Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Ezekiel 37:1-10 Luke 9:1-6

How do you get up in the morning? Do you have a hard time waking? Do you get up and say, “Oh, God,” (dragging) or do you get up and say, “Oh God! I am so glad to be alive!”? My father used to rise early and tell people he was glad to be alive because he had never lived this day before and he couldn't wait to see what the day would bring. I wish I did that! But sometimes I get up and say, “Ugh&it's morning. OK. We'll drag through this one.” Then I get going after a cup of coffee. George Barna, the researcher that I quote frequently, says that 66% of Christians in the United States are asleep. They are lax in their faith. He would even go so far as to say they are dead to their faith. 66%! He encourages us to wake them up; those of us who get up should help others get up. Those of you who have had children&have you ever gone into your child's room to wake them on a school day and they bury their head in a pillow or they complain and say, “I'm sick. I'm not going to get up.” “There is a bully at school and I'm not going to go any more,” or something like that? We have to be the people who wake others up. We have to raise the dead. We have to be like the parents who go and get the school child up and moving. We need to help other Christians wake up and serve the Lord.

I announced this morning that I was going to try an experiment by having a Back to Church Sunday. Traditionally here at Pilgrim, we've had a homecoming day in the fall where we invite all the members to come back after vacation and that apparently has worked out pretty well. But I am wondering, recent literature says that if you invite reluctant people to a fellowship activity, they are more likely to reconnect with their friends and then come back and attend church. So I am thinking&one of the great fellowship activities we do every year is our church picnic. I don't know about you but I thoroughly enjoy it and have a good time. It is a great time to get to know one another and meet and talk and greet. So I am thinking that those of you who have been here all summer, you are the elected few that God counts on. If you all encourage friends and family to come to our picnic so that they would reconnect with you and each other, it may just give quite a lot of glory to God. We'll need to know how many people you are inviting so we have enough chicken for everybody as the church provides the chicken. But it could turn out to be quite an effective way of getting people back involved in the church again&waking the dead! This might wake up people who haven't been attending, people who go to St. Mattress Church instead of coming here. That is what we want to accomplish.

There are Biblical examples of people who have awakened on fire with God's Spirit. I want to present one of them to you from the Old Testament. His name was Jonathan, the son of King Saul. King Saul became complacent. At one time, he could muster 200,000 soldiers. But they had a problem. The Philistines were constantly occupying the Promised Land. Saul became apathetic and thought, “OK. We've got Philistines wandering around here. So what?” Of course, they worshiped false gods and were really quite a problem. His son, Jonathan, was filled with God's Spirit and saw the whole picture. Now, Samuel the priest who anoints (chose) the king was not going to anoint Jonathan king which would have been the general practice. First sons usually became the next king but Samuel said, “No, your punishment, Saul, for your complacency is that I'm going to anoint David King. Your son is no longer going to be king.” But Jonathan was a really good man and he loved the Lord. He understood that whether he would ever be king or not, he was to fight for the kingdom of Israel. So all on his own, he got his armor-bearer and he went out to fight the Philistines. One man against the whole Philistine army. His chances weren't very good to say the least. But the Bible records that he and his armor-bearer (who started fighting along with him as well) killed about 20 Philistines in about an acre of ground. When Saul saw this, he felt ashamed so he sent 200 soldiers. When the 200 soldiers came, the Philistines fled, and as the Philistines fled, then all the other cowardly Israelites came out of their hiding places in the hills and pursued the Philistines and drove them out of the Promised Land. This happened because one person had the courage to awaken his love of God and for his love of the Israelite community. One person can have a whole lot more power than we think. As one person lives up to his/her responsibility, then others get involved. They come out of hiding. They wake up! You can be like Jonathan. You have been coming faithfully all summer and living up to your responsibility. You are the people, I believe, who have the greatest possibility of getting those who have slipped away this summer to come back. So I want you to stand up for Jesus and stand up for your faith and invite others to our Back to Church Sunday on September 13th. We will talk about it some more as we go along in the days to come. Let's get excited! We might need to wake up more ourselves first. That would be helpful. We've got to wake ourselves up in faith and then we can go about getting other people up.

The scripture that Susan Sroczynski read this morning is one of my favorites. It is the vision of Ezekiel and it has a lot to do with this same problem. Ezekiel sees a valley that is filled full of dead man's bones. Then he hears the voice of God, “Prophecy to these bones. (Wake them up!)” The church goes through a fluctuation like that. There are times when church members seem to become dead to their faith in the Lord and then there are times when the Holy Spirit comes in which would be symbolic in this Ezekiel story of the breath of God coming from the four winds entering into these dead bones. Suddenly the Spirit brings these bones to life and there is a great host of live people. A host is an army of warriors who are in this case willing to proclaim their faith and fight for the glory of God. So we want to call upon these dead bones to rise, too. We want to be the army that knocks on the doors and wakes others up who claim that they are Christian but are part of that 66% who don't really practice their faith. We want to encourage them to come alive again. There is probably a spark in most of them somewhere. All of us have the ability to do something with that spark, to fan that into a flame so that it becomes a burning fire  a fire of love and a fire of service and a fire of invitation to others. So this is what we want to accomplish.

As we wake ourselves up, we can do something for the Lord. We can give more to a needy person. We could give more to the support of the church in this time of economic downturn. We could help each other when we learn of someone with a problem. There are things that we can do to wake ourselves up more. We all could use a dose of that, I am sure. At the same time, as we become more on fire with Christ, then let's spread that like a wild fire in California. Let's spread that zeal to others. Let's show people our enthusiasm for God's work and the love for His church. Let's show what we can do here when we all come together as a great army, a great host like the dead bones that rose in Ezekiel's story. Once God breathed life into the dead which in the New Testament we recognize as the gift of the Holy Spirit, then the whole people come alive. Paul said, “God gives life to the dead and creates something out of nothing.” That is what we want Him to do with us. He wants to give us life when we feel dead inside. He wants to create something from our own nothingness. Once we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, we become born again as the Bible says. We do that by accepting the Holy Spirit into our life. Then we become enlivened, impassioned and on fire with Christ.

The Apostles before Pentecost were dead. They were fearful. They were scared. They hid in the upper room. Then they invited in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit hung above them as tongues of fire. The Holy Spirit filled them as a rushing wind and what were they capable of doing? They got out of their heaviness and deadness and their fear and went out and they dramatically changed the world. Peter alone in his preaching brought about the conversion of 3,000 people on that day of Pentecost. So this is our challenge  to wake up the dead, to wake up the dead parts of us and to wake up our friends and family who are dead to the faith and invite everyone to walk with God. What a challenge. What a gift. How exciting. Join me in that, please!