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The Rev. Frank Logue
Believe What You Breathe I guarantee this sermon will be inspirational. Inspiration is foundational. I remember the question so clearly: “What are the essentials of life?” I answered quickly and firmly, “Food, water and shelter.” I knew the answer. My wife, Victoria, and I once lived for six months on the Appalachian Trail where our lives were reduced to those essentials plus how far we would hike. I knew the answer was food, water and shelter. But I was told. “Yes, that’s what everyone thinks, but it’s wrong, of course.” Wrong. How could that be wrong? I had lived a life reduced to the essentials and food, water and shelter was it. “You forgot air,” I was reminded. “Everyone takes the air they breathe so for granted that they forget to mention it.” We can live a long time without shelter. Not comfortably, but we endure. We can live roughly a month without food and depending on conditions, days without water. But none of us would make it through this sermon alive if there was no air in this room. Sometime between three to five minutes from now, our brains would shut off. The funny part of this is that sermons are supposed to be inspiring. Inspirational. Right? But inspire means first and foremost to breathe. The earliest meaning was to inhale or to breathe into. This is what God did in Genesis after creating Adam from the dust of the earth. He breathed into him. This primal story tells us that the breathe of life that animates humans is from God. Our Psalm for today puts this in pretty stark terms. Verse 30 is speaking of all the creatures God has made and says, “You hide your face, and they are terrified; you take away their breath, and they die and return to their dust.” If God doesn’t continue to breathe into us, we don’t only exhale, we expire. Die. But verse 31 goes on to a livelier possibility for all us creatures of God, “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.” With each breath, we can breathe in new inspiration. We are recreated and renewed. As I have pointed out already, this is quite literally so. If we didn’t continue to breathe throughout this sermon, our cells would die off. But with each new breath, our cells are recreated. So, let’s try a quick exercise. Breathe deep with me. [Breathe in a big breath.] Now let it out. [exhale.] One more big breath. [Breathe in deeply.] And let it out again. [Exhale.] See, you've been breathing. So this sermon has been inspirational. I took a class once in spiritual direction, which suggested that simple exercise for times of extreme tension and stress, or even just getting rid of residual stress at the end of a work day before you go home. Breathe in a big breath, consciously thinking of breathing in God’s presence. [Breathe in deeply.] Then exhale all the junk separating you from God, or you from the peace God has for you. [exhale.] Just that consciously breathing in God’s presence and exhaling the junk can be very powerful. I’ve given before the example of the little fish who asks his Mom, “Where’s the ocean?” The Mom replies that the ocean is all around, we live in it, swim through it and breathe it through our gills. The little fish says, “Yeah right!” and swims away. But so it is with God. Scripture tells us that God made us and all that is and that God breathed into humans, and all creation, the breath of life. This inspiration is ongoing with every breath you take. God is just that close to you. In John’s Gospel, Jesus said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” Jesus goes on to promise that his disciples will have that same relationship of being in communion with God. Then later after he has died, Jesus breathes on his disciples, giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is an act of inspiration. And it is this inspiration of the gift of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate today. The reading from acts describes a mighty wind and flames of fire accompanied by a miraculous reversal of the Tower of Babel. Here the disciples are given the gift of making themselves understood as they try to inspire others with the Good News of what God has done through Jesus Christ. Though they do not know the languages, they don’t speak as a babble of sounds, but they clearly speak to people of different nations in their own languages. The crowd is so inspired by these on fire disciples that 3,000 knew converts to the Jesus Movement come to be baptized. The Psalmist would put it, “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth.” The Holy Spirit was sent forth and began recreation. This is where a mistake I made in building the church works to my advantage. The stained glass window above our altar shows a dove. It is the image for the Holy Spirit we find in Jesus’ baptism when the Spirit of God descended as something like a dove. But the stained glass portrays not Jesus’ baptism, but the creation account from Genesis chapter 1 which tells us that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters in creation. Actually, the Hebrew word for spirit is Ruach. It was the Ruach of God that was over the waters. Ruach means, “wind, breath or spirit.” So the wind, breath, spirit of God was over the waters and the God spoke the world into being. Later we’ll discover that that creative Word of God was Jesus. But for now, we have the wind, breath, spirit of God. Now the mistake is that if I had been paying enough attention when we were working with the stained glass artist, I am quite sure that I would have made sure that we had seven rays of light coming away from the dove. But I didn’t catch that detail. I just saw that there were rays of light coming down from the dove and these represent God bringing order to chaos in the creation. Seven would have shown completeness and could have stood for the seven days of creation. But for want of attention to detail, we have six rays coming from the dove. This is a happy accident, because the story of creation is an ongoing story. That’s what we learn from Psalm 104 that let’s us know that God’s spirit can recreate us. That’s also what Jesus is telling his disciples to expect in letting them know that they will be able to do even greater things than him. God is not finished with the creation and we can be involved in God’s ongoing work of recreation. The six rays of light in the stained glass show that work as not yet finished. The work of Pentecost was recreation as the change for the disciples that day was not that God came to be with them. God had always been with them in their hearts and through the person of their friend and teacher, Jesus. The change at Pentecost was an empowering by the Holy Spirit to turn loose that creative life force flowing through them and to channel it toward the miraculous. This is to be inspired in another sense. They were recreated from timid followers to bold leaders. When we see those creative dreams that we have for something we want to pull off but we shrink back, it is God’s spirit that can speak to our spirits to call forth even more from us. Jesus’ disciples hid away for fear of being put to death for following Jesus. Then the Holy Spirit came and inspired them to set their fears aside and go share that divine spark with others. They were inspired to inspire others. The Oprah-favorite, author Marianne Williamson wrote something in a book of hers (A Return to Love) that spoke such a truth that it has become a well-known quote. It is often attributed the Nelson Mandela, but it was Marianne’s words. She wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” She is right and right in a way that fits very well with Pentecost, the day for letting the very breath of God inspire and recreate you. Jesus put it this way in our Gospel reading, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” What would your life look like if you really believed that? What would happen if you trusted God’s peace? What would happen if you didn’t let your heart be troubled or afraid, but let God recreate you into the you he created you to be all along? This is inspirational living. It’s letting God’s spirit in anew. You don’t have to be the you you’ve let yourself become. You can breathe in God and breathe out all that nonsense about why you can’t live into the dreams God has given you. Open yourself up to that breath of God. Open yourself to the creative and recreative potential within you. For you weren’t made to believe all that junk everyone has taught you over time about what you can’t do, can’t accomplish, can’t become. You were built by God from the ground up to hold the very spirit of God within you. You were made to live into being the child of God that Paul claims you are in our reading from Romans. You were designed by your creator to be a co-creator with Christ. You were created by God to be uniquely you and the world won’t be quite complete if you don’t live into that potential. All you have to do is believe what you breath. Understand that the God who made everything is present with you in every breath you take and wants to empower you for every good thing you undertake in his name. And if you don’t find this inspiring, not only have you not been listening, you might not have been breathing. Amen.
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