Written by Shannon T.L. Kearns
05/23/2018
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Lately
I’ve been reading a book by Tim Ferris called “Tribe of Mentors”. In it
he asks over 50 leaders, across all sorts of fields of expertise, the
same eleven questions. Their answers range from the enlightening to the
silly. One of the joys of reading this book is the repetition of the
questions has caused me to reflect on how I would answer the questions.
One of the questions I’ve been reflecting on, especially as this day was
approaching, this day where we celebrate our graduates is this: “What
advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter
the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?” I’ve been thinking a
lot about what advice I would give to graduates of all schooling levels
as they prepare for the next stage in their journey.
There
are a couple of things that immediately come to mind: Read a lot, read
books that aren’t assigned to you, read outside of your areas of
interest and expertise. Be kind to everyone, but especially to people in
the service industry. Don’t be afraid to fail.
But
as I say those things they sound like a litany of cliches. The things
we tell to all of our graduates. Things like “Dream big” and “Follow
your passion” and “Please don’t move back home after you graduate.”
Okay, we don’t say that last one, but I know some of you are thinking
it.
Then
there are the unspoken pieces of advice that somehow we all
internalize: “Make a lot of money.” “Pursue the “American Dream”.
“Follow the prescribed rules of family and future.” Sure, we tell
ourselves (and our youth) that those things don’t matter, but then when
they do something that falls outside of that we get concerned. We ask
them if they are really sure they want to pursue the arts and maybe
shouldn’t they have a second major “just in case”.
I’m
sure we can all think of things that our families didn’t exactly say,
but that we felt. And the sense of failure we felt when we didn’t live
up to those unspoken ideals.
Advice
is a tricky thing because we all experience the world differently: from
different points of view, from different avenues of privilege, from
different life experiences so any advice we give is inherently impacted
by the place we occupy in the world.
And yet, there are lessons that can be passed on. There are truths that live inside of us, there are stories that shape us.
Can
you think of the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given (even if
you ignored it when it was given? Can you think of the advice you wish
you would have gotten; whether as a young person just about to head off
to college? Or as a new parent? Or even last month?
In
today’s Scripture texts we find some vital truths that we can
internalize and allow to shape our lives no matter if we’re heading off
to college, to our first job post college, figuring out how we want to
spend our retirement, or anywhere else along life’s journey.
But
first we need to be honest for a second. There is a lot of weird stuff
happening in today’s readings. In Ezekiel we’ve got dry bones coming to
life. In Acts we’ve got what appears to be tongues of fire and people
hearing and understanding different languages. We’ve got Jesus talking
about sending a “comforter”. There is a lot going on here. And yet it
all seems to go together. These stories, when put in conversation with
each other, point out some pretty profound things.
Let’s
start with the weirdest: Ezekiel. How many of you remember hearing this
story growing up? I don’t remember quite when or how I heard it;
whether it was in faith formation classes or in church or even through
art but I remember envisioning this giant field of skeletons coming to
life. Kind of creepy. And, actually, not at all what the text says. But
even now if you were to google Ezekiel and the dry bones, all of the
artwork you would see would have scores of dancing skeletons. It seems
to me that this erroneous artwork proves a point: how often do we read
and see what we think is in the text instead of what is actually there?
How often do we miss the point because we don’t understand the whole
context?
Ezekiel
is written to a people in exile. Far from their homes. Scattered and
separated from the land that nourished them and from the people that
raised them. And the longer the exile wore on the more hopeless the
people became. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine what it would be like
to be separated from everything and everyone you know? And then, as
people in your community start to die they have to be buried far away
from their homeland. And the children that you are raising have never
been to the place you still call home: their home is here in this
strange land.
You
start to wonder if you’ll ever get home. If your home even exists
anymore. The people were losing hope. The text says that the people were
crying: ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are
completely finished.’
Most
of us here probably haven’t experienced this level of exile (though of
some of you have). But others of us have experienced smaller exiles:
Maybe you came out and were no longer able to go home to the church you
grew up in. Or maybe you weren’t able to go home to the house you grew
up. You are exiled. Maybe you’ve struggled with your body: with your
gender identity or illness or disease and you’ve felt exiled from even
the intimacy of your own skin. Maybe you’ve had a relationship that was
once beautiful and life giving that instead became fractured and broken
beyond repair and you felt exiled.
What do you do in these moments of exile?
Often
in our moments of exile we find ourselves like Ezekiel standing in
field of dry bones. With our hope lost. We survey the landscape around
us and we see no future. No life. We are stuck in situations and
relationships that offer no sustenance. And we feel exiled.
In
all of our lives we will experience moments of exile. We will
experience broken relationships. We will feel broken. What can be done?
The first truth of today’s texts: No matter how hopeless it seems we can believe in the hope of resurrection.
Even
in the midst of the most dreadful exile, there is hope to be found.
There is life to be found. But this isn’t a cheap hope. A “everything
will be okay” hope. This isn’t the promise that you’re going to get your
old life back. No, this is the promise that even in the midst of dry
bones there is life.
The
reality is sometimes we don’t get to come back from exile. Sometimes we
can’t go back home. The relationships are too broken, we are too
changed, home isn’t safe or healthy for us anymore. Sometimes the
marriage can’t be saved. Sometimes the church you grew up in isn’t the
church you can stay in. You need to come out, You need to transition,
and sometimes the places you were in can’t hold the new truth about you.
Sometimes the exile is permanent but there is still hope. Something new
can be born from those dry bones.
But
this hope of resurrection isn’t passive and that brings us to the
second truth: Sometimes you gotta do something to bring about the
resurrection.
Ezekiel
didn’t just hang out in the field and watch. God put him to work. God
told him to prophesy to the bones, to call the four winds, to get up and
do something in the midst of the exile.
Being
in dry places can feel immobilizing: whether because of grief or fear
or pain. But God calls us to get up. To prophesy. To call on the breath
to come back into the airless lungs.
Both
the Gospel text today and the the story in Acts, the Pentecost story,
are about the sending of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was crucified and
after he ascended after his resurrection, the new Christian community
was left feeling adrift. How would they know what to do now that their
leader and teacher wasn’t with them anymore? He had showed them so many
new things, new ways of being, new ways to understand the world around
them and the work of God in the world. How could they possible continue
the work without him?
Jesus
promised that a Comforter would come. A Spirit. The Spirit of God that
would reside and dwell within each of them. This Spirit would reveal
God’s truth to each heart.
This
Spirit would allow the movement to grow and spread so much larger and
faster because it wouldn’t be reliant on a single leader; instead this
Spirit would empower all of the followers of Jesus to be leaders, to do
the work wherever they are.
And that brings us to another truth: We can trust the Spirit to lead us.
This
is a truth that is both beautiful and terrifying. Because frankly? The
Spirit can lead us to do some scary stuff. The earliest Christians were
led to do all sorts of things that were looked upon as awful: things
like welcoming Gentiles and baptizing Eunuchs, things like letting women
lead, things like expanding the boundaries of who was in, things like
speaking truth to the unjust political powers.
And
the Spirit continues to sometimes call us to scary things: Like doing
your internship year in Texas, or spending a year in Rwanda. It can lead
you to being truthful about your identity in the face of a family who
can’t accept it. It can lead you to pursue your heart in spite of an
insecure job market.
But
the Spirit will lead you to wholeness and health and goodness. The
Spirit will lead you to abundant life. The Spirit will lead you in the
midst of the fear and following the Spirit will be worth it. So trust
the Spirit even when you are scared. Even when it goes against
tradition. Even when it leads you to unknown places.
What
dry bones do you need to speak to today? Where do you need to call
forth breath to bring life where there is no life? What do you need to
leave behind in order to walk into the future that is promised for you?
Where
is the Spirit leading you? What are you being called to do and be in
the world? What old truths are you needing to lay down to make space for
the new truths that are being revealed?
How
are you hearing the Spirit in your life right now? What are you doing
to be a part of the Kingdom of God that is here, in our midst, right
now? How are you carrying the joy and wonder of Pentecost into the world
around you?
So
these are the lessons we can carry from this text: We can believe in
the hope of the resurrection even in the midst of exile. We must do the
work to bring about the resurrection. We must follow the Spirit as she
leads us into all truth. We must carry the joy and wonder of the
movement of God into the world.
The post Where Is The Spirit Leading appeared first on Shannon T.L. Kearns.
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