The Blank Tile Reverend Dr. Benton J. Trawick Grace Presbyterian Church May 20, 2018 Genesis 1:1-2 Ezekiel 37: 1-13 Acts 2: 1-21 On sultry summertime evenings at the beach, one oF our Family’s Favorite pastimes is a rousing game oF Scrabble. It may tell you much about our Family that we think Scrabble is “rousing,” but there you go. To begin a game oF Scrabble, each player draws seven small tiles that are imprinted with a letter oF the alphabet. A point value is assigned to each letter—more common letters, like vowels, are worth one point; less common letters like J, Q, or Z are worth 8 or even ten points. As the game progresses, players try to earn the highest score by using the letter tiles to Form, connect, or add on to words on the game board. AFter each turn, the player draws new tiles to replace the ones that were played. Now sometimes, when your turn comes around, it is easy to Form a word and Find a spot to place it. The letters you have randomly drawn come together immediately to spell a word like cat, or hat, or needle or noodle, or apogee or perigee or energy or synergy. 1 But there are other times when you have no place to move. Perhaps there’s no open space on the board, or perhaps you Find yourselF with two J’s, an X, three R’s and a Q, and everything adds up to nothing. (By the way, iF you are sitting there thinking, “wait a minute, there’s only one J in a Scrabble set,” you take your Scrabble a little too seriously and you need to get out more). But the point is, sometimes when you look at the game board and you look at your available letters, the possibilities can Fade away to nothing. At those times, there is a wonderFul little giFt that is included in the game oF Scrabble— the blank tile. The blank tile is a playing piece oF unlimited possibility. While it has no point value, it can become any letter: iF you need a vowel, it is an A or an E, iF you need a consonant, it is a P, Z, or S. And with the blank tile added to the mix, there is suddenly room to move on a jammed-up game board, or a chaos oF letters suddenly Forms a meaningFul word. L,V,E, a letter combination which is meaningless, becomes love, or live, or even lave, all oF which have meaning. The blank tile is the wild card, it is the master key, it is the something where nothing seems possible tile. And on this Pentecost Sunday, I am Finding the blank tile to be an apt image as we think oF the work oF the Holy Spirit. The work oF the Holy Spirit, you see, is oFten the work oF possibility, oF newness unimagined, oF movement where there seems no room to move, oF hope not hoped. IF we go back as Far as scripture can take us, back to the very beginning oF Genesis, the First movement we encounter in our Foundational creation story is the movement oF the 2 Spirit oF God. The earth was a Formless void, the storyteller writes, and darkness covered the Face oF the deep, while a wind From God, or the Spirit oF God, swept over the Face oF the waters. The same Hebrew word, Ruach, is translated as wind, and breath and Spirit: we might call it the “liFe wind.” So, we imagine a place oF emptiness, oF liFelessness, oF Formlessness and soundlessness—but with the movement oF the Spirit, the First spark is struck From creation’s tinderbox and LIFE begins. Into a jumble oF precreation chaos, a primordial alphabet soup—the blank tile is introduced, and newness, possibility, LIFE is the result! Nothing, Spirit, Something—it is our Foundational story! Or again, we can Fast Forward to our second scripture lesson, which records the incredible vision experienced by the prophet Ezekiel as the Hebrew people are languishing in exile in Babylon. Now I want us to think For a moment about exile, not as an ancient historical artiFact, a single event that took place more than 2500 years ago that has no meaning For us today. I want us to think oF exile, oF THE EXILE, as a metaphor. Let’s remind ourselves oF what has happened in the exile to the people who have been called God’s chosen people. There is a scene in the movie Toy Story 2—it is a scene to break your heart. There is a doll, Jessie, who has been the cherished, inseparable companion oF a little girl, the apple oF her eye, the beloved oF her heart. But as a soulFul and sorrowFul Sarah McLachlan song plays (When Somebody loved me…everything was beautiFul), the film shows the driFt oF the doll Jessie’s existence—From the little girl’s arms, closely held and 3 loved, to a place on her pillow, still loved but not as near—to a place beneath the bed, Fallen and Forgotten, to a cardboard box at a donation station—abandoned and no longer loved. That scene might encapsulate For us the experience oF God’s people—once chosen and thriving, the Holy City and the Holy temple at the center oF the world and the heart oF God’s aFFections—but then, the driFt and the tumble and the discarding. Their army is defeated. Their Holy City Jerusalem, once thought to be invincible, is sacked and her proud walls reduced to rubble. The Jerusalem temple, the symbolic dwelling place oF God in their midst, is violated and desecrated and burned. The people are hauled away en masse to live as servants in a land hundreds oF miles From their home. Their king, Zedekiah, is Forced to watch as his sons and heirs to his royal line are killed; then he is blinded, so that the last sight he ever sees will be the extinction oF his line and the end oF his kingdom. No city, no temple, no homeland, no king, no future. Israel, once dearly loved, has been exiled to Babylon, dumped at the donation box oF history. It is in this setting oF exile and dead ends that Ezekiel sees a vision inspired by God. The prophet is transported, in his mind’s eye, to a vast valley Filled with dry bones. The bones mean that liFe and hope are gone From this barren place. The dryness indicates that life and hope have been gone For a long, long time. The boneyard isn’t a gruesome place, it isn’t even a sad or a horriFying place anymore…it’s just a nothing place, an utterly liFeless place. Sunlight glints on bleached bone; in the stiFling silence Ezekiel can almost HEAR the heat. It is a vision oF a place with no Future, no present, even the past is so Far past that it makes no diFFerence here. Think oF it as a place where no words are possible. And then, in his vision, God speaks to Ezekiel and says, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And Ezekiel’s answer is the only correct one— “O Lord God, You know. And only you know. I certainly don’t know. Though I cannot imagine. 4 But God invites Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the breath, to the Ruach, to the liFe wind, to the Spirit.” And Ezekiel speaks as God invites—introduces the blank tile into the place oF no words—and scattering becomes gathering, and sinew returns to bone and Flesh returns to sinew, and liFe returns to Flesh and hope returns where there was none. For Ezekiel, the vison oF the dry bones is a metaphor For what God will do to and For the exiled, hopeless, homeless, seemingly dead nation oF ancient Israel. And For us? For us, the vision is an aFFirmation oF the Spirit’s power. Where hope is unseen, even un- see-able, the spirit wind blows and any dead end can mark a new beginning. Or one more scene, on this day oF Pentecost—we recall that First Pentecost assembly. Jesus’ Followers are gathered in Jerusalem, Following the ascension oF the resurrected Christ. They Find themselves Faced with what would seem an impossible task: to take the message and teachings and gospel oF Jesus Christ into the world, with the one they Followed no longer there as their leader. These are not especially educated people; not especially wealthy people; not superstars or superheroes, just ordinary Folk. And they are to carry the message, this handFul oF Folk, into a world oF enemies and empires. It seems a Fool’s errand. All that they have been promised is that Jesus will send a helper, the Spirit—but the who, what, when, where, and how oF that promise are a little vague, and at the moment, they sit as iF looking at a rack oF disconnected scrabble tiles—no space to move and not a word among them. But remembering the Pentecost story, once again, the liFe wind, the blank tile, comes into the mix—and suddenly they not only have words, they have words in every language. Disciples who had nowhere to go now have literally EVERYWHERE to go, as the Spirit breathes liFe and hope and purpose. 5 So—we’ve looked at three scripture lessons, three illustrations oF the Spirit’s work—and yet—what does that prove? The cynic might well say, the creation story, the event oF creation is so mind-bogglingly distant that we humans cannot conceive oF a time when the world we now know was not here.