THE RUACH OF GOD

BY DAVID ANNETT MAY 20, 2018

It is Confirmation Sunday in the life of our church, a day when we celebrate the dedication and commitment that our young people have given toward learning more about our church and their faith this year. It is also Pentecost Sunday in our liturgical year together, so we have a second reason to celebrate today.

When you hear the word Pentecost, you might conjure up images of fire and people speaking in different languages, as we saw expertly displayed in our video, and very likely you may think about the Holy Spirit. Indeed, this is the day in which we remember the story of God’s Spirit rushing like a great wind into the room where the disciples sat and beginning what would become the Christian church. This year during confirmation, we spent a lot of time discussing who God is. We talked a lot about Jesus, what his ministry was about, what his life and death meant, and the promises contained in his rising on Easter. We heard about the history of Knox Church, and took time to learn about the Reformation on this 500th anniversary year of the nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. But the Holy Spirit? We certainly touched on it, and explored it, but I would venture to say our Confirmands might have a better grasp on who Martin Luther was than exactly what this Spirit of God truly is.

That is not actually so strange in our church, both today and in its history. For instance, our class curriculum is built around the Apostle’s Creed, one of the church’s very oldest and most foundational documents, which starts by talking about God, the maker of heaven and earth, creator of all things. It then uses the majority of its content speaking to who Jesus was and is to us as a church. It spends time talking about the holy catholic, or universal, church, the saints in our lives and who have gone before, how we are forgiven and what is to come for us in our eternity with God. And the Holy Spirit? It merely gets a nod. “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” That is all there is for us to dive into. Theologians have developed a more nuanced understanding of God’s Spirit over the centuries with much being written on the subject, and yet today this is still one of the harder areas of the Christian tradition for many of us to wrap our minds around, let alone talk about.

But look at the importance that the Spirit of God plays in our New Testament passage today. The disciples are now 53 days removed from seeing their friend and leader Jesus crucified, and find themselves alone. In Acts 1 the disciples are taking care of the business of replacing Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, with Matthias. And that was it. That was the only clear task set before them, they were now a fully populated group, but still without a leader. One might imagine them to be afraid, knowing what happened to Jesus, and how most of them had to flee or deny being associated with him to save their lives. There seems to be no clear path forward for this group… and then everything changes. The writer of Acts says “Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing – and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there.” In a moment, where there was once no hope, where there was uncertainty and isolation, God’s very Spirit filled the place and the people, giving them life and direction and hope for the future. The church had begun, its mission laid before them, and the apostles went with the Holy Spirit as their companion.

The Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Gospels, and Jesus certainly talks about the Holy Spirit, but this passage is the first time that the Spirit plays a role in the New Testament since it descended like a dove at Jesus’ baptism. However, these New Testament stories are not our first encounter with the Holy Spirit in scripture. There is a common misconception that the relationship in our faith tradition between God the Creator, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is a separate, even temporal relationship. Often it is said that God the Creator operated in Old Testament times and gave way to the work of God the Son in Jesus Christ in the Gospels. And then here, in Acts 2, after Jesus had ascended into heaven, leaving the disciples all alone, God the Holy Spirit finally comes into the world and is with us to this day.

That kind of a timeline with beginnings and ends to each part of the trinity is not actually what we find in our sacred texts. Instead we find that the Spirit of God has been active and present since the very beginning of creation. Genesis chapter one: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The Hebrew word for wind here is Ruach which can actually mean three things – wind, breath and spirit. This is a very important word in the Hebrew Bible; it is found all over the text, 387 times to be exact. God’s wind ushers in creation. God breaths into the dust to create humans. The Spirit of God lives in Prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel. The wind of God blows over the earth to subside the flood and save Noah and the ark. God sends God’s Ruach to give life, and when the Ruach is taken away life is simply not able to continue. This word holds great power and is bound up in God’s creating and recreating in the world, and even in our lives as human beings.

When talking about the Holy Spirit in class this year, our Confirmation students listened to theologian Rob Bell’s perspective on this connection between the translations of Ruach. Bell notes how scripture repeatedly speaks of the Spirit of God as residing in each one of us, as intimate and vital as our very breath. Theologian Henri Nouwen writes in a similar fashion when he says, “When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we speak about the breath of God, breathing in us. We are seldom aware of our breathing. It is so essential for life that we only think about it when something is wrong with it. So too, the Spirit of God is like our breath. God’s spirit is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. We might not often be aware of it, but without it we cannot live a ‘spiritual life.’ It is the Holy Spirit of God who prays in us, who offers us the gifts of love, forgiveness, kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace, and joy. It is the Holy Spirit who offers us the life that death cannot destroy.” The Ruach of God is intimate, it is transformative, it is lifegiving, and it has always been with us.

We know that the Ruach is present in the Hebrew Bible because we heard one of the stories in which it makes a grand entrance in our Ezekiel passage this morning. The Wind of God, and its lifegiving power are on full display here. This passage is commonly referred to as “The Valley of Dry Bones” for the description that the prophet Ezekiel gives to what he sees before him. Bones, without life, without hope, strewn about until the wind of God causes them to suddenly reassemble in a great clatter. They are strapped with sinew and flesh and skin, and finally, reanimated with a breath called forth from the divine wind. This story is sometimes pointed to as a rare reference in the Hebrew Bible of an afterlife for the dead, but most scholars stress that Ezekiel’s actual intent here was more metaphor about the nation of Israel than anything physiological. A metaphorical reading of this text holds tremendous power because Ezekiel is saying that God’s Breath can give life to that which was dead. For the nation of Israel, living in exile in Babylon, that meant that their situation and condition were not to be permanent, that there would be life again for them as a nation. For us today, that means that there is no scenario too desperate, too desolate for the winds of God to be able to reanimate. That even in our most broken moments, when our relationships, or doubts, or fears, or depression, or addictions are rendering our lives as little more than dry bones cast about a valley, it is the Ruach of God which has the final word. The presence of God’s Breath means that there can be life again, in any situation, no matter how hopeless it may seem.

This is the good news for each of us found in the presence of God’s Spirit. But I think this Ezekiel passage contains two other pieces about the Ruach that I hope are not lost on us as God’s people. First, there is a difference in how the Spirit of God began its work in Acts and in Ezekiel. In Acts 2, the Spirit of God came in, unprompted, and changed the lives of the people who came into its presence. I have no doubt that the Breath of God acts in this way in our world. But in Ezekiel, God tells the prophet that he must prophesy to the bones for the breath to enter them. Surely, God’s Breath can do this work on its own, but there are times when God desires us to be involved in the process. This idea of interceding on behalf of those who are in need, of ushering in the healing wind of God is a thread that is woven throughout all of Scripture. We know, each of us I would guess, some people or situations around us who are in desperate need of the healing winds of God to given them life, and maybe God is waiting on us to start the process. Maybe it is up to us to take the first step, through prayer or action, that will start the winds of change, that will cause breath to enter a situation without life. Friends, God needs this of us, requires this of us. We have to be the ones caring for those around us so that the Spirit can do its work.

The final piece that I don’t want us to miss this morning is that Ezekiel did not just randomly end up in the valley of the dry bones. Not only did God require that he act first to bring about lifegiving breath, but it was the Ruach of God that led him there to begin with. The text says, “I was led out by the Spirit of the Lord and set down in the middle of a valley full of bones, and the Spirit led me all around them.” Ezekiel was probably not looking for a place of death and despair that day, but the Spirit led him there anyway so that he could be about the work of God in a situation that needed it.

Ezekiel’s willingness to be led and follow the Spirit was the act of faith that sets up the whole story. Might there be times in our own life when we feel, somewhere very deep down, that we are being called to follow God’s Wind to a place or people that need help? Are there times when your heart stirs and your soul aches, but it is much more comfortable to keep a safe distance away? It may be up to us to follow the wind of God as it “blows where it may”—even if it is calling us to be involved in ushering in the breath of life in scary or seemingly unfixable situations. We have to believe that the Spirit of God has the power to bring life to even the driest bones which seem to have no hope of rising. But it might take agency on our part. We might be called by that holy wind to follow where it leads, and to cry out for it amidst the injustice we are faced with.

Maybe God’s Spirit is telling you to care about and act toward some way of confronting the violence in our schools and in our country. Maybe God’s breath is calling you to breathe life into new and creative solutions to the terrible and very complicated situation in the Middle East. Perhaps God’s wind will lead you to volunteer with a local mission partner, or learn about a social justice issue you did not know much about, or to be the friend to someone at school who really needs one, or maybe to care for a neighbor in your midst. If you choose to follow it, the wind of God can nudge you toward these places where God’s love and life are yearned for.

God’s Spirit is here in this place with each of us and offers to each of us its presence to guide us, to help us, to pray in us and offer us the gifts of love and forgiveness, peace and joy. God’s Breath is present in us with the ability to reanimate even the dry bones in our lives. God’s Wind will lead us into places where its life changing power is so badly needed. Today, our family of faith gets bigger, and it is up to each of us, and especially the newest among us, to lead us to where the Wind of God is calling. May we all be faithful enough, and brave enough, to follow where it blows. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ruach of God. Amen.