If They Tear it Down, We'll Just Build Another One.

People of God, can these bones live?  People of God, can this church live?  People of God, can we live?  Today is the day the church is born.  Today is the day the Spirit shows up.  Today is the day that we cannot undo, any more than we can shove the toothpaste back into the tube after putting it on our brush.  There they were, having their festival, going about their merry ways celebrating the giving of the 10 Commandments, and then, all of the sudden, there was this great wind and something like tongues of fire and people heard foreigners - outsiders - outcasts - speaking in their own languages.  This is the day they couldn’t go back.  They couldn’t forget.  They couldn’t make the Holy Spirit go away.  They couldn’t do synagogue normally anymore.  Nothing is the same.  It starts here, leaving the good Jews scratching their heads, “Well, are we going to let anyone in, then?”

The church was called forward, and it was messy and uncomfortable and awkward, so much so that the sane people in the crowd started murmuring, “They must be drunk.”  That’s what I want to say to these people, to the people who are moved by the Holy Spirit.  That’s what I’m telling myself when the Holy Spirit shows up in my life.  It can’t be, can it?  It can’t be that we’re called to be church together, can it?  It can’t be that we are called to be a part of this mission, can it?  Like most good Lutherans, when the Holy Spirit shows up, we take off running the opposite direction.  She messes with the way we think church ought to go.  All those prayers, all those years, as we watched members find other homes.  All those prayers, all those years, as we watched our lives fall apart and learn how to pick them up again, each time with a few more cracks in them.  The Holy Spirit is out running lose in the world, and it seems its whole mission is to take a nice group of church people and show them how church is different from how they ever imagined it.  Today is the day that we are thrown out into the world, forced to learn its language, forced to see everything anew, forced to see God working in the far reaches of our experience.  Blinking as we step into the blinding light, there is no way back.

Today is the day God is calling the church forward, calling the church to let go of all its visions of the past, calling the church to let go of what it supposes the glory days were, and calling us into God’s new reality.  St. Peter isn’t supposed to look the way it did 100 years ago.  St. Peter isn’t supposed to look the way it did 30 years ago.  It’s not supposed to look the way it did 15 years ago.  Dear friends, we cannot go back.  We are not called backward, but we are called forward.  We are called to imagine this life, this church anew.

“If they tear it down, we’ll just build a new one,” the Abuna said to me about the church.  They had continued building on this site even though the permit was tied up in government paperwork and would never come back.  I couldn’t understand much Arabic, but I understood the twinkling in his eye, the note in his voice that said, “What we have can never be taken away.”

And here, in this valley of dry bones, there is a creaking, a wind, a movement, and it’s scary.  It’s scary to build a church knowing that it might be torn down.  It’s scary knowing all of your work might amount to a pile of bricks.  But will it?  Is that all we have been given here to work with?  Is that it?  Just a pile of bricks?  And I say to you what the Abuna said to me, “If they tear it down, we’ll just build a new one.”

This is what Jesus said about his body.  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  I will raise it up, and I will raise you with me.  I will not leave you orphaned.  The advocate has come, and it’s scary, coming with wind and fire, rattling through our bones, making a noise within us.  Dear brothers and sisters, the Spirit is moving.  It is moving through a valley that looked like it might be dead.  It is moving through lives that looked like they would never change.  It is moving through people that looked like they would never change the world.

There Peter was, witnessing all this.  And he opens his mouth.  Peter is no protagonist.  If this were Hollywood, at this point the audience would gasp and say, “Nooooooo!”  Then the strangest thing happens: Peter begins to preach, and it’s beautiful.  Borrowing from Joel, he says: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”  This story, which had been told to Peter and has been told to you, is the story that he tells.  This is the proclamation:  ²³this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. ²⁴But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 

It was impossible for him to be held in the power of death.  Death, the final enemy, has been conquered.  “Can these bones live?”  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  “If they tear it down, we’ll just build another one.”  Dear friends, this is the hope to which we have all been called.  It is this audacious hope that looks at a valley of dry bones and calls it to life.   It is this audacious hope that looks at sinners and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, proclaims them saints.  It is this audacious hope that says “What I have can never be destroyed.”  The Holy Spirit gives us the audacity to preach, to tell this story.  The Holy Spirit gives us the audacity to look at all of creation as our mission field.  As Ben and I left Holden Village, scared, not knowing where we were going or what we were doing, having no idea we would go to graduate school or seminary, the prayer the community sends those who leave it was strangely prophetic for us, and now I share it with you: “Lord God, you have called us your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is guiding us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Dear brothers and sisters, the Spirit is calling you out, beckoning you to imagine your lives and St. Peter anew, giving you a Spirit of adoption, a Spirit of hope, a Spirit that says, “If they tear it down, we’ll just build another one.”  Thanks be to God.