"Touched by the Spirit" Ezekiel 37: 1-14 Acts 2: 1-21; Pentecost

Two illustrations that are impacting my sermon work this week:

1.  General Electric wind energy commercial: begins with young boy   (perhaps Italian) running the last few steps with wind blowing across him, onto an overhang is on a overhang above the ocean with a jar that he opens, holds up in the air to capture the wind, and then seals tightly with the lid.  He begins a journey back to somewhere; runs down a path; takes a trains across a bridge (pretty young girl is sitting across from him); steps across a stream rocks; walks through an open filed with snow-covered mountains in the background; rides in a sidecar of a motorcycle (complete with helmet and goggles);runs up dirt path to a home and burst in the door where a birthday party, complete with a birthday cake and lots of candles (it appears to be his grandfather celebrating his birthday); cake covered with candles; he gives jar to his grandfather, who opens it and wind elbows out candles and windows of house and even moves the clothes on the clothesline outside; they all look shocked and mother's hair is askew; then smiles; voice over "Capturing the wind and putting it to good use"  found on Milton Brasher-Cunningham's blog, http://donteatalone.com/run-and-catch-the-wind/ "run and Catch the Wind" May 31, 2009,

2. a  poem by Walter Brueggemann:

Blown by the Spirit...We Know Not Where

We hear the story of the wind at Pentecost,
     Holy wind that dismantles what was,
     Holy wind that evokes what is to be,
     Holy wind that overrides barriers and causes communication,

WE are dazzled, but then -- reverting to type --
     we wonder how to harness the wind,
        how to manage the wind by our technology,
        how to turn the wind to our usefulness,
        how to make ourselves managers of the wind.

Partly we do not believe such an odd talk
     because we are not religious freaks;
Partly we resist such a story,
     because it surges beyond our categories;
Partly we had imagined you to be more ordered
     and reliable than that.

So we listen, depart, and return to our ordered existence:
     we depart with only a little curiosity
                       but not yielding;
we return to how it was before,
     unconvinced but wistful, slightly praying for win,
                        craving for newness,
                         wishing to have it all available to us.

We pray toward the wind and wait, unconvinced but wistful.

Journal for Preachers, Volume XXXIII, number 4, Pentecost, 2010 (38).  Used by permission from Prayers for the Privileged People, Walter Brueggemann, Abingdon Press, 2008

The hand of the Lord takes Ezekiel down into a valley of dry bones.  The Lord asks Ezekiel, "Can these bones live?"  Ezekiel rightly answers, "O Lord God you know."  the story of hope in the face of despair that Israel feels after the Babylonian invasion.

It seems to me that our great hope, God can breathe life back into dry bones, might also be our greatest fear, that God will call us to new places.  I wonder what the people filled with new languages  in Acts felt as it became clear that were going to be sent to a new place?