Ezek. 37 notes

1) Jacobson in working preacher 2008 in textweek urges preachers to consider performing the message of the text with as much freedom and power as Ezekiel. CGI allows us to picture such a scene more easily now. 2) I hear echoes of God the artistic craftsman here a la Gen. 2. 3) Ruah=spirit=breath/wind/breeze/air as in Gk. pneuma. So it certainly fits a Pentecost reading. Work through a bit the various reasons for this conflation of images. What of its constant linkage to the very spirit of life? 4) I can’t help but hear ‘dem bones in my mind here. 5) Christians hear this as individual resurrection, but isn’t it far more likely to hear it as a corporate resurrection of the life of a nation? 6) Where do dry bones need to be vivified, or revivified in your situation? 7) Brueggemann’s notion of the church being in exilic territory is popular. I guess I buy it as a cultural comment, but I don’t think it can hold up to the actual displacement of exile. 8) At the same time, when do you feel as if a dream has died? 9) Is it possible that psalm language of bones and valleys has influenced the vision? 10) Pneumatology is a weakness with many of us. Word and World has a special issue in June 2003. I like Welker’s book, God the Spirit. 11) Why do you think Pentecost feels like such a forced celebration in the mainline churches? 12 Pentecost has gotten to be a time where we speak of the freedom, surprise, even disorderly, movements of the Spirit. Perhaps it is also time to speak of the Spirit working through institutions.