Pentecost, Year B, 2024

When I was in the sixth grade, my friend Erica and I devised a secret code language through which we would pass notes to one another. Each of us had a key, and would then “decode” notes so that no one else could read them if they somehow fell into the wrong hands. But those notes were kind of a project, to write them, “translate” them into our code, and then to “translate” them back into English. The secret language only lasted a couple of months. Turns out sixth graders don’t have secrets that are worth that much work. We did devise a new code a few years later, but in that code our notes were totally normal except for the code names we used for the boys we liked. If you look at my ninth grade yearbook, you’ll find a note from Erica about me and “Banana”, whose identity remains known to Erica and me alone.

The apostles had a special knowledge. Like the identity of Banana, only much bigger. They had the identity of the Messiah. And unlike Erica and myself, they wanted the world to decode their message. They wanted to pass out the key. But they didn’t have Google translate. They couldn’t use Duolingo or get a Rosetta Stone subscription to improve their Arabic. So what’s an apostle to do? The answer, as is so often the case, is to wait and to trust in the Lord.

Ezekiel demonstrates first how to do this. The hand of the Lord by way of the spirit of the Lord places Ezekiel in this valley full of bones - not just bones, but very dry bones, so they’d been there a while. And the Lord asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” which feels like a rhetorical question. The answer should be “no”. But Ezekiel is more clever than that, so he answers, “O Lord God, you know.” By not really answering, Ezekiel is affirming the Lord’s power, saying “I know what the answer appears to be, but You, Lord, are the judge of this.” Then the Lord tells Ezekiel what to say to prophesy to the dry bones. And Ezekiel does so. Even though this is his third vision, I wonder if Ezekiel felt silly standing there surrounded by very dry bones, telling them to hear the word of the Lord. But Ezekiel knows to trust the Lord so he does as he’s told and prophecies to the very dry bones. And the bones regain their sinews and flesh. After one additional prophecy they regain their breath and become a multitude.

In ancient Hebrew, there is no distinction between “breath”, “wind”, and “spirit”. They are all the same word, ruach. Every time you see one of those words used in the valley of dry bones narrative, it is a choice the translator made, determining which word to use for ruach. It’s no accident that this story of the Spirit of the Lord issuing commands, causing breath to enter the house of Israel, is being read on Pentecost. Acts is not written in Hebrew as Ezekiel is, but rather in Greek. When Peter quotes the prophet Joel, “God declares that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” he does so using the Septuagint - the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. But Peter’s point of reference is Hebrew, and looking at the passage in Hebrew, we find that what will be poured out upon all flesh is the Lord’s ruach. Peter relies on the prophets to explain what is happening here in front of all the people - that, interpreting what everyone has witnessed through the prophets, a violent ruach came from heaven - as our Gospel hymn today said, is “unleashed on earth”. All of them were filled with the Holy Ruach and began to speak in other languages, as the Ruach gave them ability. That is what Peter is proclaiming has just occurred before them. 

In the introduction of Marcus Borg’s Evolution of the Word, in which he arranges the books of the New Testament in approximate historical order, he writes of trying to teach a New Testament introductory college course in historical order rather than canonical order, which means that instead of starting with Matthew, he began with First Thessalonians. His logic in organizing his class in such a way was that all of these kids grew up in Christendom. Surely they must know the basics of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, right? Wrong. After a very confusing first week, with students not understanding the coded language and Old Testament references, Dr Borg went back to teaching the class the way he had done in the past.

We, as the church, have an opportunity to live with tongues of fire upon us, remembering that we carry this good news with us and have it to share with a world that needs Jesus. We each have a tongue of fire. A “language” we speak, be it that of music, of literature, of sports, of tabletop games, of trains, of video games, the “language” of any multitude of cultures, be it very broad or very niche. From wherever and whatever “language” we use to enter into the conversation, we can see and experience through that lens Jesus acting in the world.

We see this in scripture which is part of what makes it hard to read. Writers assume their readers know other things and we don’t always know or understand the assumptions they’re making. We especially see this in the epistles. Because they are letters written to specific places addressing specific problems, there are a whole host of things we don’t understand. Language needs culture; it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are things we talk about amongst one another that, in 2000 years, archaeologists could grossly misinterpret. Writer Russell T. Davies plays with this in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special. The Doctor ends up on a spaceship taking tourists to Earth called the Titanic, the name so chosen because it’s the most famous ship from Earth - not knowing why it’s so famous. The ship’s historian, complete with a degree in “Earthonomics”, explains to the ship’s passengers that “I shall be taking you to old London town in the country of U.K. ruled over by good King Wenceslas. Now, human beings worship the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws, and his wife, Mary. And every Christmas Eve, the people of U.K. go to war with the country of Turkey. They then eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner, like savages.”

We have an opportunity to get it right. To learn from and share with one another. To be open to each other’s languages. To be open to hearing from other experts - the historian with his degree in “Earthonomics” was a bit pompous, unwilling to hear that he might not be accurate about what a turkey dinner is. To be open to experiencing the living, moving ruach in new and unexpected ways and to share those experiences with others. Amen.