I Samuel 15:34-16:13
David A. Davis
June 17, 2018
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On the Family Retreat a few weeks ago we gathered for worship on Sunday morning along the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. We broke up into teams to plan for worship and one of those teams was in charge of the reading of scripture. The lesson chosen for the morning was Jesus calming of the storm that was just offered for your hearing. The team of kids and adults decided they were going to act out the story as it was being read… and it was fun. They borrowed one of the kayaks the camp had there at the beach for a prop. The only other prop was the Chesapeake Bay though they wisely did not get in the water for a full embodiment of the story. One adult served as the reader. The children were all the disciples with one in the front of the of the kayak being Jesus. Two dads knelt at either end of the boat and served as stagehands to “rock the boat.” They were storm simulators. One other adult stood just behind the kayak and in front of the shoreline to serve as the symbolic action for the sun and the wind. Though, when the storm really hit, it looked a tad like an “arms only” hula dance.

So as the story was read and the wind and sea whipped up, let’s just say those stagehands were taking their job very seriously. Jesus and the disciples were tossed around like they were in an over-inflated bounce house at a traveling carnival. The disciples, being played by the serious and properly trained actors they were, displayed all kinds of expressions of fear. They were scared! Jesus, of course was asleep on a cushion. Jesus, though being vigorously tossed to and fro, was asleep. Jesus who at one point was just about tossed right out of the boat, was sleeping. Actually, Jesus, she was sleeping and smiling at the same time. To be more specific, Jesus was sleeping and flat out giggling all at once. Which sort of makes sense if you stop and think about it. Jesus, so confident and peaceful in God’s hands, so sure of God’s presence, that sleeping and smiling and laughing all go together.

I wonder if Samuel was smiling when Jesse’s sons were parading by. I wonder if Samuel was laughing after waiting for David to come in from tending to the sheep. Smiling because the future king of Israel was from a small town barely on the map? Mayvbe. Smiling because David was so young? Yes. Smiling because God told him to rise and anoint this shepherd boy to be the royal shepherd of God’s people? Probably.  How about Samuel, smiling and laughing and confident and sure all mixed in together because he knew God would provide.

That’s the take away from this classic story of David being found, David being selected, David being anointed, David being the one. It’s not about David being handsome and perfect in every way. Just wait a chapter or two. It’s not about David’s heart being forever pure. Just keep reading. It’s not about the right king and at the right time and a reign of peace and life happily ever after. It’s all more complicated, more earthy, more gritty, more life-like than that. It’s a story intended to affirm that the Lord provides.

Any recollection, any retelling of  how the whole epic of King David epic began has to include that stunning, show-stopping, theologically mind-numbing, so easy to miss as a passing comment verse. The verse that says “the Lord was sorry that he made Saul king over Israel.” Samuel was grieved. The Lord was sorry. Samuel was grieved here not just by Saul’s death, not because he never saw Saul again. He had to have been grieved by the whole mess that was Saul’s reign over the people of Israel, grieved that he and God and the people, they all went down this “let’s have a king” road. Samuel was grieved. The Lord was sorry and clearly ready to move on. The Lord was apparently not sorry about the king part, just the Saul part. “I have provided for myself a king”, the Lord told Samuel.

“Come on, quit your hand wringing, no more looking back. I am going to take care of this myself. I know who I want. Now you’re going to go to Bethlehem to the house of Jesse and find him.” Once again a king of Israel comes on the scene and is anointed by Samuel in a story that is, one could say, less than regal. Jesse and his sons were invited to sacrifice and a crowning of a king breaks out. Samuel, probably with a smile on his face, is sure that the first, oldest, good-looking strapping son was the one. Samuel was sure Eliab was the one. “Well, would you look at him!” God said “Nope, we’re not doing this by looks this time.” “Abinidad then! That’s it!” God said no. “Shammah! Shammah gets the rose!” The Lord said no. All the rest pass by and now Samuel is pretty much on board. “None of these are going to work. Is this everyone?”, he asks Jesse? The youngest is out working. Doing the chores. Tending the sheep. And Samuel announces that no one is going to sit down and eat until the youngest son David gets in here.

And here’s where the narrator, the writer of First Samuel, the ancient scribes, here’s where the narrator sort of slips in a kind of lasting literary reminder of human sin. A subtle, biblical, textual archived reminder that humanity will always stick its tongue out at God like a child in a playground spat. John Calvin called it “total depravity.” Sometimes its more like thumbing your nose, or hiding the peas on your plate, or having a little hissy fit.

Bill Scheide’s rare book collection lives on after his death over at the University’s Firestone Library. One of many books he really enjoyed showing people was one called “The Sinner’s Bible.” Of course it was very old. It was printed in the King James. Only a few copies remain and one is there in the Scheide collection. Bill imagined a printer’s apprentice getting back at the boss or just being impish, pulling a prank. Because there on the ancient in the Ten Commandments, the book of Exodus, it says in the print, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

Here in First Samuel God has just said no to Samuel regarding Eliab. God says “The Lord does not see as mortals see, they look on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.” I’m not picking a king on good looks this time. And when it is recorded that David arrived from the fields right before dinner, they just couldn’t stop themselves from writing down, from passing on, from announcing he was handsome! Never mind that its not all that clear to me how a young man from Palestine could be “ruddy.” God just told Samuel it was not about outward appearance. They wrote down that part. And when the story tells of David making his his less than grand entrance into Israel’s history, “tradition” can’t help but stick a tongue out at the Lord. He may have just the right heart……but he’s gorgeous too in a  European kind of way.

Not having read the narrative now preserved in the canon, the Lord simply tells Samuel, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Samuel anointed him with oil right there in front of his brothers and the spirit of the Lord fell mightily upon David from that day forward. For, according to the Lord, he was the One. David was the king God provided. David was the one God provided for Godself and for Samuel and for the people of Israel. He was the one. God’s beloved. The Lord provides.

The Lord provides. That’s the take away from this classic story of David being found, David being selected, David being anointed, David being the one. It’s not a naïve Hollywood ending kind of affirmation. Just wait a chapter or two. It’s not like one of those well-intended but poorly thought out attempts at comfort when someone gives and awkward hug and says “It must have been God’s will.” Just keep reading. It’s not one of those flowery theologically vacuous proof text quote from the Apostle Paul about all things working for good for those who love the Lord, this story of King David and God and God’s people, it’s all more complicated, more earthy, more gritty, more life-like than that. Amid all of life’s complexities, when the feebleness of kings and the failures of leaders and the fecklessness of God’s people are all so evident, when the relationships of nations are fraught with war and rumors of war, when faithfulness to the righteous, just, and compassionate vision of the prophets, a vision that is the reign of God, when such faithfulness is nothing but a flicker of light in a sea of darkness, still the Lord provides.

Back at the beach, after the young Jesus calmed the storm and the two dads stopped rocking the boat and everyone returned to sit in the worship circle and rub our feet in the sand, the preacher asked us to share with one another our thoughts and reflections. What came next, from young and old alike, was the stuff of 5, 6, 10 sermons. All of them you will be hearing from me in the future as I shamelessly pocket those ideas. The one that is apt for this morning, the one that pairs well with the story of David, the one thought that follows from Jesus sleeping and giggling all at once, it came when of the groups suggested that maybe the bigger miracle amid the storm, Jesus’ bigger miracle, was not that he calmed the sea, but that he took away their fear. When it wasn’t just Jesus sleeping and smiling, but Jesus and disciples smiling and laughing and confident and sure because they knew God would provide. He took away their fear.

It is true, that some days, some nights, some moments, some seasons, you have to pray for a miracle. It’s okay to pray for a miracle. Pray that God would take away the fear. Pray that you, that we would remember and know that the Lord provides. That God would take away any fear. For God’s perfect love casts out fear. Pray that you and I, that we and our children and grandchildren might be so confident and peaceful in God’s hands and in the promise that the Lord provides that sleeping and smiling and joy might all go together now and forever.  Even if it is a miracle.

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

I Samuel 1 1-20
David A. Davis
June 3, 2018
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This morning and on most of the Sundays to come this summer, we are turning in our preaching life to the Old Testament. On these first three Sundays of June, the sermon text will come from the Book of I Samuel. The reign of King David is the central story line, the focus of I and II Samuel. But before David and all those stories of Jonathan and Goliath and Uzzah and Michal and Abigail and the ark and Jerusalem and dancing and slingshots and a bow and arrow and witches and music and singing, there is Saul, and there is Samuel, and there is Eli the priest and his two priest sons tagged in the words of scripture as “scoundrels.” And there is Hannah. Our biblical text for today is the story of Hannah. Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Hannah and the boy Samuel, who after he was born and weaned, Hannah, as the Bible says, “lent him to the Lord for as long as he lives.”

You will remember the comical story of the call of Samuel, how God kept calling Samuel in the night but Samuel thought it was the old priest Eli. I Samuel tells of how the young boy served in the temple at a time when “the word of the Lord was rare… visions were not widespread.” The book of Judges ends with the troubling conclusion that all the people of Israel “did what was right in their own eyes.”

The Word of the Lord was rare and everyone did what they thought was right in their own eyes. In other words, when it came to God’s people and faithfulness and righteousness and loving the Lord your God, and having no other Gods before me, things were a mess. So when the narrative of I Samuel points out for the reader that “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground”? That’s a big deal. Samuel is a big deal. The relationship, the communication, between God and Samuel is a big deal.

When it comes to God’s covenant with God’s people, the salvation history of God’s people, it turns with Samuel. God’s revelation to God’s people; God makes a move with and through Samuel. The monarchy, the king, King David, the house of David, God’s promise to David, it didn’t start with a lineage. It didn’t start with a coronation or a royal wedding. It started with Samuel. Which means it started with Hannah.

Hannah only hangs around the world of the Bible for a chapter and a half. She enters stage right as one of the wives of Elkanah and exits with the narrator’s incredible understatement: “The Lord took note of Hannah… and the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.” I for one, as I read and ponder the story of Hannah in June of 2018, I have decided I can’t read it, I can no longer hear it, in the same way. This living Word of God. If you are anything like me, you won’t be able to ever hear it the same way again either.

[I Samuel 1:1-20 is read]

Over the years I have regularly been invited by the professors at Princeton Theological Seminary who are teaching the introduction to the Old Testament course to participate on a panel to discuss “preaching from the Old Testament.” The class happens near the end of the semester. Students are invited to submit questions ahead of time. The panel members receive a copy of those questions organized by theme by the faculty members.

What we panel members have learned is that we really don’t even have to look at the questions. Not because we know all the answers but because the questions never change. The students change. The faces change. The years change. But the questions remain the same: How do you preach the violence and judgment that runs all through the Old Testament? How do you preach all the complex historical-critical material we have been learning? Do you have to mention Jesus in every sermon even if the lesson is from the Old Testament? How do you preach the apparent contrast between the God of Old and the God of the New Testament? What about some of these difficult, gut-wrenching biblical texts of the Old Testament?

At some point in the discussion I usually try to mention that in my pastoral experience, in my years of serving as a pastor and preacher, one of the most difficult aspects of preaching the Old Testament is something never mentioned in all the questions, the years of questions. It is the dominant theological motif of barrenness and fertility. Hannah is far from the only name. Sarah. Rebekah. Rachel. The mother of Samson. In the New Testament, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

Over and over again, the reader of scripture is told that God heard their prayer and a child was born. Yet, pastors and preachers and professors and students of the book, all of us know that it doesn’t work that way: when it comes to real life, life in a congregation, having a child, unable to have a child, joy and heartbreak.

I stopped carrying babies at the time of baptism up and down the aisle to introduce them to the congregation way back in the early nineties when I had a child in my arms and looked right into the tear-filled eyes of a woman sitting on the aisle there in the pew who I knew had just suffered a miscarriage. I have rarely felt more helpless as a pastor than the times I have sat with women and men who have poured their hearts out to God just like Hannah and they ask me why God has not heard their prayer, why God has not answered their prayer… and I have no answer to give. For those students in the introduction to Old Testament class, after a year or two of ministry, I bet the questions change.

Such a dominant biblical theological motif in I Samuel. But it’s not the only one, especially if you find yourself hearing an old, old story in a new kind of way. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. The reader is told right from the get-go that Peninnah had children but… Hannah had none.

Each year, Elkanah would take his family on a pilgrimage to worship and offer a sacrifice at Shiloh. The two priests who served at Shiloh were the scoundrel sons of Eli. It is not until chapter two that the narrator tells of these corrupt priests who “had no regard for the Lord.” They would steal from the food being sacrificed for themselves, sometimes sending their own servant to do the dirty work of getting the better portion. “Give it to me now,” the servant would demand of the worshippers, “or I will take it by force.” The narrator comes right out and announces that “the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord!”

So the yearly trek for Elkanah, his wives, and kids was hardly a pious, rejuvenating, spiritually-uplifting retreat that included a visit with the family priest and sage and all-around pastor who had sort of become part of the family. Add into that toxic religious environment the notion that Peninnah, labeled in the text as Hannah’s rival, “used to provoke her severely, to irritate her” because she couldn’t have a child. According to I Samuel “it went on year by year, as often as they went up to the house of the Lord. Peninnah used to provoke Hannah.” This was more than teasing. It was more than whatever we could fathom as competition among spouses in a polygamous situation. This was bullying. This was abusive. This was Hannah over and over again, year after year, repeatedly being reduced to tears and not being able to eat.

On a first read, it is as if we are to give Elkanah a bit of a pass for his part any way in the family system. After all, according to the translation, he gave Hannah a double portion of what had been sacrificed. He gave her a double portion of what was left after the rotten, sinful sons of Eli took the best and, no doubt, larger part. He gave her a double portion, which in her distress, she wasn’t eating anyway.

A footnote to the reading in the New Revised Standard Version indicates that the meaning of the Hebrew in the verse about Hannah’s portion is uncertain. Another translation indicates Elkanah only gave her one portion and for that portion she should have been grateful because she had no children. As one Hebrew Bible professor told me years ago, the Hebrew in a few parts of I Samuel is a mess. What the professor, what he didn’t say back then, was that the translators and scribes must have been trying to give Elkanah the benefit of the doubt. A pat on the back. There, there, old Ekanah. “He gave Hannah a double portion.” Of course any benefit of the doubt is lost when Elkanah makes the mistake that us men have made pretty much forever, thinking it was, at the end of the day, all about him. “Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

After everyone else had finished eating and drinking, Hannah rose. Well, that doesn’t quite to it justice, does it? She made the decision to go back up to the temple. She turned from her husband and his other wife, she turned away from all that nastiness and hurt and stepped with both feet into a less than welcoming religious space so that she could present herself before the Lord. “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.” It was the kind of prayer that comes with clinched fists, and indescribable groans, and breathless sobs, the kind of prayer that comes with sweat-like drops of blood, the kind of prayer that no one should endure and the kind of prayer that way too many have. She continued to pray silently and her lips were moving. “Please, please, please, O my Lord, O my Lord, O my Lord.”

Eli lifted himself off the front step and went to see what this childless woman was up to inside the temple. He thought she was drunk. “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.”

“No, my Lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring my soul before the Lord. Do not regard me as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.”

Do not regard me as a worthless woman. I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. That old codger of a priest Eli basically says, “Well, God bless you,” and gets out of there as quickly as he can. I Samuel puts it more formally: “Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’” What it doesn’t say is that he was probably already half-way out the door, because Hannah, Hannah, just dropped the mic. Don’t call me a worthless woman when I have been pouring my soul out before the Lord.” Oh, I bet, no kidding, you think, “the Lord took note of Hannah”?

As to that dominant biblical, theological theme of barrenness and fertility, the culmination, the end of the story, of course, is that Hannah conceived and bore a son, Samuel, the child she lent to the Lord for as long as he lived.

But this time, with this read, with this biblical, theological theme, I sort of want to stop right there. Right there with the echo of Hannah’s bold, courageous voice. For a powerless, childless woman dared to speak up and pour out her soul before God and before a world, a religious world that then, and pretty much ever since, would prefer she just keep quiet. One biblical scholar puts it more eloquently. She writes, some of these stories of women in the Bible, “they are not just simple domestic tales with happy endings” but rather, they are stories that tell of how “the initiative of bold women can alter the trajectory of history.”

God’s covenant, God’s covenant with God’s people. The monarchy, the king, King David, the house of David, God’s promise to David, it didn’t start with a lineage. It didn’t start with a coronation or a royal wedding. It started with Samuel. Which means it started with Hannah. A powerless, childless woman who dared to speak up and pour out her soul.

Speaking up and pouring out.

© 2018 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Ezekiel 37:1-10 and Acts 2:1-18, 21
Mark Edwards
May 20, 2018
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Today is Confirmation Sunday- a day when we welcome eight new high-school-aged members into our church. Having gone through a series of retreats, having memorized a number passages of scripture, having reflected on the church’s role in their lives, having written a statement of faith, having met with Session, they will soon come before us, profess a public confirmation of their faith and be welcomed into the church as new members.

It is also Pentecost Sunday- a day when we adorn the sanctuary in red, when we read the passage from Acts 2 and when we make promises about the Holy Spirit’s presence in the world and in our lives. When combined with the classic and bizarrely biblical story of Ezekiel in a field of dry bones, bones that God shakes, rattles, and rolls into life, it is a day when we expect great things to happen. If the breath of God can do such things, then the pressure is really on. High speed reverse decomposition; divine tongues of fire blow-torching down from the heavens; the voice of God calling out, “Mortal, can these bones live!?”; uneducated day-laborers bursting forth fluently in foreign languages they don’t know; a vast multitude of ‘ready to do thy bidding’ faithful assembled on an apocalyptic field; instantaneous cross-cultural understanding between Medes, Phrygians, Arabs, and Judeans. If the breath of God can do such things, then the pressure is really on. What might we expect today? What will we see today? Will we see anything quite so… supernaturally fantastic?

I’ve got my robe on, and I feel like now is the time that I should Harry Potter up some “speremus meliora” incantation to really make a show happen…

But that is not really how this works. I’m not in control. God isn’t under my command. I can’t conjure up the divine at will. The breath of God is no ritualistic regularity; it is no genie; it is no magic trick in my pocket. It may rush among us a powerful wind, it may breeze upon us as a gentle puff, it may ripple among us a silent whisper. Or it might not come at all and leave us sitting in the emptiness of our own making. The breath of God. Where is it? Will we see it? Will we feel it? Will it come?

Alex, in your “History with the Church” essay you wrote: “Looking back at the past seven years of my life, I see one thing that has remained consistently in my life. Nassau Presbyterian Church.”

And in your statement of faith you wrote:

I affirm my faith of the Holy Spirit, my sustainment and power in life. The Holy Spirit is God’s force which is the breath in my body and the wind in the sky. The Spirit inspires myself and many others and is the force which drives me to be better. I am part of God because the his Spirit resides within me, and all people. The Holy Spirit explains the inexplicable so that we, created in God’s image may better understand our purpose and direction. God’s Spirit creates life where there is death like Jesus in his tomb. The Holy Spirit will always lead me through the deepest of oceans and the tallest of mountains, so that I may fulfill God’s purpose.

You close by saying that God gives you power, Jesus Christ gives you freedom, and the Holy Spirit gives you life.

Wow. You learned that here? A 14-year-old talking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? That might be a miracle. A 14-year-old Presbyterian talking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? That definitely is.

From Ezekiel 37: “Mortal, can these bones live? I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’”

I think I can speak for all of us on staff here at NPC when I say that we’ve all had experiences and histories with the breath of God. We’ve been encouraged, converted, enlivened, forgiven, freed, and have been given hope by the breath of God. And we want others to see it, feel it, hear it, live it too. And so we talk about it. And talk. And talk. And talk.

Grace, you wrote honestly when you said

What I dislike about church is probably that it does feel long sometimes and I don’t always connect with what the pastors are saying. This might be partially due to the fact that I have swim practice beforehand and then have to come to church right after when I am tired. This makes me more likely to zone out, and then once I have zoned for part of the sermon, it is hard to bring myself back in and understand what is going on.

Grace, we’ve all been there, and some are probably there right now. But then you wrote in your Statement of Faith the following:

I believe the Holy Spirit is what calls us together to celebrate what Jesus has done for us, to thank God, and to pray to God. It is what allows us to view what is good in life, what allows us to learn from our mistakes, and what gives us appreciation for what we have and what is around us.

You made it clear that you do understand what is going on here. And when you wrote, “Once we had a guest speaker that spoke about his time in jail and his story. I don’t remember exactly what his message was, but I do remember walking out of that sermon saying to myself that I wanted to do something helping others’ lives who had gone jail,” you show us all that you really understand what is going on.

From Ezekiel 37: “O dry bones hear the word of the Lord… I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”

Rory, you wrote:

I have been a part of the church for as long as I can remember. I started by coming to church school every sunday when I was very young. I made friends in sunday school, and I learned about Jesus and God. Although, I don’t think I understood or really believed any of it.

A lot of us have been there too, and that is pretty understandable. I mean, a valley of dead bones? Do we need to get scientific about that for a second? And yet, you wrote:

Appalachia Service Project was the most life changing trip for me. I went into it being more scared of anything else I had ever done in my life, but I loved it. It was a highlight of my summer and something that changed me as a person. In these more recent years at the church, the last one specifically, I feel that I have grown as a christian a lot. I am understanding Jesus and God way more than I did in the past. I am starting to grow my own sense of faith, and I now believe and trust in God and Jesus. I have nothing else but the church, to thank for this.

Rory, let’s be real for a minute. Norm’s house? It was dry bones. Dirty dry bones. That were rotten. And uninsulated. And without plumbing. And cigarette butts. And beer cans. And that really big snake. And yet, you all… You all brought those bones back to life.

From Ezekiel 37: “I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Alex, you were in that house. Camille, too. Camille, you wrote:

I also believe that prayer is how you talk to God, however I have never heard a direct reply. Instead, I see God in working through people who interact with me. […] My fondest memory so far has to be going on the ASP trip and bonding with the other teens as well as helping Norm and repairing his house.

Camille, rest assured that you were the direct reply to Norm’s prayers. Because, see, this is what the Holy Spirit does. It takes you and uses you to reveal God to other people, even if you don’t know that it is happening at the time. While you were working on his floor and painting his trim, remember how hot it was in there at times? That was the breath of God you were huffing and puffing out. But when we give ourselves in service to others in Christ’s name, God is faithful and the breath of God brings faith to life.

From Ezekiel 37: “Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

James, some more honest words:

I never wanted to go to church on Sunday mornings. I didn’t understand what the point of it was. It was always so boring and long. And I never fully understood who Jesus was. Last year, my cousin approached me with the idea of going to Tennessee for a week to work on homes with the Appalachian Service Project. My initial response was, ‘No way, why would I spend a whole week of my summer doing that?’ After many hours of convincing, I finally agreed to do it with no idea of what I was really getting myself into. During that week of hard work in Tennessee, I had a lot of time to reflect on my life and the reason I was there.

[Christian, are you here? Cause what comes next is your fault. John and Jacq, you too.]

James, you wrote:

I got to know Jesus by giving up my time to help someone else. He gave me the strength to be there to do good work for the homeowner, Bob. While I got to know Jesus that week, I also realized he had always been there for me even though I didn’t recognize him.

From Ezekiel 37: “Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves.”

James, I think it is safe to say that Bob has been in some graves. A former meth addict. A daughter who’s a meth addict. Time in jail for violent offenses if I remember correctly. Bob had a tattoo of a web on his right forearm, a tattoo of a spider around his left elbow, and a tattoo of spider in a web on his right bicep. He’s seen some graves. And yet now he’s adopting his granddaughter, painting the house, and growing the biggest organic cabbages in the neighborhood. The breath of God gives life.

And the breath of God teaches us the language of God, who is Jesus Christ. We might look at the Pentecost story and think it incredible. But James here learned the language of Christ from a power drill, a pile of Mountain Dew cans, and time in community working on Bob’s roof. The breath of God was blowing in those Tennessee hills. And James’s life is different. And so is Bob’s. And so is Jacq’s and John’s, and mine…

From Ezekiel 37: “Mortal, can these bones live? I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’”

The Breath of God. Have we started to see it? Have we started to feel it? Can we, in fact, really live without it? Allison, as you say:

I think this is the question that has really fueled my journey so far. It’s so easy to feel like religion is unnecessary when everything is going well, and it’s so easy to feel like God isn’t there when everything falls apart. But what about when life is just okay? […] That’s where I’ve found God the most because sometimes it’s easy to feel sort of empty.

It is easy to feel empty. And I imagine that is how the disciples felt just before Pentecost. They’ve resorted to throwing dice to try and figure out who their next club member is gong to be. They are, to some degree, compensating for their emptiness by securing a well-rounded social network.

“Two summers ago,” you wrote “my first time going to NorthBay, a speaker there made an analogy that really stuck with me. If you imagine life like a well, social media, friends and material objects only temporarily fill it, and when you try and get more water, you’ll find it empty. But the speaker’s idea was that God could be the thing in your life that will eternally fill it.”

From Ezekiel 37: “Suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.”

Without the breath of God we are simply bodies and minds who are, well, empty. The beauty of the breath of God is that it fills us and guides us away from emptiness.

Hugo, you see this when you say:

The holy spirit guides and raises me to be good and do the right things. Church is my home away from home in that it is my safe haven. Church is my place of freedom. Church is where my sins are forgiven, church is where my prayers are answered, church is what connects me to the holy spirit. […]

Hugo, this is beautiful. But if the church is these things, then it is because the breath of God is here.

Annie, you say, “I am taking this journey of confirmation because I want to discover a God who is:

• Loving
• Forgiving
• Peaceful
• Gender-neutral
• Accepting of all genders, races, ethnicities, sexualities, financial situations, pronouns, religions, beliefs, family structures, mental and physical illnesses, and mental and physical disabilities
• Understanding
• Present when anyone wants Them to be there
• Present when nobody wants Them to be there
• At the marches with all of us
• Fighting for us, with us
• Just so, so good.

Annie, I think we all want to meet that God. And if we have, we all want to see and feel that God again. And we need the breath of God, the spirit of God to do so. So may it blow on us all, may it teach us the language of Christ’s love, and may it prove to us the existence of the loving, redeeming, sacrificing triune God.

I’ve been teaching a philosophy class this past semester, so I have to make a comment here about proofs for the existence of God. Much of medieval theology was deeply concerned with offering proofs for the existence of God. These philosophical, logical, and even mathematical proofs sought to coherently establish the being and existence of an all-powerful, good God.

And while these are fun fodder for a philosophy class, sometimes we need something beyond our own ideas to move us past doubt and uncertainty. Sometimes we need to be drawn out of our own ideas about God and skepticisms toward eternal love, and out of our own hostilities to sanctifying peace. But what such traditional arguments overlook is that God seems interested in proving to us the existence and depth and power of the reconciling triune love.

From Ezekiel 37: “I will cause breath[a] to enter you, and you shall live… and you shall know that I am the Lord” (emphasis added).

Do we really want proof that the breath of God is real? Do we really want evidence what the breath of God can do? Then we will likely be lead to a valley of dry bones. We will likely be brought to a place where death, disintegration, and despair are so heavy that only a miracle of God can bring life. WWII Nazi resister, Corrie ten Boom, and her family were brought to such a place: it was a concentration camp called Ravensbruck. Of her time there, Corrie writes in The Hiding Place, “Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.”^[1]

“So it was,” she was able to say time and time again, “we were not poor, but rich. Rich in this new evidence of the care of Him who was God even of Ravensbruck.” In that camp of death, the breath of God brought life of the spirit. And after the War, Corrie took another death camp, one at Darmstadt, and together with members of the German Lutheran Church, turned it into a group home for reconciliation, rehabilitation, and gardening.^[2] “Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.”^[3]

Or as Ezekiel puts it: “Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

There are many graves and valleys with dry bones in our world today. And many places desperately need the breath of God. We think of Sante Fe, Texas, with ten new graves of teens your age, gunned down by a maniacal fellow student obsessed with death and domination. And we ask, “How long, oh Lord.” How long will this insanity go on? How long before it happens here? We pray that it does not. And we pray that God will guide prophets to our wastelands and that the breath of God would give life.

We give thanks today for you eight confirmands, who are proof to all of us that the breath of God is real and active in this place. And we pray together: Come breath of God. Fill us all and give us life eternal. Do this to us, that we may know that you are Lord. Amen.

^[1] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, 35th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2006), 206.

^[2] ten Boom, 11, 249 and 263.

^[3] ten Boom, 138.

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