note… the original sermon for Pentecost was written over 10 days ago because of staff vacations and our own pre-recording for worship in the age of Covid-19. But I couldn’t rest with this sermon and felt the Spirit keep nudging me to talk about how breath this past week has been stolen from so many… so here is the update God put on my heart this morning.
Text: John 3:1-8
Most of us are familiar with the story of Pentecost from Acts.
As the crowds gather in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Passover, the disciples of Jesus were also in town. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit rushes in, sounding like a violent wind and appearing as tongues of fire.
And then, the Holy Spirit empowers the disciples to reach out and speak to all who gather around, each able to hear in their own native language.
Three thousand people give their lives to Christ that day, receive the Holy Spirit, and the church is born.
Just six weeks before, those disciples had been gathered together behind locked doors. We heard this message right after Easter and also last week from Bishop Deb. Jesus is resurrected and shows these frightened disciples his hands and side and then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit. He offers them peace and sends them into the world.
This wasn’t the first appearance of the rushing, flowing, creative, breath of God.
In the first verses of our scripture, God’s breath, wind, Ru’ach, sweeps across the waters as the world is being shaped.
And in the second chapter of Genesis, God scoops up a handful of topsoil and forms it into a human being. Then, God breathes life, Spirit, into its nostrils.
Birth and creation and the Spirit go hand in hand.
And wherever the Spirit shows up, the finite and the infinite are closer together.
Our very first stop on our summer road trip is Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.
For the Lakota people, their story of emergence into this world is connected with this sacred place. Emergence in this tradition is not creation per se, but when their people came to the surface and emerged from the spirit realm.
Their story begins in a time when the plants and animals were being brought into existence, but there were no people or bison living on the earth.
The cave itself, is known as Oniya Oshoka, the place where the earth breathes. This cave is believed to be a passageway between the spirit world and the surface.
The Creator instructed their ancestor Tokahe to lead the people through the passage when the earth was ready for them. When they emerged, they saw the hoof print of a bison who had come before and were told by the Creator, “follow the buffalo track and you will have what you need.”
Then the Creator shrunk down the entrance to the passageway, leaving it as a reminder of where they had come from.
As a child, my family traveled through the Black Hills in South Dakota for our family vacation one summer.
Yes, in this picture my brother and I ARE handcuffed together. You see, we made a stop at Wall Drug and got some of those novelty handcuffs… and when we got out to take this picture we couldn’t find the key!
However, we never found our way to Wind Caves.
In fact, it most people traveling through the area probably would have been unaware of the intricate network of caves just below the surface. The opening from the Lakota Emergence Story is just a small hole where the wind moves in and out.
In 1881, the Bingham brothers were traveling by and heard the sound of a blowing wind, even though it was an incredibly calm day. They sought out the source and the wind blew one of the brother’s hats right off!
Many came to see the sight and explore the caves and in 1903 it was officially designated as a National Park. It is one of the largest cave systems in the entire world and still has not been fully mapped!
Scientifically, changing barometric pressure causes the air to move through this the small natural entrance to Wind Cave.
Yet that unseen force, that natural in and out, reminds us of the breath of life blown into Adam’s nostrils.
It reminds us of the wind hovering over the waters.
It reminds us of Jesus breathing the Spirit of peace upon the disciples.
It reminds us of the birth of the church!
And as fundamentally as our own life depends on every breath in… and breath out… our life in God depends upon the flowing of that Rua’ch, Pneuma, Spirit in our own lives as well.
Think about your own breath.
Inhale.
Exhale.
That breath sustains you every minute of every day.
But how often do you really notice it?
The air entering your lungs.
The muscles moving as it leaves again.
The oxygen moving to every red blood cell.
I must admit I’ve been thinking a lot more about my breath this week.
I’ve been thinking about it after seeing those images of George Floyd struggling to breathe on the ground.
As a white woman, I confess that when Eric Garner cried out that he couldn’t breathe and died in police custody in 2014, I was upset for a little bit.
But my life went back to normal.
Lord have mercy.
Hear my confession that nothing in my life changed, when I could have breathed in your Spirit and could have spent these last six years building capacity and standing up against racism in our community.
The anger and frustration we see spilling out on the streets is a direct result of the fact that nothing has changed.
That what is normal is the systemic racism embedded in the fabric of our country.
I’ve been thinking about my breath every time I check the daily numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths here in Iowa.
Because of the essential nature of their work, the virus is disproportionately impacting our black and brown neighbors here in Iowa.
But I also think about the stories of children in the documentary “The Human Element” who couldn’t breathe because of asthma. The film explored a school in a neighborhood with a lot of industrial pollution where so many of its children have this disease they have an entire asthma protocol.
We are so busy prioritizing livlihoods over lives we can’t hear the people in our community telling us that they can’t breathe.
My insides are just twisted from grief and anguish.
It is Pentecost and it is 2020 and it feels like the world is on fire.
Maybe you feel the same.
Our gospel lesson for this morning comes from very early in the gospel of John.
Enter Nicodemus.
He was part of the ruling class in Jerusalem.
He had done everything in his life right.
He was the epitome of privilege and power.
And I think he felt like his world was on fire.
He knew that something had to give, something had to change, knew that there was something he wasn’t seeing.
And he was scared.
He was scared for others to know what he was wrestling with or how he felt…
In some ways, he was waiting to emerge…
So he goes to Jesus under the cover of night to have a conversation.
What he hears surprises him.
Jesus tells him that unless he is born anew, born from above, re-created… Nicodemus will not be able to see the Kingdom of God.
It’s as if he is telling him, as long as you remain hidden, in the dark, under cover…
As long as you are comfortable with things as they way they are…
If you refuse to let go and leave behind what you know…
Then you’ll never really experience God’s Kingdom.
Nicodemus takes Jesus literally and tries to figure out what it means to re-enter his mother’s womb…
And that is when Jesus brings the Spirit back into the conversation.
We emerge…
We are recreated…
We are born again…
We wake up…
We are able to see and know and participate in the Kingdom of God only by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus invites Nicodemus to set aside his privilege and power and to let the power of God fill his life and guide his actions instead.
And just like that very first breath in Adam’s nostrils brought him to life, when the Holy Spirit moves into our bodies and minds and souls, we come to experience a life that we couldn’t even comprehend before.
God breathes into our lives and changes everything.
All around us, our neighbors can’t breathe.
They can’t breathe because systemic racism is holding them down.
They can’t breathe because of pollution.
They can’t breathe because of an uncontrolled virus.
They can’t breathe because of hatred and frustration.
And I am taking a good long look at my own life today and thinking about all of the ways that I have directly or indirectly contributed.
How have I stifled the breath of God?
How have I kept that life-giving breath from entering their lives?
Where do I need to emerge, wake up, be born again?
As Tim Nafziger writes, “Jesus understand that power warps the way you view the world. The more power, the greater the warp. Being born again is what it takes to start seeing things again in their proper light.”
It all feels so impossible.
It feels overwhelming.
The grief, the division, the anguish is palpable.
But you know what… it was for the disciples, too.
When I initially wrote this sermon, I said that on the day of Pentecost they were in Jerusalem celebrating.
But how can you celebrate when your leader has been executed by the empire?
How can you celebrate when you are still angry and frustrated and grieving?
It had to have felt impossible and overwhelming and they had to have still been afraid.
And that is when the Holy Spirit showed up.
Showed up with fire and with wind.
Turned the world upside down.
No doubt, some in that crowd had just fifty-three days before been crying out “Crucify Him!”
But the Holy Spirit showed up and they could see now what they couldn’t see then.
Three thousand people were born again that day.
Three thousand people woke up to a new way of life and living in the Kingdom of God where you put your neighbors first and love is the greatest command and you share what you have and make sure no one is in need.
I think again about Nicodemus.
If we follow his story through the gospel of John, we find him again at the end.
No longer is he hanging out in the night.
He emerges into public view, in broad daylight, after the crucifixion of Jesus.
In a time when it would have been the riskiest for him to do so, the Spirit pushes him to the seat of power to ask for the body of Jesus.
He puts his own life on the line for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
In the midst of all that seems impossible, Come Holy Spirit!
Come and blow your life-giving breath among our communities once again!
Come and breathe into our lives so that we might see Your Kingdom.
Come Holy Spirit!
Cleanse us of all within us that keeps others from breathing.
Cleanse us of all that has kept us from experiencing your life.
Burn away the sins of racism.
Melt away our tendency to put profits over people.
Come Spirit and help us to see things in their proper light.
Help us to see ourselves in our proper light.
Help us to see our neighbors in their proper light.
Your light.
Your life-giving, life-sustaining, cup-runneth-over, abundant love for all light.
Empower us to be your church.
Not in a building, but right where we are… in our homes, our neighborhood, our work, our world.
Come Holy Spirit and help us to set this world on fire once again with love and grace and mercy and kindness and forgiveness.
Let’s pray…
Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your love within us.
May we breathe out and share it with the world.
Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your peace within us.
May we breathe out and share it with the world.
Spirit of God may we breathe in and hold your life within us.
May we breathe out and share it with the world. (Christine Sine)
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