The Rev. Dr. Melissa Lynn DeRosia was called to serve as Pastor of Westminster
Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2019. Previously, she served
congregations in Rochester, New York; Caro, Michigan; and Louisville, Kentucky. She is a graduate of CRCDS.
“When We Breathe Together”
Scripture Texts: John 20:19-23 and Acts 2:1-21
One of my favorite artists and authors is Jan Richardson. Jan is a United Methodist minister, who expresses her heart at intersection of writing, art and faith. On this Pentecost Sunday she wrote the following blessing:
“When We Breathe Together”
This is the blessing
we cannot speak
by ourselves.
This is the blessing
we cannot summon
by our own devices,
cannot shape
to our purpose,
cannot bend
to our will.
This is the blessing
that comes
when we leave behind
our aloneness
when we gather
together
when we turn
toward one another.
This is the blessing
that blazes among us
when we speak
the words
strange to our ears
when we finally listen
into the chaos
when we breathe together
at last.
Jan’s words have been on my heart over the last few weeks preparing for this Pentecost Sunday. A Sunday, that is a day of celebration often referred to as the birthday of the Christian Church. It is a day of red—the liturgical color that symbolizes the Spirit. It is a day when we try to imagine the hearts and minds of those early disciples as the wind blew through the closed doors and a beautiful cacophony of chaotic sounds emerged from those gathered in Jerusalem that day.
I confess that has taken me a bit to get past the first verse in Acts 2, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. When COVID-19 first began to impact our gathering as the church, back in mid-March, I remember beginning to mark time according the liturgical calendar. That certainly, by Holy Week and Easter, all of this would pass and join our voices together in chorus of Alleluia’s, that “He had risen indeed!”
When it became clear that we would still be confined to our homes, we began the worship series “Faith Behind Closed Doors.” And I thought, surely by Pentecost we would be joining the disciples, gathered in one pla
ce for prayer and celebration.
I suppose in another sense, we are in one place. We are in this hard place of uncertainty and anxiety. As one commentator points out we are together “across all sorts of distances — geographical, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic — we are bound together as one people, one humanity, one planet, facing a common threat that knows no borders. Like the disciples in our Gospel reading for this week, we are again huddled together behind locked doors, waiting for Jesus to come among us and say, “Peace be with you.” Waiting for him to breathe on us. Waiting for him to speak the words we need so desperately: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
During this time when the very thought of another person breathing on our near us raises our anxiety exponentially, I am strangely drawn to the ways the Pentecost stories as told by two different gospel writers include the breath of the Triune God. Both of these stories embody an ongoing collective breathing together of God with all of creation.
Ancient Jewish understanding of God’s breathing together with creation has much to do with the Hebrew word “ruach.”
Remember with me to the beginning.
The very literal beginning of creation as told through the pages Genesis where the breath, the ruach of God’s very being soared over the waters at creation and was breathed into word made flesh. Ruach dried the face of the flooded earth inviting Noah and his family into new life. God breathing together with creation inspired prophets both male and female and brought to life the valley of the dry bones. Over and over again ruach restores the land, restores the people’s relationship with God and one another.
They are a new creation.
Though the words changes from Hebrew to Greek, God’s breathing with creation continues as it comes upon a young woman who has found favor with God. Who is promised that she will bear a son and will call him Jesus. Years later, that boy will grow to be a man and emerging from the waters of baptism, God again breathes God’s spirit into that moment proclaiming from the heavens the presence of God’s love.
It really should come as no surprise that when the Risen One appears to his disciples, he would breathe God’s peace into the fear and death of uncertainty. This breath is the fulfillment of God’s promise in Jesus to be with us always, to the end of the age. I find it fascinating though, that the Gospel of John does not tell us what the disciples did.
What was their next step?
How did this breath, the Spirit, empower the first Christians to find that rhythm of breathing with God and all of creation?
Luke’s Gospel, as the story continue through the book of Acts, offers us an amazing story, full of details that invite us to listen into the chaos. Listen as God’s breath shows up and transforms ordinary, imperfect, frightened people into the Body of Christ. Feel the rise and fall of the disruption and disorientation of engaging the sacred breath, in such a way that something new and holy can be born within and among us. It is about our breathing with the rhythms with God that carry us out of suspicion, cynicism and fear into a radical new way of engaging God and all creation.
Here in Acts, we have story after story of the first believers who communally bear witness to the Risen Christ and the Spirit he has bequeathed to them as a group. The overarching message we obtain from Acts is that Christians can only be Christians in community; that we will only make a difference in the world by sharing all that we are, all that we have, all that God has created us to be in common and in a spirit of unity. That the blessing of breathing with God truly comes when we turn toward one another and breathe together the new life God intends for all creation.
I look at what is happening in the world right now and we hear the cries from those who say that they can’t breathe. We the names made known to us: Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and over these last few weeks Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Abrey and George Floyd. The spread of COVID-19 in this country has further exposed the racial inequalities in this nation where an African American is statistically more likely to be die after struggling to breathe on a ventilator. Not being able to breathe because of lack of access to health care and at higher risk for chronic diseases.
We the church cannot turn away from those cries, ignore them, pretend they don’t exist or stay silent. We believe God’s very breath created the diversity of humanity. We believe Jesus’ breath of compassion met people where they were, heard their cries, broke bread and offered love and healing. Are we willing to be filled with this breath, turn toward one another and do likewise?
The ruach of Pentecost empowers us, like the first Christians, to find that rhythm of breathing with God and all of creation. So I would invite you for a moment to connect with rhythm. Close your eyes if you are able.
Take a deep breathe and exhale.
Take a moment to just thank God for the fact that you can breathe. That no one is kneeling on your neck strangling the life from your body.
And now imagine that the Spirit is filling your lungs with a breath of fresh air.
Imagine that you are exhaling everything that stands in the way of being the person of conviction that God is calling you to be.
Exhale cynicism, shame, knee jerk reactions of defensiveness and just try to sit and listen with someone else’s experience.
Imagine that the Spirit is filling you so that you can work with God, be used by God to give life to something new – to co-create to a world where we turn toward each other and value every life.
Imagine that together we breathe life to the best of what God desires for the world.
Imagine that as you breathe in the power of the Holy Spirit we can be the church. We can be part of the creating breath of God’s new creation, a community whose purpose is to share the same love that unites us and sends us forth.
On this day of Pentecost and everyday.
May it be so. For you and for me.
