As we continue to explore the meaning of Pentecost in light of the narrative of Old Testament history, today our journey brings us to Ezekiel 37. In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel is given a vision in which he sees a valley full of dry bones. In verse 11, the interpretation is given by God, saying that “the bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Interestingly, God says that these bones are the whole house of Israel, as opposed to were. The bones represent the existent Jewish people. What this means is that we are dealing with a metaphor. Ezekiel was seeing bones that represented the nation of Israel (unless you think that bones are in the habit of speaking).

While being metaphor, the aspects of the vision are still extremely significant. The interpretation God gives has three parallel phrases:

1) Our bones are dried up – in other words, their rotting flesh has completely decomposed and only bones are left – they are completely dead – way beyond the state of for example, the boys who Elijah and Elisha resuscitated (1 Kgs 17; 2 Kgs 4). There is nothing of them left to be raised from the dead.

2) our hope has perished – we’ll come back to this one in a minute.

3) we are completely cut off – the same word is used in Psalm 88 to describe complete and utter desolation, similarly using death as a metaphor: “I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit; I have become like one who has no strength, forsaken among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, and they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.

What about that second phrase? What hope has perished? What is all this dreariness about? Again, the vision clues us in. Why might there be a large number of bones gathered in one location? In Jewish tradition, dead persons are to be buried relatively quickly and to leave bones unburied was both ritually and socially unpropitious. Even if someone was left unburied, that would not explain why in this one valley, so many bones were amassed together, unless they all had died in that place. I think the best explanation is that the bones belonged to people who died in a battle, a battle in which Israel was decimated. This would certainly then allude to the invasion and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC. When Israel speaks of their “hope perishing,” by this they mean the exile.

The exile was the period in Israel’s history that began in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem and burned it to the ground, including the temple. Of those who survived, many were taken into captivity to Babylon, while many others were left to pick up the pieces. Regardless, Israel as a national, social and political entity was annihilated. As a religious entity, however, they endured, specifically in relation to what they called “our hope.” I think perhaps on one level their “hope perished” in that their normal human desire to live a long and happy life had been abruptly curtailed. However, it is significant that the bones spoke collectively of “our hope” (singular). It is the national hope of Israel, the expectation rooted in their history of living under the promises of God. This goes all the way back to the promises to Abraham, that to him and his seed God would give great blessing and bless all the nations of the earth through them, which in context means being God’s solution to the problem of sin (cf. Gen. 3-11). Yet how would they be God’s agents of blessing if they were constantly being harassed, oppressed and dominated by foreign powers? How could this future be true if all the institutions of Israel’s religious and national identity had been destroyed?

The solution to Israel’s desolate state is the Spirit of God – “And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” The Spirit of God will be the agent through whom this metaphorical resurrection of the nation of Israel will take place. Israel’s hopes will be restored and fulfilled my means of the Spirit of God “breathing” new life into them and bringing them back to their land.

Fast forward a couple hundred years. Israel had been back in their land, having returned from Babylon, since 536 B.C. Nevertheless, there was still a strong belief that the exile had not yet fully ended. They were back in the land, but were still under the domination of foreign powers (Click here for more on the notion that the exile was believed to have continued past the geographical return from Babylon). Leaving aside the Gospels (which confirm the same general point I am about to make), when the sound of a great and mighty wind enters the house where the disciples were gathered, as recorded in Acts, we are meant to understand this breath of God as (an at least incipient) ending of the exile and the restoration of God’s people. In Greek (and Hebrew) the word for wind and breath (and Spirit for that matter) are the same word. This doesn’t mean that they did not differentiate between those concepts, but the ambiguity enabled authors to add layers of nuance and allusion to their texts. When the wind blew upon the 120 Jewish believers in Jesus, they were experiencing the Ezekiel 37 breath of God which launched the beginning of the restoration of Israel and the ending of exile. All of God’s promises were being answered “yes” in and through the Messiah Jesus. The people of God were being restored. There would be a worldwide family descended from Abraham that would be a blessing to all the people’s of the earth, dealing with the problem of sin and overturning the effects of the fall.

While Ezekiel 37 mostly has the national identity of Israel in mind, Acts 2 (together with the rest of the NT) has in view the full extent of the Abrahamic promise to address the woes of sin and death. In Ezekiel 37, the “resurrection” was metaphorical – speaking of the return of Israel from exile. However, beginning with Jesus, this “resurrection” suddenly became literal. When God restores his people, he does more than revive national hopes, but enables the completion of the Abrahamic mission by destroying the power of death itself. All who receive this life-giving Spirit participate in the very power that raised Jesus from the dead (cf. Eph 1.19) and are guarunteed a share in the final resurrection (Rom. 8:11). As God welcomes his people Israel home from exile, he also welcomes all of humanity back from the exile of death they had shared ever since Adam and Eve were “exiled” from the Garden of Eden, immortality escaping their grasp. All are invited home to experience the fullness of life in and through allegiance to Jesus the Messiah and Lord of the world.

At the end of each post in this series, I’ve been commenting briefly on a developing “praxis of Pentecost,” i.e., what kind of practical expressions, lifestyle, etc., flows out of an understanding and experience of the Spirit poured out on Pentecost. The Spirit of God is ever and always the Spirit of the Resurrection, whom the universal Church confesses as the “Lord and Giver of Life.” As long as the Spirit is the Giver of Life, it is the enemy of death and all that causes death. A truly “pentecostal” person will never acquiesce to the “death drives” of our modern culture, whether they be associated with the death of innocent “expendable” lives (abortion, euthanasia), the sickness that robs the life of the body, poverty that denigrates the dignity of life, the narcissism of our image-obsessed culture that effaces the true beauty of life, behaviors that abuse and destroy relationships (unbridled sexuality, violence), diseased philosophies and theologies that kill the meaning of life, reckless political, economic and domestic practices which damage the world God created and loves, or the brutality of war. I am not here making a moral statement related to the whole “just war,” but all Christians must be at least eschatologically opposed to war (Isa 2:4; 46:9; 60; Hos. 2:18; Mic. 4:3-4; Zech. 9:9-10). A “Pentecostal” Christian, alive with the energies of the resurrection flowing through their members, opposes death in all its forms, eagerly acting as an agent of the restoration of true life, in collaborative partnership with the Holy Spirit.

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Soon after we overcome the anxiety of needing spiritual quick-fixes—thus setting our sights on a long-term journey of growth, depth and maturity—the difficult, and at times, demoralizing reality of such a journey becomes apparent. If I will bear much fruit over a long and steady process of growth, it means that I will not “arrive” by tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. To embrace a process of growth entails allowing the illusions of achieving spiritual prowess in a short span of time, of imminently overcoming all struggles, or being a member of the spiritually-elite must collapse to the floor in a shattering crash. Left standing without such illusions propping us up, the deflation of confidence can result in a moderate to severe depression. We might on one hand feel relief from the pressure to have arrived by tomorrow, but at the same time we realize that such attainment is significantly beyond our present reach and certainly outside of our immediate control. The strong emotional responses to such a realization indicates a significant misplacement of our hope as Christians. We hope for a near day when we can be free from the troubles that beset us. We hope for a soon time when the Christian life will not be a struggle. We hope in illusions about our own spiritual state and progress and thus approach collapse upon the discovery of their fallacious nature.

With our illusions swept out of the way, we come face to face with our own barrenness, the death and decay marring our existence on almost every level. Our hope cannot be set on our spiritual achievement – but on the God who brings order into existence out of nothing (creator ex nihilo) and gives life to the dead. In our spiritual journey, we have not been “set at the high noon of life, but at the dawn of a new day at the point where night and day grapple with each other. Hence the believer does not simply take the day as it comes, but looks beyond the day to the things which according to the promise of him who is the creator ex nihilo and raiser of the dead are still to come.” Our own struggles and barrenness do not intimidate or challenge God. Neither do they determine the course of our future. For belief in the God who creates out of nothing necessitates we understand the future to have possibilities in distinct discontinuity with the present.

“The spell of the dogma of hopelessness – ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes) – is broken where he who raises the dead is recognized to be God. Where in faith and hope we begin to live in the light of the possibilities and promises of this God, the whole fullness of life discloses itself as a life of history and therefore a life to be loved. Only in the perspective of this God can there possibly be more than philia, love to the existent and the like  – namely, agape, love to the non-existent, love to the unlike, the unworthy, the worthless, to the lost, the transient and the dead; a love that can take upon it the annihilating effects of pain and renunciation because it receives its power from hope of a creation ex nihilo. Love does shut its eyes to the non-existent and say it is nothing, but becomes itself the magic power that brings it into being. In its hope, love surveys the open possibilities of history. In love, hope brings all things into the light of the promises of God.” (Theology of Hope, Jurgen Moltmann, 31-32)

A recognition of our own need and lack may initially be demoralizing, but in fact contains within itself a most remarkable possibility. By bringing our own unworthiness, our own lostness, our own transience and death “into the light of the promises of God,” their permanence is broken. We no longer have to pretend such death does not exist and neither do we need to fool ourselves into thinking it will be gone tomorrow. Rather, through faith in the God who raises the dead, having our hope truly set on Him, we are able to extend agape love to the reality that exists within ourselves, which is nothing more than receiving love from God in truth. With our illusions gone, we can offer much needed acceptance to our broken selves, a self which had gone for much time under the heavy yoke of self-rejection, self-scorn and self-hatred. Such self-hatred came in the form of delusional spiritual ideals, which though looking noble, all the while were scorning the true broken self which lie concealed behind them.

“An acceptance of the present which cannot and will not see the dying of the present is an illusion and a frivolity – and one which cannot be grounded on eternity either. The hope that is staked on the creator ex nihilo becomes the happiness of the present when it loyally embraces all things in love, abandoning nothing to annihilation but bringing to light how open all things are to the possibilities in which they can live and shall live.”

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All three of these prayers for the “spirit of prayer” are inspired by these themes from Romans 8:

Gracious Lord, who saved us in the hope of the resurrection: fill us with your Spirit, that we who live in the time between the breaking of dawn and the fullness of day, encumbered with much weakness, not knowing how to pray, may find help as the Spirit intercedes through us with groans too deep for words, united to the suffering cry of all creation, believing we will see your goodness in the land of the living, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who created heaven and earth by an overflow of your tender, faithful love: as the entire creation suffers in hope that it will be set free from the bondage to decay, may we who by your Spirit have a foretaste of the freedom of the glory of the children of God, by that same Spirit groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly, identifying compassionately, praying fervently, with and for the redemption of our bodies and the resurrection of life, that your will for the fullness of life would be brought to birth on earth as it is in heaven, through Jesus the Messiah, your Son, our Lord…

God of hope: give us grace to perceive the depth and reality of suffering which pervades our entire age and the entire creation. Then so clothe us with the Spirit of love and compassion, that crying out from the depths we would not remain silent, praying that your will for the restoration of all things would come to pass, even in our own day, through Jesus the Messiah your Son our Lord…

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“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”  “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.”  John 20:11-14

This is a most curious of passages. In all the other gospel narratives of the resurrection of Jesus, the angel(s) at the tomb give dramatic revelatory statements like “Why do you look for the living among the dead;” “He is not here, He is risen.” However, in John the angel makes a seemingly obtuse and even insensitive statement. He asks a woman standing outside a tomb why she is crying? Why might a woman standing by a tomb be crying? This seems blatantly obvious to anyone, let along an angel. This hints to us that more is going on here.

Rather than a revelation coming from the words of the angels, we get a description of the location of the angels. They are were Jesus’ body was, one at the head, and one at the foot. This creates a visual image that would have been familiar for first century Jews (by story and Scripture, rather than from experience of course!), that of the Ark of the Covenant.  This sole item that occupied the central and holiest part of the tabernacle and later the temple was covered by two cherubim, which from the best that we can tell are angelic-like figures.

Between the two cherubim was the precise place where God would meet with His people (Ex. 25:22). Moses would hear the voice of God speak to him from between the two wings of the cherubim (Num. 7:89). Between the two cherubim was the place where the Lord of the hosts of heaven was considered to be actually enthroned on earth (1 Sam. 4:4. 1 Chron. 13:6). The central ritual by which the forgiveness of sins was mediated to the people was through sprinkling blood on the cover of the ark (Lev. 16:15ff). In between the two cherubim was the place where God’s glory, his manifest shekinah presence dwelt. The ark was in a sense the meeting place between heaven and earth, where God and sinful humanity met and in a remarkable way met in mercy and forgiveness.

The irony here is that the place of the ark of the covenant – lost for centuries (since the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.), and certainly not dwelling in Herod’s temple has shown up in the most unlikely of places – in the place of death – in a tomb. The glory of God – his holiness and very nature on display is manifested in the place traditionally most antithetical to holiness – death. Here the victory of God over even death itself is displayed as Jesus rises from the dead and now the glory of God dwells in that place of triumph. This is not the redemption of death, but rather its reversal. The very glory of God dwelt in a tomb and defeated death in the resurrection of Jesus. Death, far from being outside of the reach of God is what He decisively defeated in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That which seems farthest from God’s intervention, those areas of pain, weakness, depression, despair, disease and death are not simply to be reconciled with and resigned to. Rather, these are the very places where God’s glory and resurrection life will manifest and display the character and heart of the loving, compassionate, merciful God who “gives life to dead and calls into being things that do not exist.” (Rom. 4:17)

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This is my first and rather uneventful entry in my new blog. I figure for such a moment I should do nothing more or less than plot my course. I like to think of myself as a pilgrim, living in a world of sorrow, pain, death and decay with my sights set on a Day yet to come when the old order of things will pass away and all things are made new, when Jesus himself will establish justice, truth, freedom and love in the entire earth, and bring all who are His into the eternal fellowship of his family. Yet even now, an undreamt of love for life can emerge as glimmers of the coming Day of God diffuse over the horizon, as the image of God’s fair beauty shines forth victorious over the blight of a broken world. So that’s what I plan to do here: share some thoughts, mostly from Scripture, but occasionally from telling experiences, that may strengthen your heart in hope and your life in the noble task of giving yourself as a gift of love to God, his people and all creation.

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