Readings: Ezekiel 37:3-14, John 3:3-11

Once wanderers, human civilisations began by rivers. Canterbury was settled in the Iron Age on both sides of the river Stour, and our long history has changed over time like an ebb and flow of the tides – a movement that has not ceased as our human life moves and shapes the landscape in which we are.

Our rootedness, our stillness or belonging to a place has fostered our human creativity and technological development. Our curiosity ignited by our ability to wonder as we become still and yet the world continues to move around us – a mechanism of movement and relations we observe as objects external to our minds until we dive in and become a part of that whole. Each one of us is like a raindrop that falls from above, we are a little act of movement, change, and disruption across an ocean that is the vast mystery of time and place.

The first man Adam, made with the dust of the earth that became flesh animated by the breath of God, was created as the animals were also created, yet Adam and God went through every animal looking for a suitable helper and none was found which rather suggests our human set-apart-ness. If instinct is what animals have, then in the Garden of Eden which represents the ‘perfection’ of the human nature, it is highly unlikely that we were oriented towards our instinctual nature and therefore, wrong for us to believe that we are simply embodied spiritual beings served by our instincts.

If these instincts for basic needs are of the body, each of us requiring for example water and food, then this idea supports a dualism that is a spiritual being imprisoned within a body, which is false. The soul, as Aristotle suggests, as ‘the animating principle of the body’, is the life that grows with it from a ‘seed’ that records our nature, our nurture, and our choices.

The human spirit is our breath, the breath or movement of our being that carries our words which shape the world around us, it is the ‘wind’ of our movement, a movement that is our ‘act’. Therefore body, soul and spirit cannot divided except by God who judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12).  

The bones and flesh in our scripture come together, yet there is not yet any breath in them – they are like the walking dead – having the appearance of life, but containing instead an emptiness or void – one that needs to be filled with the Spirit of Love, for love is the foundation of our being and from love comes life.

The opening of the book of Ezekiel brings us to him sat by a river, and we are plunged straight into his fantastic vision of heaven, and his calling to be a messenger of God for the people.

‘The spirit or wind blows wherever it pleases, we cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.’ (John 3:8).

Ezekiel says of the angels, ‘Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, because there the spirit went; and the wheels were lifted together with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.’ (Ezekiel 1:20).

Moving in harmony is taking on the will of God as our own will. “Not my will, but your will be done,” says Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42).

I wonder how many of us can remember our first encounter with God or our calling to become a Christian? My own story began one late summer night in 2015, when I was wild camping in the heart of the Lake District below Green Hole Crags, an isolated spot very close to Scafell Pike which is the highest mountain peak in England, and a friend told me about Jesus. He said, “if you were sick and needed a new heart to stay alive, then someone died and gave you their heart – would you not try all you could to live a great life for them?” When I heard that, something just clicked inside me, as if something I had never understood before all of a sudden made perfect sense. So let us remember now and then these times when we knew for certain God was with us or calling us.  

Living as Christians in this moment, perhaps a long time after our baptisms, we are and have become temples or homes for the Holy Spirit. Jesus sent upon us a baptism of fire, the fiery breath of God came as spiritual wind, so that we are homes with gardens in our hearts. Like the angels are winds and ministers flames of fire (Hebrews 1:7) – so every Christian is called to be an angel, a movement of the Spirit in us, around us, and in the world – a flame of fire that casts the light of love into the world, illuminating the shadows, and dispelling the darkness.

Yet, as the Rev Dr Martin Luther King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” If we as Christians are meant to be the angels held together in the cross of Christ – Christ’s angels that are the movement of God in the world and the ministers of His word on fire – we must ask if we are truly reborn in the Spirit from above, are we truly pure in heart or has the world entangled us in its ways?

St. Augustine said, ‘In essentials, [we foster] unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”  Time after time, age after age, we are called to be ministers of God’s love, and His mercy. The worldly so often cannot tell their right hand from their left, and yet God cares for them, He shows concern for the people whom He created and calls. (Jonah 4:11). He calls us to repentance, not once but often – for any rosebush left to its own way becomes a tangled mass with few flowers.

There is a suddenness, a surprise or unexpectedness that comes with encountering God. The meeting together of heaven and earth within us and the other is a transformative process that ends only when our time is called to meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17), that through our constant wrestle with God, we uncover the tenderness of what it truly means to be human and our set-apart-ness.

We are no longer asked to live in the same way as the worldly, but to be and become the difference that love makes in the world. We are called to be bridges of light – like the angels – in all we do. Too often today we separate and categorise our brothers and sisters for security, status, and productivity.

Henri Nouwen said, “As long as national security is our primary concern and national survival more important than preserving life on this planet, we continue to live in the house of fear. Ultimately, we must choose between security—individual, social, or national— and freedom.”

Ezekiel is a refugee in exile, while Nicodemus settled in his life and ministry, comes in a manner of fear, at night under the cloak of darkness. Jesus is unsettling, He comes to bring the Kingdom of heaven to earth not with passions and fight, but with fearlessness, self-control, endurance, and the acceptance of death.

Robert Baer said,

‘Bethlehem was God with us,

Calvary was God for us,

Pentecost is God in us.’

Jesus says, “I AM the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). He opened the graves and brought us up, and breathed His life into us.

Living in the spirit is a daily movement that is far removed from the western culture of death which has essentially become a new form of lawlessness – that people think we can do whatever is right in our own eyes erases the sanctity of life and hope.

Actions are without meaning unless there is love. Our happiness increases not with materialism but with stronger relationships which is dependent upon the quality of our dialogue and communication. We are happier when we’re able to resolve conflicts, develop deeper bonds, and by being less individualistic – developing these would bring greater happiness in our world today.

Love however is often confused with desire. Love is not fulfilled when we possess something we didn’t have before. Also, we can confuse love by measuring it in the value or quantity of the gifts we have, give, or receive from each other. But true love is fully valuing a person, a soul, for who they are and not who we think they should be. True love enables us to live in the freedom to be ourselves rooted in relationship.

Material possessions and the pursuit of individual pleasures are all things that fade away after a time, but the love we have for each other stays with us and is passed on from generation to generation. ‘Love is eternal,’ (1 Corinthians 13:8) it is the best part of us that lives on forever.

Amen.