Sunday, May 22, 2016

Sometimes, All I Need is the Air that I Breathe... 5/22/16


     (Based on Genesis 1:1-2, 2:4b-7, Job 33:1-4, Matthew 3:13-4:2 - And on a great   song by The Hollies!)

            All through the month of May, we’ve been celebrating the environment that is so closely linked to the God we worship and serve. We’ve seen God in the soil – that wonderful and rich provider of nourishment, life, and growth; that soil from which we were all created…that soil to which we shall all return. We’ve celebrated God’s presence in water in its many forms, particularly the form of Jesus’ living water offered to the Samaritan woman in the well. Today, we turn our attention to the sky, the air.
            For centuries and even millennia now, Christians have come to picture God as living way up in the sky, remote from us, unreachable, in a totally separate realm we refer to as “the heavens.” Many Christians still believe that we can never get there – that place where God is – until we die. Does that make sense to you? Are you comfortable with that?             
          The writer of Hebrews sure wasn’t. He put it this way in chapter 4 verse 15: “For we do not have some high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we have.”
            Paul wasn’t completely comfortable with a remote, distant God either. In Romans 8:26, he tells us that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don’t even know what to pray for but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” The Spirit “searches and knows and dwells within our hearts.” That’s close!
            Take a look at that amazing quotation I put on the front of the bulletin today. Once again, it comes from Diana Butler Bass and her amazing book Grounded.
           
            "For centuries, we have distanced heaven, placing it beyond reach and  making it impossible to experience. If you think about it, however, heaven is not far away at all. We may walk on the ground, but the rest  of our bodies move through the sky all the time -- the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends upward from the earth's surface to about thirty-    five-thousand feet. The sky begins at our feet.
            "To say that God is in the sky is not to imply that God lives at a certain address above the earth. Instead, it is an invitation to consider God's presence that both reaches to the stars and wafts through our lives as a spiritual breeze."

            How cool is that? The sky begins at the top of our feet. She’s right, isn’t she? The sky begins where the ground ends. Butler Bass points this out because, like me, she is not a fan of the traditional understanding that God is “up” there, way above us in some separate, heavenly realm. If we recognize that the sky begins here – at our feet – then God can be all around us, literally as close as our next breath!
            Job understood this. He said in Job 27:3For as long as life is in me, the breath of God is in my nostrils.” And in 33:4 "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
         A little later this morning, we’re going to sing that classic hymn, “Breathe on my, Breath of God.” Did you know that in Hebrew – the language of the Old Testament – the word Ruach means wind, air, breath, and Spirit. What a word! It encompasses all those things that we have since separated with our many words. And Greek – the language of the New Testament – is similar to the Hebrew in this regard. The one Greek word “Pneuma” can mean spirit, Holy Spirit, wind, and breath. Ancient cultures were actually way ahead of us on recognizing the nearness of God, and their language reflects that!
         I think Jesus and the writers of the gospels worked hard to reinforce the nearness of God as well. The passage I shared from Matthew, which is actually covered the same way in all 4 gospels, has the heavens being torn open and that spirit of God – the Ruach, the Pneuma – descending out of the heavens and staying on the earth. It doesn’t go back up! Matthew’s account emphasizes that not only does this spirit come down and rest on Jesus, but it stays! In fact, it is that same spirit that then compels Jesus out into the wilderness. And it’s that same spirit that comes upon and surrounds the disciples in Acts chapter 2, the day of Pentecost that we celebrated last week. It’s the same spirit that hovered over the waters before creation in Genesis 2. And the same breath  - the breath of God that called everything into existence. It’s all connected! It’s all the same thing! It’s in the wind; it’s in the air; it’s in the sky; it’s in your lungs and my lungs; it’s in this space above our shoes, in everything that’s above the ground. Wow!
         So if all this amazing stuff is connected – sky, wind, air, breath, breath of God, God’s Spirit, what does that mean for us and for our lives? Well, first it means that every time we breathe, we become more connected to God. I’m going to shut up so we can all breathe for a while. Ready…. (Breathe)
        Secondly, this truth about air, wind, spirit, sky, breath and God should help us remember that we are all connected with each other, right? What’s the one thing that connects every living human being on the planet…? We all breathe. The very act of breathing is what connects us, no matter what color our skin is; no matter what country we live in, no matter who we vote for, no matter what religion we are. It is our breath that connects us! Not only do we all breathe, but more importantly, we all breathe the same air. This might not be the most pleasant thought I share with you today, but in this room, right now, the very air that you take into your lungs is the exact same air that has been in and out the lungs of every other person in this room. (Talk about recycling! I had us all breathing before; now everybody is holding their breath! ) And as we back the camera up further and move outdoors, that same principle applies. We come from the same soil as everyone else; we drink from the same well as everyone else, and we breathe the very same air as everyone else. Folks, we are all in this together.
          I learned about the incredibly connection our breathing builds between all people through a group I facilitated in the six years before I came here, I worked with a small group of adult students every Tuesday night in a Petoskey yoga studio, helping them explore and experiment with ancient, silent prayer practices. We would gather for an hour each week. The first 10-15 minutes, I’d offer some background and instruction on a particular silent practice. Then, for the next 20 or 30 minutes, we’d attempt the practice or discipline. And then in the final 10-15 minutes, we’d talk about what we experienced in the silence and meditation. I’m not sure what we expected would result from the silence, but some really cool things happened that we didn’t expect. One was that, over time, we started to feel incredibly close to each other. There was a real tenderness and compassion we felt for each other, by sharing that space together and entering that scary and often uncomfortable silence. Simply breathing together and not talking put us in a very different kind of realm. We rarely, if ever, had any lightening bolt experiences or flashes of the presence of God. But, in a way, that made our time together even better, for we were all humbled by our individual and collective emptiness. That time spent breathing in shared silence, waiting on God, made us all realize that weren’t as holy or as godly as we sometimes like to think.
         I want to close by sharing a very personal story of the moment when God showed me just how present She is in the air we breathe and in the wind. I was going through a very low and dark time in my life. I was lonely and very isolated. I was unemployed and feeling the pinch of long-term, day-to-day economic hardship. I was taking a walk in one of my favorite, most beautiful Northern Michigan bluffs along Little Traverse Bay, where there was tall, unmowed wheat grass on this cliff overlooking the bay. It was just before sunset and the sky was brilliant. The wind was up and, in addition to making the tall grass sway rhythmically, it was pushing the billowing clouds from left to right, from west to east across the sky. I was feeling weak, depressed, and totally alone.
         For some reason I stopped along the bluff and took a few deep breaths, as I looked out over the swaying grass, the whitecaps on the waves, the rapidly moving clouds. I felt the wind on my face as I looked all of this power and movement and beauty. And suddenly, it occurred to me that the air I was breathing was the exact same air that I was feeling on my face; it as the exact same air I could see blowing the grass, the waves, and the clouds.
         So I took in more of that air, and my chest began to swell and my posture straightened, and it hit me…It hit me that I was connected to that swaying grass and those billowing clouds and those strong crashing waves. I realized that I had access to that exact same power that I saw and felt all around me. It was God’s spirit – all of it. And I wasn’t separate from it. I was connected to it! I was a part of it, and it was a part of me.
         After several minutes, I started walking again, and I felt incredible – powerful, strong, hopeful, and it was nothing like being alone. In fact, I knew more at that moment than I ever have, that I am not alone. I am never alone. I knew right then that I am not weak, but infused with the same power of that wind that was everywhere around me.
         I come back to that moment, to that scene every now and then, for it reminds me that the air, the wind, the breath of God, my breath, your breath – it’s all connected. Loneliness and separation – as real they may feel at times – they’re an utter illusion. Human loneliness and isolation are a lie. The Truth – with a capital T – is that we are far more connected to each other and to God than we can even imagine. And when we forget that, when we lose sight of that powerful and eternal connection with God and with each other, all we have to do to get it back…is breathe. Just breathe. Mindfully take in each breath remembering all that is within it – your breath, my breath, the breath of the world, and the Ruach, the Pneuma, the breath of God.
         That’s the good news of the gospel. That’s the good news that I have for you today. Amen.

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