10:30 am, Sun, May 14, 2023 - JGWhite/FBCA (Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21)
For the prayer before the
preaching, let us quiet ourselves for a breath prayer…
About twenty-five years ago, one
of my faithful few people of the Port Greville Baptist Church was in hospital,
here in Amherst. Dear Jessie was a delightful woman, with energy and a sense of
fun, in the midst of the quiet life she led, of a widowed senior in a quiet village.
I remember some fun little stories she told me. She had a lung problem – I
forget now if it was emphysema, or COPD, or what – and so she landed in
hospital, periodically. I never shall forget, as she paced herself, talking to
me, in her hospital bed, with oxygen from a tube, as she said, “When you can’t
breathe, nothing else matters.”
You can’t deny that!
Today, another ‘earth day’ Sunday
for us, this time with the theme of AIR. It is said of fish they don’t know
what water is; but they must. We know what air is. We know it when we need to
breathe deeply, or hold our breath. We know it when it blows strongly in north
Cumberland County. We know it when we smell smoke, or mayflowers, or a skunk, or
supper burning in the kitchen, or any other common stink. I recently gave a
staff member a birthday gift, a book titled: Jesus Farted and Other
Uncomfortable Thoughts.
On the other hand, do we know when
the wind of God the Holy Spirit is blowing in the midst?
Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love as Thou dost
love
And do as Thou wouldst do.
I am, in these earth day weeks,
treading a fine line. The line between preaching a Bible study about religious
ideas, using the images of earth, air, water, and so forth. Or,
preaching about creation, the environment, and things like the climate
crisis or the big extinction that is happening now.
Today, from the four scriptures
for this Sunday of the year, I took two: Acts 17 and John 14. Sometimes I feel
that I am performing eisegesis, which is not a swear word. E I S E G E S
I S, eisegesis, is taking Bible verses and putting your meaning into them,
instead of being influenced by the holy text itself. (That’s called exegesis –
the meaning coming out of it.)
The words of Paul, preaching one day in Athens,
Greece, sound wonderful for a sermon about the air we breathe. God “gives
to all mortals life and breath and all things.” This was common ground
for Paul and his audience, in general: there is a Creator, and our life,
including our breathing, is a gift. But the points of Paul’s sermon were about
God, who God is, how to worship and relate to this God. And it happens through
a Human who was raised back to life: started breathing again.
At the basis of Christian
thinking and living are facts like: physical life is a gift, including the
oxygen we breathe in, and the carbon dioxide we breathe out, along with a lot
of nitrogen, other gasses, and material of all sorts. ‘Life and breath and all
things’ does pretty much cover everything. With everything we have, getting along
well with the Source is a great thing to have going for us.
So much of our talk – and music –
in Church just uses things like ‘breath’ as a metaphor for spiritual stuff. This
is a biblical thing to do. It can be poignant and beautiful.
Spirit, Spirit of gentleness,
Blow through the wilderness
Calling and free…
But if we have no breath in our
lungs, our living here is done, & we won’t have the Breath of the Spirit in
us here either.
On Mother’s Day quite a few
people (of course not all) think with fondness of the good things they got from
their mothers. Air, breath, is one of them. Most of us spent about nine months
on the inside, and where did the oxygen we needed come from then? The body that
was our home, our mother.
All together, we realize for
earth the lungs are the plants (mainly) on land and in the waters. They
take in CO2, and turn that gas into two things: wood and other solid material,
as well as O2 gas, which they release in great amounts. These plants are solar
powered: there’s the energy they use to do this. ‘Mother Earth,’ or ‘Gaia,’ the
whole environment, is something we are part of, and don’t live without. Remember
that canticle Francis of Assisi composed, saying to God:
Praised be You, my Lord,
through Sister Mother Earth.
who sustains us and governs us
and who produces
varied fruits with coloured
flowers and herbs.
These days, eight hundred years
after St. Francis, we see a climate crisis. Praise be God through brother wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene, which warns us of many things. All that
surrounds us sustains and governs us. This is part of how
God sustains and governs us. We know it is not just the supernatural that
proves God or intervenes in our lives. It is the natural, every day,
that keeps us living and shows us the way.
So, the Spirit of God points us
toward creation care. You may well know that in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek
Bible the words for ‘spirit’ are the same words for ‘wind’ and for ‘breath.’ Both
the immaterial Spirit of God and the physical atmosphere govern us.
I think climate change is to
bring about a spiritual change in Christianity. And physical changes. (Such as
how we use paper, perhaps?) Change is beginning. Like several other important
challenges of our age, the environment is calling for it’s own health and
salvation. Practical projects are popping up.
An old friend in Annapolis County
was telling me about things in her congregation, including little crocheted
animals they are making and selling. Lots going on in our church, wrote
Janet. We are working on a project to raise funds for our solar panels that
are going on the church roof. It
involves making 480 "Worry Worms" that we are calling "Earth
Worms" to tie the sale of the worms to our efforts to improve the
environment. We are aiming to sell 480
because the panels cost $480 each and we want to symbolically sell enough to
cover the cost of one solar panel. A
couple other women have agreed to learn how to make them, and they went
to my friend’s house for a crochet lesson.
Let us be grateful for the
messages we are hearing from the air we breathe, from fellow humans: our
siblings in Christ, and the inner voice we call the Breath of God. A worship song
says:
This is the air I breathe,
This is the air I breathe,
Your holy presence living in
me.
May we be aware of the presence
of God, who can turn the page of a new chapter for us. A chapter of touching
the earth lightly, using the earth gently. We do this for everyone’s breath.
“When you can’t breathe, nothing
else matters.” This is true for the atmosphere going in and out of our lungs,
and the leaves of each plant; and it is true for the values and the
spirituality we share – for our spirit. So, we do not take for granted the
life, and breath, and all things we and our world have been given. Thanks be to
the Breath of God!
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