“Come From the Four Winds, O Breath”

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21

May 31, 2009 Pentecost and Confirmation

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

This is Ezekiel’s vision:

“God brought me into a valley, and as the light grew, I realized that I stood in the middle of thousands of bones, dry, dry bones that had once been legs and arms, ribs and spines, feet and hands and heads. I was horrified. Then God asked me if I thought these bones could live. How does one answer such a question except to say, ‘God knows?’ Then God told me to prophesy to the bones, to tell them that God has spoken and that God says they shall live! God says muscles and tendons and ligaments and veins and flesh and skin shall come on you and the breath of God shall blow in you and you shall live and know God is!

So I talked to the bones! And as I spoke, I heard an unforgettable sound that made me close my eyes in fear: the rattling of bone being joined to bone. When I opened my eyes, the bones were covered with muscle and flesh and skin, but they lay still and did not live and breathe. Then God said to me ‘Call the four winds together and summon the breath of creation so that these slain might live.’ So I summoned the winds and they swirled around and through and into the bodies which rose as one. Amazing!

Then God said, ‘Ezekiel, this is your nation which believes hope is lost and all that’s left is dry bones. Tell them God is still God and will give them life! The very breath within them is my spirit! Tell them they will be restored and then they shall know without a doubt that I, God, have spoken and will do what I say.’”

Hundreds of years later, on the day of Pentecost, when 120 believers were waiting for God to act, again the four winds gathered and blew through the open windows and flung open the doors of a Jerusalem house. The breath of God’s Spirit entered the believers, and they could not stop proclaiming that God had spoken and acted in Jesus who was very much alive. Wind and flame danced around the house, confusing and astounding those who witnessed what happened that day. The Spirit shouted and laughed and sang. It was wonderful!

In the English language, we have too many words, sometimes, and so we lose connections that could help us know the Spirit of God more clearly. In Hebrew and Greek, the words we translate as “wind” and “breath” and “spirit” are all the same word. “Ruah” or “Pneuma” they would say. The words mean “air in motion” or “God in motion,” so that whenever air moves, there is the sense that God is present and up to something. We breathe or speak or sing or dance or run; air moves and God moves in us. The wind blows, and what was still is disturbed, changed, lifted up, pushed along. Sometimes the Spirit air moves gently, softly, whispering among us. Sometimes the Spirit air moves fast and loud and pushes us where we don’t think we want to go. Without the breath of God, the Spirit air, we are bones that do not live.

There are those in the world, however, who take the breath of God within them and use it to make noises that are far from joyful, far from life giving. Some noise is loud and harsh and speaks of hate or greed or fear, sometimes in shouts we hear on radio or TV or Youtube and even sometimes in popular music. Other noise is more subtle, voices that call us away from God, voices that are seductive or despairing, voices that may even declare with the breath God gave them that there is no God, who try to separate us from God and from each other. Those who sneer at believers like those Pentecost disciples, saying, “Oh they’re drunk” or crazy or stupid or naïve. Sometimes it seems that the spirit of God has left the air and empty sounds have filled it. But I do not believe this to be so.

Andrew, Leah and Jen: You are coming today to speak words using the breath of God within you, words which affirm that you believe that God is in you, God in motion in you. I was not present at the moment each of you drew your first breath and cried the cry of life, of entry into this stunning world, but I know exactly what happened in that moment. God said, “Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon this new soul, that he, she, she may live.” And you did. And you do. Do you remember that Rob Bell film we watched in Confirmation class? He said that every time you breathe out you say the name of God. The air moves within you and around you and God’s spirit swirls and dances through you and, behold!, you are, with every breath, filled with God and breathing out God.

The rest of you are, too.

I hope that for each of you, at some time in your life, you have had or will have a moment of total clarity in the presence of God’s Spirit, like Ezekiel or those Pentecost believers had. But those kinds of moments are few and far between. What you and I have been given, though, is the constant presence of God’s animating, enlivening, rejuvenating, renewing, sometimes annoying Spirit in the air within us that forms our speaking, lifts our singing, sounds in instruments, flows around our limbs as we dance or run or jump, and inhabits right at this moment the spaces between us, pulling us together. For in God we live and move and have our being, not just in extraordinary moments, but in every moment. God in air in motion.

Andrew, Leah and Jen: When I was your age, I loved a song by a couple of songwriters named Avery and Marsh that our youth group sang in worship one Pentecost Sunday. It’s called, “What makes the wind blow?” It ends with these lines. “What makes the wind blow? Well it’s enough to know that there are winds and dreams and love moves everywhere.” Breathe in. Breathe out. Never forget that God is in the winds and the dreams and the love that moves everywhere. Amen.