Shalom! Believe!

Acts 5:27-32; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

It has been written that "The human species has been twice kissed by the divine. If the first kiss brought us breath and birth, the second kiss brought us rebirth and a second breath." "The first kiss of God quicked us to come alive. Adam was God's first kiss. The second kiss of God, which is Jesus Christ, quickens us to come alive in Christ and be 'born of the Spirit.' And, the Spirit is the breath of God in the body of the Church."

God has planted throughout the Scripture time-released fireworks. At various periods in the church's history these bombs go off under their texts, exploding for all to see, inviting people of that era to "look at me" and take seriously the Word of God coming alive specially for them right before their eyes.

Two books of the Bible exploding under us, and wanting to explode within us are the books of John, from which our Gospel lesson for today comes, and the book of Genesis. Why John? First, it stands apart from the other gospels in its interest in "spirituality." That is why Clement of Alexandria called it "the spiritual Gospel." And, second, it uses image after image, appealing to a visual culture, like ours, where the perceptual is more galvanizing and mobilizing than the conceptual.

And why is Genesis a book of the Bible that speaks so urgently to our day? Well, in times of transition, like now, issues of rootage assume added urgency. People want to know the answers to the questions: "Where did I come from? Who am I? What am I made of? What is the nature of the cosmos?

True, the readings for today include no Old Testament reading except a Psalm, but todays account from John of the resurrection of the New Adam invites, indeed demands, that it be interpreted within the First Adam context of Genesis 2. So, you will forgive me for preaching a little upon a passage that we didn't read, earlier in the service. The words, nevertheless are, I am sure, very familiar to you. And they speak so importantly to our Gospel lesson for today.

Verse five of Genesis 2 opens, like a curtain, onto the desert, a landscape the Hebrews of 3000 years ago knew better than almost anyone: "...the Lord God sent no rain on the earth" Now, when you bring earth and water together, what do you get?... "Mud." Well, all right. But who wants to be a mudball? How about clay? That's what you and I are -- a crusty clumb of cosmic clay that God scooped out of the swampland created when God used a flood "to rise out of the earth and water all the surface of the ground."

Someone once wrote that there is a high mathematical probability that some of the molecular stuff that has gone into what we conventionally call "us" has come or will yet go to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. A breath of air. A cell on your eyelid, in a drop of sweat, or in the wall of your heart, has in all likelihood been to the edge of space!

There is an equally high mathematical probability that some of our melecular stuff has come from the primeval fireball of creation itself, the furnace in which the universe began. That we might literally have (for a while, at least) within our very bodies some of the matter that was there during the very first moment, or some of the air with which Moses reiterated what he had heard when he heard God say "I am"; or some of the air that carried that, still small voice, which calmed Elijah.

You know, when we talk about bringing children into the world, we make a mistake. The truth is that we actually come out of the earth. The Bible celebrates our earthliness, our dustiness, our ashiness. We come out of the earth and share a similar fate with the earth itself. There could be no more powerful statement of the continuity of human creation with the rest of creation than this one. Indeed, we are the earth come to con sciousness through a kiss-like breath of divine life which God infused into earthly dust.

So, here is a very biblically profound reason for us to be concerned about the fate of the earth.

And what did God do to that cosmic clump of clay to bring it to life and give it the divine essense? Here is the key text that introduces the Bible's first definition of "spirituality:"

Then the Lord God formed adam [a human] from the dust of adamh [the ground] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus adam became a living creature.

Using the triple word play of adamh (earth), adam (human), and adom (red), God fashions the rich red earth into human form and then kisses us to life with the divine "breath" -- in Hebrew ruach, in Greek pneuma, in Latin spirare. In its first meaning, spirituality is nothing more nor less than coming alive to life. Aliveness is from God.

God enspirits us, breathes air into us. God is the breath of life in us, making us alive to life.

In one of John Wesley's most classic sermons, "The New Birth," Wesley draws graphically on the Genesis 2 vocabulary of breathing and respiration to describe the meaning of "regeneration" and "being born again":

God is continually breathing, Wesley said, upon our soul, and our soul is breathing unto God. Grace is descending into our heart, and prayer and praise ascending to heaven. And by this intercourse between God and humanity, this fellowship with the Father and the Son, as by a kind of respiration, the life of God in the soul is sustained: and the child of God grows up, till he comes to "the full measure of the stature of Christ."

In other words, salvation is at heart a form of breathing or respiration. The means of grace are breathed in (that's "inhalation"), and good works are breathed out (that's exhalation"). If one tries to get by in life by only breathing in grace, what happens? How long can you hold your breath? After a while one passes out. Breathing that only takes in but doesn't give out is a form of respiration that leads quickly to expiration.

Then there are those who want large draughts of divine grace, and inhale deeply the grace of God, but who don't want to let out too many good works. If you takes deep inhalations and shallow exhalations, what happens? You hyperventilate, and some Christians are, indeed, hyperventilating on the Holy Spirit.

The 14th century mystic Ruysbroeck puts it in an even more powerful way that shifts the axis from our breathing to God's breath:

God aspires us into himself in contemplation, and then we must be wholly his; but afterwards the Spirit of God expires us without, for the practice of love and good works.

In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus came into the room where his disciples were sitting, blessed them with the words, "Peace be with you!" and then breathed upon them, giving them a new life in the Spirit; a life that would require, that would demand, that they go forth and share the good news and the love of God with the rest of the world.

It is good for us to come here, week by week, taking in the fresh air of God. But, at the same time, it is so important for us to apply what we have gotten here to the life we live, in the good things we do, in our love for others.

It is important for us to remember that after Adam and Eve were put upon the earth they were told to take care of it; they became gardeners. It may also be interesting to note that Mary Magdalene, following the resurrection, stood in a garden and thought that Jesus, the second Adam, was a gardener!

It certainly follows, then, that if we are to be made into the new adam that we must, also, become gardeners, taking care of one another and taking care of the earth, as well. When Jesus told his followers, "Shalom, Believe!" and breathed upon them, he was inviting them to be recreated and reborn. He was inviting them to become gardeners in the new Eden.

But, the biggest question is: Have you let God's Spirit breathe in your life? Can you say this morning you are alive to life in all its magic and mystery? Can you say this morning you are alive to life in Jesus Christ in all its majesty and miracle? Let it breathe, brothers and sisters. Let it breathe...

Amen.