Pentecost Sunday, 2009

Collected Texts

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“The Law of the Spirit of Life”

In the valley of his vision, the prophet Ezekiel is confronted with a disconcerting image of the lifelessness and forsakenness of the whole house of his people Israel: a landscape strewn with old, dried-out bones. It is a stark picture of covenantal death – the parched state of a nation devoid of the blessing of God for having turned away from that special relationship it had entered into with its Lord at Mt. Sinai, which could only be described as a marriage union with the Almighty. And as he views the carnage, the Spirit of the Lord asks Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And on the knife-edge between hope and despair, Ezekiel responds, “O Lord God, You know.”

But then into the stillness of that valley of death, the Word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones, “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live.”

“So I prophesied as I was commanded,” says Ezekiel. “And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there was no breath in them.”

So the word of the Lord came again, “Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”’” “So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”

What we see in the vision of the valley of dry bones is a visual picture of the Word we heard this morning which came to the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them… But this is the covenant that I will make with house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

What is promised is a kind of covenantal resurrection and rebirth. What is promised is a new covenant, not like the old one made at Sinai - the covenant of the Law, which the people of God could only break. What is promised is a totally new kind of relationship to the Law.

You see, as the long as the Law of God remained written only on tables of stone, that is, as long as it remained only an external force outside of the people of God – outside of us - it would forever remain a kind of tyrant, convicting and condemning and calling us down for coming up short, but giving us absolutely no power to do what it commands. And therefore through sin, the Law, written on tables of stone, confronting the sinner from the outside like an unfeeling, unmerciful judge, became the very cause of covenantal death – like the picture we have in the valley of dry bones.

St. Paul says in Romans chapter 7, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.” So not only does the Law convict and condemn, but so long as it remains only a force outside of me, it actually puts in my mind the desire to do just the opposite of what it commands. This is what I call the “Don’t-eat-the-cookie-effect” of the Law. When your mom said to you when you were a kid, “Don’t eat that cookie,” what did you immediately want to do? Eat the cookie! And if she hadn’t told you not to eat it, you probably wouldn’t have had such a great desire to eat it in the first place. That’s the Law, as an external force, in action. It’s made operative by sin to cause rebellion and ultimately death.

You might be surprised to know that Martin Luther considered the Law, conceived in this way, as one of the four great enemies of Mankind, right up there with sin, the devil, and the fear of death. The Law of God, an enemy of Man! St. Paul can even call it “the law of sin and death” so long as it remains this force external to our hearts.

But now, says St. Paul, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” In Christ Jesus we are free from Law as a cruel taskmaster that works us till we’re dead. For now through the Gospel the Spirit of God has written the Law upon our hearts. We have an entirely new relationship to the Law, one in which it becomes the very delight of our hearts. For God promised through Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you… I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues, and you will keep my judgments to do them… and you shall be My people, and I will be your God.”

That’s what we celebrate today on this Pentecost Sunday – the giving of the new law of the Spirit of life which makes us free from the old law of sin and death, and breathes new life into us and causes us to walk upright in the ways of the Lord. Why do you think Pentecost came on Pentecost (if you get my meaning)? Pentecost was the Jewish holiday which celebrated the anniversary of the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. Did you know that? And God, with His amazing sense of timing, and with His amazing sense for the dramatic, decided that this was the day He would give the new law of the Spirit – the Spirit which comes down from God not with a whole bunch of new commandments to bind us under an even greater burden, but to enter into us and to give us new hearts and new minds that we may keep the commandments of God from the heart – “that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter,” says Paul. “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

That’s what’s going on on Pentecost. For what do we see and hear when the Holy Spirit is first poured out upon the disciples? We first hear the sound of a mighty rushing wind. To what was Ezekiel commanded to prophesy? “Prophesy to the wind, son of man… and say to the wind,.. ‘breathe on these slain that they may live.’” Both the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma, can mean “wind” or breath or “spirit.” It could just as easily be read, “Prophesy to the breath, son of man,” or “Prophesy to the Spirit, and say to the Spirit, ‘breathe on these slain.’” “The sound of a mighty rushing breath entered the house.” The ruach, the wind, the breath, the Spirit entered into the house and filled the disciples of Christ, and, like those old, dry bones, they became an exceedingly great army for the cause of the Gospel.

What’s the next thing we see coming upon the disciples as they are being filled with the Holy Spirit? “And there appeared to them tongues as of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” Remember, this was the anniversary of the giving of the Law from Mt. Sinai. And how did the people of God receive the Law at Mt. Sinai? “These are the words the Lord spoke to all your assembly, in the mountain from the midst of the fire… ‘I am the Lord your God, thou shalt have no other gods before me…” The fire is a visual symbol that connects the two events.

Finally, we see the disciples newly filled with the Spirit going out and proclaiming the wonderful works of God in all the languages of the people who had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. Isn’t it a marvelous coincidence that at the time there was a rabbinic tradition that said that the Law was spoken by God from Mt. Sinai in the languages of the 70 nations of the world? Now the law of the Spirit – the Gospel – goes out in all the languages of the nations.

So you see, to us the Day of Pentecost is the celebration of the giving of the Law, but of the better law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, written not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart.

But now I know what you’re thinking, because I’ve been thinking the same thing all week. If it’s true that the Holy Spirit has written the Law of God on my heart, and if the law of the Spirit makes me free from the law of sin and death, then why do I feel like such a miserable sinner? Why do I feel like I have so little power over my sins? Well, you wouldn’t even be asking that question unless the Spirit of God had in fact put his law in your heart. The very fact that you recognize yourself to be a miserable sinner and are disgusted with yourself for being so given to your sins is evidence that Holy Spirit has made the Law of God the delight of your heart in the inner man. Take comfort in the fact that you feel like such a miserable sinner. If you didn’t, then you’d need to be worried, because then, it wouldn’t mean you were perfectly sanctified and without sin, it would mean you were unfeeling about your sins, which would be the evidence that the Holy Spirit was not at work in your heart. Take comfort from the fact that you struggle with your sin. It’s that very struggle that shows that you have a new heart and a new Spirit dwelling in you. For you are engaged in the struggle of the Christian. Even the great apostle Paul had this struggle, for he says, “what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me… For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

This is a day of great celebration, for it is the day we Christians celebrate the anniversary of the giving of the new and better law of the Spirit of life which makes us free from the law of sin and death. In the struggle with our sin we must trust that “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Like those old dry bones, the Spirit of Christ has breathed His breath of life into us to cause us to stand upright before God and to walk in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. And the very fact that we struggle with our sins is the testimony that the Spirit of God has indeed written the Law of God on our minds and has made it the inner delight of our hearts. Let us march forward in that confidence. +