Prayer: Please send your Spirit, Holy God. Amen.

Not quite two weeks ago, on Monday, February 25th, the CEO of Starbucks Coffee, Howard Schultz, made an announcement that was outside the box of typical business practice and bewildered the coffee drinking world. Due to sagging sales and strong competition, he declared, “Tomorrow evening, we will come together in an unprecedented event in our company’s storied history. We will close all our U.S. company-operated stores to teach, educate, and share our love of coffee and the art of espresso” (Sermon Resources for March 9, 2008, illustrations@clergy.net, retrieved March 7, 2008). Now, I’m not a ‘go-to-Starbucks-for-my-coffee’ kind of person, but apparently, for three hours (5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.) on Tuesday, the 26th, many unaware coffee lovers came to Starbucks and found the doors locked. I heard some folks were jittery. Any of you encounter locked doors at Starbucks?

It’s an interesting ‘outside the box’ concept, isn’t it? Shut down all 7100 Starbucks stores nationwide, and focus on the 135,000 Starbucks employees for three hours to energize their commitment, their passion, their focus on the real reason for their business—to provide the customer with the best coffee and espresso that they can (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23351151/, retrieved March, 7, 2008).

That got me thinking… are we passionate enough about our faith? Do we need some energizing event to share our love of God and renew our commitment to loving God and our neighbors more deeply? Should we shut down for three hours so that we can be re-educated and re-trained on faith matters? Should we focus on our membership and attempt to re-capture what we are about as Christians? To re-orient ourselves to the gospel? To re-acquaint ourselves as instruments of God’s justice?

You know, sometimes I think we get complacent about our faith. Even though each of us lost an hour of sleep last night, did any of us loose sleep over our apparent contentment that things are just status quo in our faith, in our spiritual journeys, and in our ministry? Sometimes I detect that being content is pretty appealing. We like where we are our faith journeys. We really don’t want to move out of that which is comfortable. We don’t really want to change our priorities to God’s priorities. We don’t really want to through a whole lot of process to discern what God’s priorities are.

Status quo ministry in a church is a dead end, friends. It’s a lifeless grave, filled with dry, lifeless bones. Are we in danger of being passionate about holding on to our status quo? Are we committed to keeping our lifeless graves?

If we’re not, wouldn’t we have our Sunday school rooms filled with children and youth, and wouldn’t our parents would be committed to living and sharing the Christian faith with them? Wouldn’t we have God’s priorities on our hearts? Wouldn’t we be on fire to actually get out there and be involved with our mission projects, hands on, helping the needy, expressing God’s justice? Where is the evidence that the gospel of Jesus Christ sets us on fire? Where can we point and say, here! Here is where the good news of God really matters! Here’s where I am energized to serve the Lord!

And, I’m not talking only about Chapel Hill. Any church which is complacent about God’s justice, or God’s children, or God’s mission has a lifeless grave in it. Any church that advocates intolerance of others has a valley filled with dry bones. Any church that promotes that one faith has to fit everyone, and if you don’t have that faith, you’re not welcome, that church has a grave that cuts them off from God completely. When church pastors and church leaders hang on to the demand that everyone must conform to certain religious doctrines that is a grave filled with disconnected bones. How can God, who loves the world and its billions of people, all different, demand such religious conformity?

In the domestic arena, people hang on to lifeless graves, with tenacity. Sometimes think of the abused spouse who keeps going back to the abusive partner. Think of the child of an alcoholic who marries an alcoholic, divorces, and marries another one!

Even on the cultural scene, people hang on to lifeless graves with a passion. It drives me nuts to hear people say, “I won’t vote for Hillary because she’s a woman.” Sexism is a lifeless grave. Or, “I won’t vote for Barack because he’s black.” Racism is a lifeless grave. Or, “I won’t vote for John because he’s too old.” Ageism is a lifeless grave. If we hang on to our lifeless graves, I think we risk become a lifeless people. If we do that in church, we risk being in part of an impassive church, serving an innocuous God, with blandness in our mission.

Oh, who will rescue us from such a dilemma?

Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ! The Spirit that lived in Jesus is promised to come to us and live in us. Deciding to let God’s Holy Spirit live in us and energize us will help us think outside the lifeless grave. Paul says that when we set our minds on life in the Spirit, we will experience life and peace. Ezekiel says that the day is coming that the Spirit will open lifeless graves, just when we think it is impossible to have life in that grave whatever it is.

In a dream, the Spirit shows Ezekiel that the dried up bones are a metaphor representing Israel as prisoners of war, trapped in Babylon, far from home, and hopeless. Seventy years earlier, Jeremiah told them that God would rescue them, but they forgot that. Now they are desolate, defeated, dejected, demoralized, and any other “D” word I can think of.

But, Ezekiel’s dream tells him that God hasn’t forgotten them. God promises to open their graves, get them out of Babylon, and take them back to their homeland. In the dream, the bones come together! They take shape! In the midst of impossibility and hopelessness, the Spirit of life, the breath of God, gives those bones new life.

There is new life outside the lifeless grave of Babylon. Outside the lifeless graves of our own spiritual contentment, the church’s complacency, and culture’s variety of “isms”, there is new life. Where? Wherever there is a need for the breath of the Spirit to bring new life. Wherever there is hopelessness. Let me share with you two short stories.

Jeff Wright, a mission volunteer with Global Ministries witnessed an ancient practice of ‘Ashira’ between two Arab families in the absence of a judge or magistrate. Ashira is a way to restore broken relationships. Two school age boys had brawled causing one boy to get stitches and both got arrested. Both families went to the jail and secured the boy’s release because they agreed to practice Ashira in settling the dispute. Ashira, in this case, turned out to be sharing a cup of coffee—Arabic coffee—with no sugar. The absence of sugar signaled brokenness, a sign that something very serious had happened. “Sharing the bitter coffee was an act of mutual grief and longing,” Jeff said. Then the families began talking. The night before they departed, the families shared sweetened coffee, celebrating the return of a healthy relationship (In Prayer—A Devotional Calendar for 2008, United Church of Christ Resources, 2007, p. 41). “Ashira’ is thinking outside the grave.

The second ‘thinking outside the grave story’ I heard first on the “Today Show,” Friday morning. There are a lot of details that I’m not going to cover so here’s a very brief, nutshell version of the story. On September 6, 2006, a fourteen year old girl named Elizabeth Shoaf was kidnapped by a man dressed in combat fatigues claiming to be a police officer. He handcuffed her, told her she was under arrest, and led her into the woods to a “bunker” dug in the ground close to his trailer. There he chained her up and abused her repeatedly several times a day for 10 days. In this underground grave, she was utterly on her own. She lost hope that she would be found. But, she relied on prayer, and she knew she would have to find a way out herself. How did she do it? She tried a little reverse psychology. She befriended him. She said to Meredith Vierra on the “Today Show, “I guess if I wanted him to trust me I’d have to have him think I kind of wanted to be there and would be more comfortable letting me do things I wanted to do.” It worked. In a few days, he trusted her enough to remove her chains and to give her his cell phone so she could play games on it. But when he went to sleep, she used the phone to send text messages to her parents and friends. Even though the phone said “No service” her mother received one of the messages. She went to the police who broadcast the message over the media that Elizabeth was alive. But, this alerted the kidnapper to Elizabeth’s use of the cell phone. However, he had come to trust her and asked her what he should do. Elizabeth said, “I told him he needed to leave because if they’d catch him, he would go to jail,” she said. The man took her advice and left. The next morning Elizabeth climbed out of the grave and wandered through the woods, calling for help. The man was soon arrested and has since been sentenced to life imprisonment (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23518089, retrieved March 7, 2008).

In the midst of a hopeless, dead, disconnected, valley filled with dry bones, Elizabeth was thinking outside the grave. In the midst of broken relationships, think outside the grave. In dealing with the lifeless graves we get content to live with, think outside the grave. For God promises that the Holy Spirit will open our graves, and bring us up, and the breath of life will come in.

Let us pray… God of all compassion, your breath alone brings life to dry bones and lifeless graves. Please pour your Spirit upon us, that whenever we face despair and death, we can place our hopes in you. Breath into us, your church, and your world the strengthening power of life. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.