I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;

The people of Ezekiel’s time were living in exile and despair.

Sound familiar?

Their nation was shattered, their culture unrecognizable, all around them and within them there was death and dryness and hope was a bitter lie, suitable for children, but it didn’t work in the real world.

Sound familiar?

And in that context Ezekiel experienced his wondrous vision in the valley of the dry bones, his reminder that in the very presence of failure and death, life wins.

Sound familiar?

It should.

Because if you are paying attention, you will notice that life always wins. And whenever life wins, it is Pentecost.

Now I know what you are thinking, Pentecost was centuries after Ezekiel, wasn’t it? Pentecost was the birth of the Church when, for the first time, the Holy Spirit came swooping down on people, wasn’t it?

Well, yes in a technical and linear fashion, Pentecost was the day when the Church, as we know it came to life. But too many Christians have the misguided notion that the Holy Spirit came to life that day as well, as if the Church created her, rather than the other way around.

So if a Pentecostal moment is when the Holy Spirit fills the world in a special way, wasn’t that the case in the Genesis creation story as the Spirit of God broods over the chaos of primal ooze?

And wasn’t that the case when Christ was led by the spirit, into the wilderness to face the temptations, not temptations of what to do, but of how to do it?

And isn’t that what we are finding in this Ezekiel experience?

Ezekiel was led by the spirit, and the spirit – imparted by his words – filled these dry dead bones with meat and flesh and ultimately with life itself.

These were the people of Israel. Living people? Yes, but not really.

And by the power of God’s spirit, conveyed by Ezekiel’s words, they really came to life.

That’s what God’s spirit does.

She brings life through the words that we speak to one another.

And it’s not life after death that I’m talking about or worrying about here, that’s God’s concern and I trust him to handle that.

It’s life before death that concerns me, because too many people aren’t experiencing it.

I know too many people who believe that John Mellencamp had it right when he sang “hold on to 16 as long as you can . . . oh, yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” And after that they settle for an emptiness that doesn’t know how to remember, to anticipate or to enjoy the victorious wonders of life that grow deeper and richer with each passing year.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;

That’s what Pentecost means, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit in the OT, the NT, in 1834 in this room, and in 2009 in this room. God’s spirit inhabits us and we live and we are placed in our own soil, we are led to a real world site where we are meant to be and life wins.

It’s how we got started here.

As I write the book that will celebrate who we are in this 175th Anniversary Year, there is a chapter on the ministers. The first minister was The Reverend Garrett C. Schanck. He came here in 1835 after the first two or three people that the Consistory offered the job to turned them down – which must have been a humbling feeling.

Old Garrett was a graduate of Rutgers College and New Brunswick Seminary. His first assignment out of Seminary had been at the Reformed Church in Marshallville, NY, which had been founded in 1831, three years before us. He spent one year there, 1833, and in 1839 that Church was disbanded.

Now why, in the plans of God, did that Church close after 8 years and this one continue for 175 and counting? It wasn’t the quality of the ministers, Garrett Schanck served in both places, and I think ministers are highly overrated anyway. No, the only answer that makes sense to me is that God’s spirit did what was needed for that 8 year span there, and that there was still more needed in this place.

And there still is! God’s spirit is within us today, we are here in the soil of Central Jersey with a congregational life to lead today. There have been any number of moments along the way when we could have followed the example of the Church in Marshallville, any number of moments when Church experts and the wisdom of the world would have said “it’s over”, just in my time I can recall moments of despair and exile, but God wasn’t done with us.

And God isn’t done with us!

And so here we are.

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;

And what is true for the Church is true for the world.

It is easy to be filled with despair as we hear and read the news.

The economic blows that most of us have endured – some greater than others – over the last few years have left us unsure, afraid, angry and lost.

The ongoing wars in the Middle East, the apparent insanity among the leaders of North Korea, fill us with an apprehension of nuclear terror.

The ways in which our culture and our country seem to be fraying and pulling apart with crime and violence creeping closer and closer to us, until even our gentle neighborhoods and schools are poisoned with the horrors of drugs and alcohol abuse.

There are plenty of valleys of dry bones all around us. People at work and at school and at play and at worship and at service, who need to be filled with God’s spirit.

And God’s Spirit stands, as on the day of creation, as on the day of Pentecost, ready to do her great work of healing and reconciliation.

And who will speak the word?

Well, that’s our job, isn’t it?

It was Ezekiel’s job.

It was the disciple’s job.

And now it is our job.

We who have heard the good news must speak the good news.

We who have been forgiven must forgive.

We who have been loved must love.

We who know that we are saved by faith must share that faith with others.

It’s how the Holy Spirit works, those tongues of fire came swooping down when the disciples were all together in one place.

Put aside the old hurts.

Put aside the misunderstandings.

Put aside the he said/she said cycles that never get resolved.

Put aside the pride and the pain.

Speak the word.

Speak the word of apology and of love and of acceptance and of reconciliation and let God’s spirit do her work in your world, your Church, your family, your heart.

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;

Today we recognize all of the over and above gifts that have been given over the past year.

Gifts of honor, gifts dedicated to special works, and gifts of memory.

As the names are read, during our litany, consider the ways in which those lives continue with us, shaping us, inspiring us, reprimanding us.

And as you consider that, roll around, in your heart and mind, the words of the Apostle’s Creed that I consider the most significant in our daily routines of life “I believe in . . . the Communion of the Saints.”

I was asked, by Dave Fergesen and his study group, to address a question about salvation a few weeks ago and I finally got around to it this week. Not because I forgot it, but I wanted to get it right, I wanted to say it as clearly as I could. I’m not sure I did, I’m not sure I ever will, but I keep working at it.

I don’t know who all will be saved. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddists, Catholics, Baptists, Yankee fans, I don’t know. Nor do I know that they will not.

I don’t know if those who worship differently and live differently and love differently and pray differently than I do will be saved. Nor do I know that they will not.

I but I do know this, and I only know this: I am saved, by faith alone.

And that is what you can know and that is all that you can know, by faith alone, you are saved.

The rest is up to God and I trust God.

But I do believe some things.

I do believe that we will all be surprised at who all is saved.

You see, God has guided us to this soil, this place, and made it ours, but the day will come when God will lead us to a richer and finer soil and he will make us his and I do believe that those people who we name today, and hundreds of others who own a piece of our hearts will be waiting for us.

And I do believe that the Holy Spirit of Creation and of the dry bones and of the early Church and of 1834 and of 2009, that same Holy Spirit will once again, as she has done for me throughout my life, guide me home.

This I do believe. And it is enough, more than enough for me to see and share in the victory of life.

I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil;

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here