceptable. A reality that is uncomfortable for us to acknowledge. In those moments, we have the capability of looking this reality in the eye and saying, “I don’t believe you. You’re drunk. Go home.”
Some days there is nothing we want more than to say, “You’re drunk, Reality. Go home.”
But we can’t do that. We have no right to do that.
We must acknowledge truth, even when it is uncomfortable. We must keep our eyes open and see the things that we are tired of seeing – the violence, the hatred, the severe alienation of humans, one from another.
We must see the fear and loneliness that our children are living with. We must see the pain that is ever-present, often quietly living beneath the surface. Occasionally breaking through in unspeakably violent action. The fear that is always just beneath the surface.
We don’t want to see it, but we must. And just for a little while, at least, resist the urge to throw blame on somebody.
And knowing, also, at the same time there is so much beauty in the world. There are weddings, babies are born, children grow up and graduate – there is much beauty and love and joy that we embrace. And this makes it possible for us to see the pain, the fear, the violence, and not be overcome by it. Beauty and violence, love and hate; somehow, outrageously, these things co-exist. And it is the beauty and love and joy in this world that give us the strength we need to stand against violence.
If we won’t do that, we are like Ezekiel’s dry bones – lifeless, powerless, loveless.
Let the Spirit of God come breathe life into us – a people waiting to be born.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
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