The Center of our Lives 9-2-12

The Reading— Ezekiel 37 (Portions)

God grabbed me. God's Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. God led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.
God said to me, "Ezekiel, can these bones live?" I said, "Creator God, only you know that." God said to me, "Prophesy over these bones: 'Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!'" God, the Creator, told the dry bones, "Watch this: I'm bringing the breath of life to you and you'll come to life. I'll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You'll come alive and you'll realize that I am God!"
I prophesied just as I'd been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them. God said to me, "Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, God’s Child. Tell the breath, 'God, the Creator, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!'" So I prophesied, just as God commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! …
"When your people ask you, 'Are you going to tell us what you're doing?' tell them, 'God, the Creator, says, Watch me! I'll take the Joseph stick that is in Ephraim's hand, with the tribes of Israel connected with him, and lay the Judah stick on it. I'll make them into one stick. I'm holding one stick.' …They'll be my people! I'll be their God! My servant David will be king over them. They'll all be under one shepherd.
"'They'll follow my laws and keep my statutes. They'll live in the same land I gave my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their grandchildren will live there forever, and my servant David will be their prince forever. I'll make a covenant of peace with them that will hold everything together, an everlasting covenant. I'll make them secure and place my holy place of worship at the center of their lives forever. I'll live right there with them. I'll be their God! They'll be my people! "'The nations will realize that I, God, make Israel holy when my holy place of worship is established at the center of their lives forever.'"

The Gospel Reading: Luke 7: 11-17

Not long after that, Jesus went to the village Nain. His disciples were with him, along with quite a large crowd. As they approached the village gate, they met a funeral procession—a woman's only son was being carried out for burial. And the mother was a widow. When Jesus saw her, his heart broke. He said to her, "Don't cry." Then he went over and touched the coffin. The pallbearers stopped. He said, "Young man, I tell you: Get up." The dead son sat up and began talking. Jesus presented him to his mother.
They all realized they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among them. They were quietly worshipful—and then noisily grateful, calling out among themselves, "God is back, looking to the needs of his people!" The news of Jesus spread all through the country.


The Center of Our Lives 9-2-12
Eternal and holy God, bring us to that place of holy mystery—that time of knowing without a doubt that your Holy Spirit is in complete control. Lead us in your way everlasting and bless us with your truth. Amen

Noreen, you, did a great job bringing those bones to life as you read the passage from Ezekiel. The older I get, the more fascinated I am by this story—how God reaches out and makes these old, bleached out bones come to life. Now I will admit that I almost asked the choir to sing “Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones”, but thought better of it. Our Gospel passage brings us another moment of absolute worship and I thought about calling the sermon “Quietly worshipful and noisily grateful” but, that sounded a little too much like the title of a recent movie. Both passages, though, have much to tell us about worship—the nature of worship, why we worship, and how we are to worship.
Look at what happened. Right from the start God is in control. Ezekiel tells his story: “God grabbed me”. There was no gentle nudging of God’s Spirit, no still small voice, no, God grabbed me. The Spirit of God carried me somehow to the middle of an open plain where everywhere I looked there were bones. And there were lots and lots of bones, all dried out and bleached by the sun. It was a pretty incredible sight. I got lost in looking at those bones and forgot all about God for a moment.
Out of the blue, God says to me: “Can these bones come to life?” Now, I’m wondering just exactly what the right answer to this question is. Seems pretty obvious, but this is God I’m talking to, so, perhaps, I should rein it in a little and not say what I’m thinking. “Creator, God” I say, “you are the only one who can know the answer to your question”. God says, “Prophesy over these bones!” What, they’re just bones and ugly bones at that. God, then speaks directly to the bones: '”Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!" God, the Creator, told the dry bones, "Watch this: I'm bringing the breath of life to you and you'll come to life. I'll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You'll come alive and you'll realize that I am God!"
So I, Ezekiel, began to prophesy just as God commanded. Saying words that were directly from God’s Spirit, I let go and told those old bones all I knew about this God who created them and who could bring them back to life. Suddenly, there was a rustling sound. I looked, in unbelief, as those old bones began to move and come together just as they were supposed to—leg bones to hip bones and wrist bones to arm bones. And then, the muscles that hold the bones together began to form, followed by the skin. They looked like people, but they were still—they had no breath in them.
God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath—prophesy, you are my child, you can do it. Tell the winds to come from every direction and breathe life into these bodies”. And so I did, again, letting the words spill out as the Spirit inspired me. And suddenly, “Winds blew, and the breath entered them and they were alive.
And then, God told them directly what this was all about. God was pulling together the separated tribes of Israel. God pulled those tribes together in a way just like those dry bones. God united them and reclaimed them, appointing David to be their King and shepherd. These reclaimed people will follow God’s laws and obey all the rules. They will live in the original land that was given to the Jewish people. And this will be for all time—so that their grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren will live there as well. And David will be their prince forever. God said, “I'll make a covenant of peace with them that will hold everything together, an everlasting covenant. I'll make them secure and place my holy place of worship at the center of their lives forever. I'll live right there with them. I'll be their God! They'll be my people! The nations will realize that I, God, make Israel holy when my holy place of worship is established at the center of their lives forever."
Well, there is more to the story, but we’ll let Ezekiel go back to what he was doing before God grabbed him. What is important from this story is not seeing the bones dancing wildly around as real human beings after God brought them back to life, though that would have been quite a sight to see; we must come to grips with the fact that God intends for worship to be at the center of our lives. And that should stop most of us dead in our tracks. For most of us, the question “What is worship?” is not an easy question to answer. Is it praise? Is it teaching? Is it communion with God and others? And, just how is it like God making those old dry bones alive again?
Interestingly, people have been asking those questions for a while. So, I looked at the writings of a specific Anglican Bishop, named William Temple. He wrote and ‘bishoped’ in the first half of the Twentieth Century. He answers the question “what is the purpose of worship?” with five specific attributes.
First, the purpose of worship is “to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God”. I want us to take another look at our Gospel lesson. Jesus and his disciples are walking to a village. They have quite a large entourage following them. They came upon a funeral procession. Jesus soon learned that the deceased was the only son of a widow. She could not be consoled. Luke records that when Jesus saw her and understood her circumstance, his heart broke for her. He then stopped the procession and quickly, with no fanfare, healed the young man. Let’s not lose sight of what happens next. Luke states this: “They all realized they were in a place of holy mystery; that God was at work among them.” Let’s sit with this for just a moment. Is God at work among us? If so, this place is a place of holy mystery. Now the people who witnessed the healing had three responses. First came quiet worship, then noisy gratitude, and then they spread the good news about Jesus. Perhaps this is a possible litmus test to determine if we, too, are experiencing the holy mystery of God at work among us? Let’s think about that in the coming weeks.
Second, Bishop Temple suggests that the nature of worship is “to feed the mind with the truth of God”. This calls us to listen to God’s word—spoken and sung and preached. We gather each week for a new understanding of God’s truth. For me, and I think for many of you, that truth is wrapped in God’s unconditional love and radical welcome into the Reign of Justice. Each week, our worship, if it is true worship will fills us with the sense of that truth—that we, and everyone on this earth, are acceptable to God exactly where and who we are. And so, our participation in worship is the visceral acting out of the Good News of the grace and forgiveness, the mercy and love of God, made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
In the third place, Bishop Temple invites us to experience worship as a place and time “to to purge the imagination with the beauty of God”. The beauty of God has different meanings and I will not try to give you a universal definition. The scriptures call us to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”. Each week our service includes a brief prayer called “Commitment to Worship”. I hope that you do not miss the intent of those prayers and that they have not become mere wallpaper for you. I invite you to engage your whole self in our beginning readings each week—they invite you to worship—to put off the things that leave you unable to be present in this moment. Each portion of our worship service has its own significance and is part of a whole experience of worship that takes us to a place of the possibility of the beauty of God. We, each, take responsibility for our real participation in this act of formal worship, just as you invest yourselves fully in the small or large experiences of worship throughout your week. God invites us each week to give ourselves over to divine beauty and grace.
The fourth purpose of worship for Bishop Temple is to give us a place where we are called “to give the heart to the love of God”. This is not mere poetry, this is a call to hand over our hearts and allow God to change them, to fill us with the love of God for each other and for ourselves. When we love God with our whole hearts, we are filled with love that transcends bitterness, or dissension, or difference. Worship is the place where we allow God, in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup, to enter and transform our hearts. This is why we slow ourselves as we enter into the time of communion at God’s table. If you do not already take advantage of the moments of reflection and prayer in the process of communion, I invite you to do so—to invite God to open your hearts anew.
Finally, Bishop Temple says that worship is the time that invites us “to devote the will to the purpose of God." We close every worship celebration with the singing of the prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples. “Thy will be done” we sing, “on earth as it is in heaven”. At this moment, if not in other moments, we, caught up in the love and beauty of worship, pledge ourselves to the will of God, to the coming of the Kingdom and to the ongoing experience of the beauty, majesty, and love of our Creator God. “For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever!” Amen and amen.