The Breath of God

Source of Grace, Love, Forgiveness and Life

Our lives are gifts from God and are filled with many things: family and friends, jobs and professions, successes and failures, heart songs and heartache, sin and forgiveness, life and death. During the season of Lent leading up to Easter we have to opportunity, perhaps even the necessity to reflect on these many emotions and experiences. The following prayer helps me and many others put all things into perspective.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer p. 219)

As we examine our lives with the help of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we see that God cares about our joys and our sorrows, our sins and successes, our life, death and new life (resurrection).  I share a portion of Ezekiel 37:1-14, the Valley of the Dry Bones, and of John 11:1-45, the Raising of Lazarus, to shine a light on God’s care and love for us as we journey from life to death to resurrection with all that entails for us and for our families.

“The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. . . Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord. . . and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. . .” (Ezekiel 37:1-14) The Holy Spirit, the Breath of God surrounds God’s people through life and death and back to life again. We now go with Jesus to Bethany.

“When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. . .and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. . . then Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go! (John 11:1-45)

“Lazarus, come out!” “Unbind him and let him go!” Jesus’ words to Lazarus, Jesus’ words to Lazarus’ friends and family are Jesus’ words to us as well. He calls us out from death: from death to our fears, our sins, our disappointments and our failures as well as our physical deaths. We are surrounded by and filled with the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, our chains are broken and we are set free to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.” (Book of Common Prayer p.305)

Jesus’ Temptations, The Coronavirus and What’s Important

Jesus’ Temptations, The Coronavirus and What’s Important

Possessions, Power, Praise

Or

Family, Friends, Creator, Community

Most of us have known for a long time how fragile life can be, not only for individuals, but for our community, the nation, the nations of the World and the Planet itself. Natural disasters like hurricanes, fires and floods have shut down economies, and destroyed lives and property around the world. Wars and terrorism have done the same in parts of our world. Many of us are also concerned about Climate Change and its effect on the global food supply and the continued and sufficient supply of clean water. We think about these events and possibilities and pray for those affected and for the wisdom to help each other recover from these disasters, make necessary changes to our life style and for the grace to love one another so that wars may cease.

But, I have to admit that I naively never considered that a virus originating on a continent thousands of miles away would infect and kill people around the world, stretch our health care system and food supply chain to the breaking points, shut down the global economy putting people out of work around the world, cause financial markets to tumble and increase the political divisions within our own country.

Having said all this, I want to look at Jesus’ Temptations in the wilderness as a window through which we may find the strength to weather the crisis, remember what is important to us and all the peoples of the earth, all of God’s Children, and find the silver lining behind this very, very dark cloud.

The story begins in Luke 3:21-22 when Jesus is baptized by John and the Holy Spirit descends upon him and a voice from heaven declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is then “lead by the Spirit in the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil.” I believe Jesus’ time in the wilderness was used by the Holy Spirit to allow Jesus to focus, meditate and pray about why God had sent him into the world, what was important in life, what his mission was to be and whether he would accept it (remember he was fully human as well as fully God). The three temptations were his “final exam” before “graduation” and beginning his new job, his mission and ministry.

The story continues in Luke 4:1-13 with these temptations: turn the stones to bread; receive the glory and authority and the possession of all kingdoms simply by worshiping the world the flesh and the devil; jump from the pinnacle of the temple, proving God’s power in him: temptations to possessions, power and praise. These are not unlike the temptations we face as we search, struggle and strive to find what is important in our lives. We too are tempted by “the world, the flesh and the devil.”

I see in this time of Pandemic, a wilderness, not unlike the wilderness Jesus found himself in. I see a physical wilderness and a spiritual wilderness. I see anxiety and fear, disappointment, frustration and physical loss including loss of life. I see the loss of jobs, incomes, loss of investment value for some and worries of not being able to pay the mortgage or rent or feed one’s family for others. I also see partisan politics and anger toward those who have more than we do and fear of those who have less. I believe we are all asking the questions: will we make it through this? How long will it last? How long will it take to recover? What will the world be like when this is over?

Let’s begin as Jesus did, by reflecting, mediating, praying and asking ourselves: what is important to me now?  Are possessions, power, praise my focus and goal, or are family, friends, Creator and community more important. As the Caterpillar Tractor Company advertised years ago, “There are no simple solutions, just difficult decisions.” This was true for Jesus and it is true for us as well. We all, obviously, need a place to live and food to eat and a decent job to pay for this things. We also need a health care system that is prepared, provisioned and well supplied to care for all of us. Like Jesus we also need a vision of who God created us to be, how God created us to live, and a vision of the interconnectedness of the World.  As we said in the 1960’s, “we are all passengers on Space Ship Earth.” Yes there is the International Space Station, but for most of the Seven Billion of us there is no place else to go.

Since we are bound together, whether we wish to be are not, perhaps this Crisis will give us that wilderness experience that will help us learn to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” even those neighbors with whom we disagree about history and politics, economic systems or anything else under the sun. Can we use this time to help those in need, to maintain connections with family, friends, our communities, even if we have to do it for awhile by phone, or Skype or Zoom or standing six feet apart at the Grocery Store. Can we use this time to see the world as a community, a very small community in which one can travel from the United States to Europe to Asia in a matter of hours? Can we use this time as an opportunity to learn that those with whom we disagree about global politics love their country and the world just as much as we do?

I leave you with a poem by Wendell Berry shared on Facebook this morning by my friend Lisa Hodgens.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

May we all be free and may we all be connected. “May the peace of God that passes all understanding be with you now and forever. Amen.