Pentecost

Today's sermon:

I want you to humor me for a moment and breathe. I know you're already breathing, but I want you to close your eyes, relax your shoulders, and take a big breath in through your nose so that it fills your whole gut. If you don't feel your stomach expanding, you're not breathing deeply enough. Let it fill you and then exhale slowly. Now do it again while I talk to you a little bit... Chances are you are sitting near somebody. Do you realize that you are breathing the same air as them? In fact, you are breathing the same air as the person sitting farthest from you in the room, and if you want to be technical, since we don't live in a giant air-tight space ship, we're kind of all breathing the same air as people across the country, and across the world. Breathing suddenly seems a lot more intimate, doesn't it?

You can open your eyes, but you probably want to keep breathing now... A while back I had the opportunity to talk to a native American woman, who told me that in her tribe breath is considered divine. God breathes into us and we inhale, and when we exhale, God is breathing us in. We are sharing breath with God. The idea isn't so far removed from our tradition either. The same word that we read in Genesis for “spirit”--ruach--also means breath. The ruach of God moved over the water—and things started to come into being. We hear about the breath of life in the Psalms, and in Ezekial, where God commands the prophet to “prophecy to the breath” and the bones that had been dry and dessicated come to life. Breathing is more than just a physiological action—it is the force that animates us, and gives us the potential to move, to act, and to be alive. There's something cool about the way that we are tied together, all of us reliant on this primitive action of sucking in oxygen and converting it to CO2. We are incredibly, vastly interconnected with each other and with God.

Pentecost was originally a Jewish festival. It was called the Feast of Weeks and celebrated the giving of the law to the people of Israel. It seems a little counterintuitive to us Lutherans who so often put the law at odds with the gospel, but the giving of the law was (and still is) seen as a joyful occasion. It was a way for God to be present in human communities, by helping us to live. It's no coincidence that the birth of the Christian church would coincide with this celebration. It was a day when the words Jesus had spoken about the advocate—the Spirit—coming to be present in his stead came true. It was another day in which God radically invaded our world. And how did this happen? The sound like a rush of wind filled the room. This was a “pnoe”, the Greek version of ruach and the same word that is used for Spirit or breath of life. And God's presence was suddenly revealed in a new way, literally igniting a flame on the apostles and compelling them to speak languages they didn't know, preaching the Word, sharing, spreading, revealing the reality of who God is, who we are, and what God is doing for all of us. Imagine what your ministry would be like if you could suddenly speak Russian or Chinese or Spanish depending on who you met. The Spirit of God became known to us on Pentecost, showing us our interconnectedness by allowing the Word which is universal to be heard universally.

When you breathe like you did just now, you are sharing in something. When you live on this planet, you are sharing space and energy and purpose with millions of people that you've never even met. We are connected with people who are totally different from us because that same Spirit that moved over the water in the beginning is the Spirit that moves inside and among us, declaring that all of our different callings and lives and ways of being are ultimately sustained by the same creator, and that our sin, brokenness, and pain are ultimately conquered by the same Lord. It gives you a different perspective on Jesus' words in Matthew: “What you do to the least of these, you do to me,” doesn't it? It gives a different flavor to your service, or apathy. When you walk by a person paralyzed by grief or loneliness, you are walking by a part of the community of Christ, a part of Christ himself, and a part of yourself. But in acknowledging a person in need, you have named that person as a sibling to you, as a son or daughter to Christ, and an heir to the kingdom of heaven just as you are an heir. And that is what Pentecost is about—it's about God's presence being made known boldly, coming down and going out as God did in the very beginning.

Take another deep breath. You are still breathing. You have been breathing since your first cry, and you will be breathing until your Spirit returns to God. The same way that you don't just breathe on your birthday, Pentecost isn't just one day, because God isn't present just one day. Pentecost is every day, and it's up to us to recognize the Spirit as it is present and working among us, and to allow ourselves to be open to that activity. When was the last time you felt the Spirit really moving? I felt it this Monday at our Taize worship service, as the Spirit settled down over us as we sat silently in prayer. I felt it whispering to me 'these are your brothers and sisters, these are all God's people.' I have felt it moving in silence, and I have felt it moving like a strong wind—in the rush of tears during a moving hymn, like a loud voice calling for peace within fear and panic, and in the face of a stranger. It is in you and around you, and you are an instrument of it.

So how can you allow yourself to be moved by the Spirit? Sometimes it just gets up and sweeps you away, like, for example, when you find yourself suddenly moving to Minnesota to start seminary against all your better judgment and reason... But sometimes it nudges gently. I think that prayer and discernment within the community are vital, and because we are so connected we need to pray for each other, and help one another discern where we see God's activity. We have been given an awesome task to boldly declare God's love and promise to our sibling neighbors in the world, so breathe. Inhale the breath of God, and let it fill you up, so that you have the air to walk wherever you are meant to go, and to do whatever you have been strengthened to do.

Let us pray... God of wind and silence, of all people and all languages, reveal yourself to us daily as you did on Pentecost. Show us where to go, so that we can boldly go out into the world, declaring that all people are daughters and sons of you, heirs to your promise, and recipients of your grace. In the name of Jesus, who walks with us, and the Spirit who breathes life into us. Amen.