(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
27:3 “For
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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