Resurrection and Blooming Forsythia
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ephesians 4:17-24
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
April 19, 2009 - Sunday after Easter

What would you do if the ceiling started to make snapping racket, ominous rumbles?  Your belief would change!  Quickly!  You sit here under tons of steel, concrete, wood, lighting, shingling and plaster.  Why? Because you believe that what is up there will stay up there.  Our lives are lived by what we believe, even if the belief is a negative belief.  Even if we are nihilistic and proclaim, “I don’t believe in anything!”---that is a belief.  What we believe about ourselves and about God shapes who we are and our attitude toward everything.

John Alexander in his book "The Warrior's Edge" writes about reality maps.  A reality map is a mental map of our belief system.  It is a way of speaking of what we believe is real and not real, and what we expect. 

Let me give you an example of a reality map expectation.  In 1597 a young sailor returned to his home port in Madrid, Spain.  Juan Combe had been to the New World, and he was quite a celebrity.  People flocked to hear stories of his ventures among the natives.  He was wined and dined, the toast of the town.  Then one day it rained and Juan Combe walked through the streets of Madrid wearing a wonderful cape that kept him and his clothes dry.

Folks thought this cape must be magic.  Juan explained that such coated capes were widely used by the natives in the New World.  But his explanations did not satisfy the authorities who arrested him.  A judge examined the curious garment, questioned Juan at length, and then gave his verdict.  Juan was declared guilty of wearing a cape through which water would not pass. (Horror of horrors!)  Obviously Juan was interfering with the will of God, who sent the rain "to drench the just and the unjust."  Such evil interference was witchcraft punishable by death.   That was what their reality map told them about [what?] rubber.   And, about God.

Our beliefs dominate what we will make happen, or allow to happen, or expect to happen, or believe should happen.  Our beliefs influence us to feel good about something, feel guilty over something, feel motivated to do something.

In church we talk about beliefs.  However, we do not in society.  I am interested in the role that beliefs play in American culture.  Tell me if I am reading the scene right.  Many in our popular culture are embarrassed by beliefs, and therefore devalue beliefs.  I sense a discomfort  with beliefs, e.g., an astonishment or bewilderment that Moslem extremists will act out their beliefs with such fervor.  There is a supercilious attitude toward anyone who speaks of belief; a belief that believers are old-fashioned and out of step with modern sophistication.  In fact, the word “belief” is not used often.  The word “idealistic”, used pejoratively, often is substituted. 

One of the mental games that I like is: What is the belief system?  When I read anything, I am asking what the author believes.  When I see a movie, I am asking what the values are, i.e., the beliefs that are presented covertly.  I even do this with news programs.  (This does not make for happiness in our house, so I have learned to keep commentary to myself.)  Beliefs are motivators, so I ask about the hidden motivations.  What motivates the writer?  What motivates the news reporter?  What is there, but unspoken? 

One of the potent beliefs among Christians is the power of sin.  It is implied even when we are being positive, hopeful and upbeat. 
   
Sin.  We do not want to believe that sin prevails.  We want to believe in the goodness of people.  We want to trust people.  We want to trust institutions.  Our presbyterian founding ancestor was John Calvin.  John Calvin believed in the total depravity of humanity.  We don’t want to believe that we are really, really sinful.  People are good!  Then we read the news: Sunday School teacher kills a child, priests molest boys, fathers murder their own children, multi-millionaire executives bend rules to make more money, super-rich executives who own many houses are given bonuses for laying off people who owe money on their only home.  The mugger is gross and clearly a sinner.  But the white-collared villain is educated, well dressed and attractive, and deemed acceptable, even admirable.

I have to ask: Is our belief in the essential goodness of humanity a combination of reality, denial and fantasy?  Was John Calvin onto a truth that we just don’t want to be true?  What do we believe about the potential in individuals and the potential in the people who lead our institutions?  (A speculative question:  Are we in the economic recession now, partly because we did not believe that brilliant and wealthy people could be really, really sinful?)  Beliefs have consequences.

A corollary belief is that we can save ourselves.  We work at saving ourselves.  We have to try.  We have been successful in some areas, yet dismal failures in attitude and behavior.  After all of our investment in physical health, mental health, societal change, economic change, treaties, agreements, prisons, probations, laws and regulations – after all these – we still seem to be the same people with the same issues.  At a deep level, we believe that we can save ourselves, that the solutions to humanity’s problems lie solely within us.   Or, do we believe that we also need a Savior?   

The first question is: What do you believe about humanity?

The Apostle wrote to the infant congregation in Ephesus, using Markus Barth’s translation, “Now in the Lord’s [name] I say and insist upon the following: No longer conduct yourselves as do the Gentiles in the futility of their mind.  Intellectually they are blacked out.  Because of their inherent refusal to know [God] and of the petrification of their hearts, they are excluded from the life of God.”  Markus Barth’s translation in “The Anchor Bible, Ephesians 4-6".  Tough talk!  Their beliefs excluded them from the life of God.  Their thoughts took them to futility. 

In our beliefs, you and I have a place for God.  I assume you do or you would not be here this morning.   We have not blacked out God or petrified our hearts toward God. 

The second question is: What do you believe about God?

With those questions in mind, listen to what God taught Ezekiel about God.  For me, this image is one of the most gripping in Scripture.  Imagine that it is 1875, twelve years after the battle here.  You are in the valley in front of Little Round Top.  Nothing was cleaned up after the battle.  The corpses of the horses, mules and the soldiers still lay where they fell. 

Ezekiel 37:1-11
The hand of the Lord … brought me out … and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.

He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know." [Lord, in my belief system, they can not.]

Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”

I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'  Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves…; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act...."

The disciples hid behind locked doors.  Their leader had been officially tortured and executed.  Would the authorities come after them, too?  Their fear was heaped upon their despair.  They had hitched themselves to Jesus as the rising star, the one sent from God, and now he was dead in a tomb and they were dead in their souls, dried bones.  Can these dead disciples live again?

Very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, intending to anoint Jesus’ corpse with spices as was their custom.  They found the stone that sealed the tomb rolled away.  They went in.  No body!  Suddenly two men stood by them and asked, "Why are you looking among the dead for one who is alive?"

God makes the dead live!  God breathes vitality into dry lives.  God may not change the world for us.  We still are creatures, subject to all the limits that all other creatures face.  We are sinful.  We live in a world of sinful people.  We cope within an environment.  We face financial challenges.  We fight wars.  In our text, the apostle does not refer to God changing the world for us, or setting aside all illness, sin or death.  He talks about God working to renew the inner person, the mind.

The Apostle describes God’s loving work: “Your were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness vv. 22-24.”

It is God's way to renew, to recreate the mind – for God loves us deeply.  Through Moses, God made a new nation out of slaves.  Through prophets, God called for beliefs that reform corrupt societies and governments, and create communities of justice, compassion and honesty.  Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God makes us into new creations.  God resurrects! 

Is that what you believe about God?

On this Sunday, one week after celebrating the resurrection of our Lord, what does resurrection teach us to believe about living as God's people?

Marilyn Morgan Helleberg tells about a time in her life as a teenager when she questioned her faith.  One cold sunless day in early spring, she and her Aunt Alta were doing dishes together in the kitchen of her Aunt's old house.  They got to talking about Easter, and Marilyn blurted out the question, "How do we know Jesus really came back from the dead?  I know the Bible says he did, but how can we be sure that those people didn't just say they saw him?  It was all such a long time ago."

Her Aunt Alta dried her hands on her big apron.  "Yes, it was a long time ago," she said, "but this day is as full of meaning as the day of resurrection was.  In fact, this moment is as meaningful as any moment in all eternity!  Come with me a minute."

Marilyn followed Aunt Alta out the back door, down the rickety wooden steps, and across the backyard, to a clump of gray, dead-looking bushes.  An icy March wind whipped the branches back and forth as she reached down and cut off a few pieces about eighteen inches long.  Back in the house her Aunt got a milk-glass vase out of the pantry, filled it with water, placed the branches in it, and put it on the table by the west window in the living room.  This ‘bouquet' of dead branches "looked like a bunch of bony-fingered skeletons there, so stark and bare."

But in three days, those dead-looking twigs blossomed into a profusion of bright yellow, gloriously living flowers, even though the bushes outside were still gray.  Then her Aunt explained that just as the forsythia bloomed when they brought it into the house, Marilyn needed to bring Christ into the living room of her life.  If she would do that, she would know firsthand that the resurrection was true, because his living presence would blossom within her."  

Blossom within us – a beautiful image.  And, continued after our death in resurrection to eternal life in heaven – another beautiful image.  Out of the ugliness of sin, God just never stops creating beauty!

If you feel lost to sin, God loves you and works to create a new you.
If you feel like dead bones, God loves you and works to put fresh life into you!
If you feel like a dormant bush, God loves you and works to put new life into you!  Believe it!  Believe it!

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