Poolesville Presbyterian Church
04.07.13; Rev. David Williams
We breathe in, we breathe out. It’s a simple and basic part of our existence, so simple that we don’t really even think about it.
Well, actually, the last week or two we have been thinking about it. It’s Spring, and the world is a joyful riot of life. The morning begins with the flutter of birdsong with the rising brightness of the sun, followed by the glorious sound of our dog hacking and sneezing. Our every breath brings in those floating flecks of pollen, which embed themselves in our red itchy eyes and coat our scratchy sinuses and phlegmy throats. We did say we were eager for spring to arrive, right?
But breathing itself, when the air isn’t filled with tiny spiky balls, well, we don’t think about that. it just happens. And it happens a whole bunch.
The muscles of our diaphragm contract, and pull air deep into our lungs. The muscles of our diaphragm relax, and the air is released. That action happens between 8-15 times a minute, around 17,000 times a day. We do it mostly without thinking, without thought, and we do it a lot.
We can control it, sure. You can breathe really really fast...but if you keep that up, you’ll hyperventilate and pass out. You can stop your breathing entirely for a while......but that ends up having the same effect. For breathing to work, we have to take the air in, and give the air out. We receive it, and we send it. We send it out, and we take it in. If we don’t, we die.
Our lungs are partnered with our heart, which functions in a similar way. The oxygen taken in by our lungs enters our blood, and needs to get out to the body. Our heart is like the heart of any other mammal, and has four chambers. The left atrium receives oxygen rich blood, and the left ventricle sends that blood to the body. The right atrium receives the oxygen-depleted blood back, and the right ventricle sends it back to the lungs. All this happens without our thinking, 72 times a minute, 2.5 billion times over an average lifetime. Receiving and sending, sending and receiving. It’s absolutely necessary if we are to live.
Breathing and sending and receiving are at the heart of what Jesus was proclaiming in today’s post-Easter passage from the Gospel of John. This little chunk of John’s Gospel is full of intriguing stories, like, for instance, the description of the doubts that Thomas felt and Christ’s response, as He told us what it meant to believe.
If you read it closely, you might also notice that this was probably the point where some early version of John’s Gospel actually ended. Take a look at the last two verses, at John 20:30-31.
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
Those verses read like the conclusion of a book. Why? Because at one point, they probably were. It wraps things up, telling us that there were other witnesses to Christ, and telling us why John’s Gospel was written. Of course, after that, we get a whole ‘nutha chapter. It’s just part of John’s open ended approach to the Gospel. This Gospel admits there are other accounts out there, other stories and other parts of the truth about what Jesus taught.
What most likely happened as the Gospel was pulled together was that after the writing was done, John’s community discovered another story, one containing some of the “many other signs”...that was remembered later. And so we get John 21, which also ends with the same invitation to embrace more of the story.
“There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
But what I want to raise up about this final section of John’s Gospel has everything to do with breathing in and breathing out. The story comes after the resurrection, after Mary had met the risen Jesus in the garden. It’s John’s post-Easter story, but when we encounter the disciples, we don’t find them happy and uplifted and never wanting to see another chocolate bunny again. Instead, they are frightened and isolated, huddled behind locked doors and unwilling to move out into a world that has just taken the life of the rabbi that they loved.
Suddenly, Jesus is among them. He just is, right there, in the flesh. Though they’ve closed ranks, he works his way among them. They are, understandably, overjoyed.
But his arrival isn’t without purpose. First, he offers them his shalom, his peace. Then he tells them that peace will be with them a second time. Having promised them peace, he presents them with a challenge. They’ve received him in. They’ve been filled with rejoicing at his impossible presence.
So he tells them this: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He has found them holed up, locked away, and he wants them out in the world. This is, as John’s Gospel tells it, the equivalent of the Great Commission in Matthew’s story, when Jesus tells the disciples to get out there and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Get out there. Be sent, as I was sent.
And then Jesus breathes on them. Breathes on them? It’s not something that we’d usually expect someone to do when they’ve asked us to do something. I mean, seriously. When I want the boys to do their chores, I don’t say, “Go clean your room....hhhhhHHHHaaaaaaaa.” Although given how much that might freak them out, perhaps I should consider it.
Giving marching orders? Sure. Giving instructions? Fine. We’d expect that. But Jesus breathes on them.
In the Greek that John’s Gospel uses to tell the story of Christ, of course, the words for “breath” and the words for “spirit” are the same. Pneuma, it is, in Greek. So out flows Christ’s breath, and it carries with it the words “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Having given them the breath and the spirit, Jesus then makes a radical statement. He tells them that they have been charged with the ability to forgive or retain sins. That’s an odd mirror of such passages as Luke 7:49, where people can’t believe that Jesus would have the audacity to forgive sins himself. But remember, right here Christ is sending them, just as he was sent, using the same Spirit, the same breath, the same hope, the same Gospel.
Just as He also sends us. That is a difficult thing to grasp here, even if we are sorta right in the middle of a church. I mean, here we are on Sunday, as always. We’re doing the stuff we do, singing and studying and praying and worshiping and then hitting McDonalds afterwards. We listen to passages like this and we think, great! Good for them. Good job guys! Go to it!
But passages like this aren’t meant to be heard as referring to some long distant time, or as being intended only for the ones gathered there in that room. They are spoken just as directly to us. It is we who need to receive them, we who need to know that we are sent, we who need to feel the warm sweetness of that breath upon our brow.
And if we can allow ourselves to be grasped by that truth, then we have to ask ourselves...having received this Spirit, having been entrusted with this Spirit and this calling...what are we supposed to do?
What we cannot do is hold it in. We can’t just receive and receive and receive and not send it out ourselves, any more than lungs can fill themselves with air and not breathe it out, or a heart can fill with blood and not send it on. Holding it back, keeping it to ourselves, trying to grasp it and keep it...none of these things can lead to our own spiritual life. If we receive only, and do not act and send...we’ve missed the point.
And our culture drives us to miss the point. We are consumers, after all. We are told to take, to have, to devour. The taking is easy. We breathe in easy.
How do we breathe out? Being willing to share our faith, to speak it and breathe it out into the world...these things are important. But we also have to be able to live and act in such a way that those who hear us talk about our faith know that we aren’t holding back.
Take, for simple instance, Christ’s affirmation that we are empowered to forgive. Sure, we can also retain sins, keeping a meticulously detailed Excel spreadsheet of all the ways that we have been wronged or slighted or disrespected. We can do that. Problem is, most of us were doing a great job of that before Jesus came along. Human beings have that one down pat.
Do those around you...and *particularly* those you’ve gotten into disagreements with, who are on your bad side...have any idea that you’ve been given the power to forgive? We’ve all received that forgiveness ourselves, from the one whom we crucified...all of us...with the nails of our selfishness and the hammer of our hatred. But do we give that forgiveness out in return...or do we sop it up like a heart that refuses to beat, or a chest that refuses to breathe?
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
It’s as simple as living.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment