Pentecost Homily, May 11, 2008

Valley of Dry Bones by James Nesbitt (click on image for larger version)

For some musical accompaniment to this post, click on the song here, "Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones."


Homily for Pentecost 2008
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:22-27
John 20:19-23

(In my parish we celebrate First Communion in small groups at Sunday liturgies. At each celebration I note that we need to “make room” at the Table for our new Communicants and I introduce them to the assembly, asking each child to stand up on the bench his/her pew. When all are standing I invite the assembly to bask for a moment in the beauty and innocence of the children and to remember that one day we were all in their places…)

We look at the children and see in them a beauty and innocence,
that we might remember in ourselves,
or perhaps over the years the memory of our own youth has blurred
even to the point where we might have forgotten it altogether.

Perhaps our perception of ourselves is closer to the dry bones
in today’s first lesson.
In a vision, the prophet Ezekiel sees the desert filled with bones,
dry bones, the bones of the dead.

As we get older our bones become more brittle, they break more easily,
they don’t support us as well as they used to,
and they ache in sync with the changing weather.

We don’t expect our bones to grow stronger or younger.
Nor did Ezekiel expect those bones in the desert to come back to life –
until the Lord planted that possibility in his heart, asking him,
"Ezekiel, can these bones come to life?"
Ezekiel gave a very clever answer:
"Well, uh, I – only you know that, Lord!"
He didn’t want to give the wrong answer
so he lobbed the ball back into God’s court.

But even as Ezekiel spoke the bones began to rattle,
come together and be joined again, one with another.

And then sinew, muscle and flesh came upon the bones
and then God breathed Spirit into them
and they came to life again.

Can that happen for us?

Is God’s Spirit alive and powerful this Pentecost Sunday,
centuries after Ezekiel’s vision,
after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in Jerusalem?

I don’t expect that our aging bones will grow fresh marrow
and return to the strength they had back in the day.

But there are two things I believe do happen.

First, there is no reason to doubt
that in our heart of hearts, in our souls,
the Spirit of God desires to restore the innocence of our youth.
When God looks upon us and into our hearts,
whether we are 7 or 8 years old,
or 27 or 38 or 70 or 80 yeas old,
God sees in us and love in us
the original beauty in which we were created,
the divine image within us,
regardless of how tarnished or broken
that image has become over the years.

And the second thing I believe is happening is this:
that God looks upon our tarnished and broken Catholic Church
and sees in it the beauty and innocence of Christ
whose body the Church is, whose body we are,
regardless of how tarnished or broken
we allowed that image to become,
regardless of how ashamed of it we may be.

It is ever the desire, the will, the work of God
to forgive us, to bathe us in his mercy,
to restore us to the beauty he sees deep within us -
even, and especially when we have become, ourselves,
blind to that beauty, have forgotten it,
or have lost any hope of recovering it.

In Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit,
God restores the soul's beauty,
tarnished, broken, even deadened by sin,
and brings us back to life.

Christians call this the Paschal Mystery!

The whole life, suffering, death and resurrection of Christ,
and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost:
all this is directed to restoring our lost innocence
and reconciling us with God and one another.

God breathes the Spirit upon us – of that we have no doubt.
The question is,
will you and I, will the Church,
inhale the breath of the Spirit?

What if you and I had been in Ezekiel’s place in the desert?
What if God had asked us,
“Can those bones come to life?
Can your bones come back to life?
Can the Church’s bones come back to life?”

What would have been our response?

Would we have walked away, telling God,
“No, I’m too old for that stuff.
No, the church is done – it’s all over, it’s too little, too late.”

Or would we, like Ezekiel, have said,
“Only you know that God…”
and then to see God’s Spirit breathe
and the tarnished shine,
the broken made whole,
the lost be found,
and the dead come to life?

The Spirit breathes this morning on each of us
and on the whole Church.

Will we inhale the breath of the Spirit of God?

Will we believe that God can do what we ourselves cannot do?

Will we believe that God desires and can restore in each of us
the beauty and the innocence of these girls and boys
about to receive Communion for the first time?

One of the First Communion moms told me before Mass
that her little boy told her on the way to church,
“Mom – I think this is the best day of my life!”

If you inhale the breath of God’s Spirit,
this could be the best day of your life.

-ConcordPastor