Sermon: A Breath of Fresh Air

Texts:  Numbers 11:24-30; John 7:37-39; Acts 2:1-21

Date: May 11, 2008

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            Here’s my vote for ridiculous opening sentence of the week: “Breathing is known for its stress reducing results.”  This was in an article on a websight called “Fitsugar” under the headline, “Breathe like a celeb: Oxia.” “Breathing is known for its stress-reducing results, but what about sucking in pressurized oxygen?”   It’s an article about one of the latest celebrity fads, carrying around little canisters of compressed pure air so one can suck in a hit of oxygen if a little burst of energy is needed.  What a country!

            Yes, friends, for only $49.95 (and up) you too can have a bottled, branded can of air with enriched oxygen content, which is purported to have the following benefits:  “Provides natural relief for headaches, migraines and hangovers; Rejuvenates the skin; Aids in metabolism and digestion; Reduces lactic acid build up, extending your limit of exhaustion to promote faster recovery; Helps you party longer and harder (hence why celebs like Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Parker Posey, Christina Ricci, Kanye West, Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Timberlake are digging it); Clears your mind and de-stresses.”

            This strikes me as a kind of consumer pornography, buying $49.95 (and up) canned air so you can “party longer and harder.”  But I’m bringing it up not as yet another illustration of the corruption of our culture just for the fun of moaning about it, but as a potentially helpful metaphor for what the Holy Spirit is not. 

            The Holy Spririt is not a substance the well-heeled acquire in a portable container, available for a little pick-me-up when the owner chooses to access it.  The Holy Spirit is a wild wind blowing, available and accessible to all.  The first image that the writer of Acts uses when trying to describe what happened that first Pentecost day is “the rush of a violent wind.”  This reminds those familiar with biblical stories of the “ruah,”  the wind of God’s presence in Ezekial that animates the dry bones in the valley. Or the wind of John 3:8 which says, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  This Spirit-wind filled the entire upper room where the disciples were gathered, stirring hearts, mussing up hairdos, blasting dust bunnies out from under the furniture and sending them swirling in mini-tornadoes toward the ceiling. 

            This Spirit event was not a refreshing little sip of purified air, no ma’am.  It was a rush, a propelling force that sent the disciples sailing out into the streets to shout out the gospel at passers-by.  It’s a thrilling story.  But it’s unnerving, too.  That Spirit-wind is so wild, I think a lot of religious folk would rather can it and brand it than that just let `er rip. 

Even some of the Israelites following Moses way back when wanted to bottle up the Spirit—did you catch that in the story from Numbers?  These two guys, Eldad and Medad started prophesying on their own.  They had—horrors!—missed the meeting in which the Spirit made an appearance, as arranged by the mighty Moses, presumably with the assent of the Almighty God.  They didn’t play by the rules, didn’t write down “Council of Elders, 7:00” on their calendars, they missed the meeting, and still the Spirit rested on them and led them to prophesy.  Immediately one of the good boys who knew that the Spirit was on the agenda at the meeting ran and tattled on them.  Joshua, functioning like a vice-president of the tribe, knew a threat to order when he saw one.  He strongly urged Moses to rein them in.  He wanted that Spirit bottled and branded and available only to those who paid their dues and toed the party line!  But Moses wouldn’t do it.  “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” he says.  Do you think he could possibly foresee what kind of blessed chaos might ensue if all the Lord’s people believe the Spirit might could rest on them?

            The little snippet from the gospel of John also undermines the attempts of the religious leaders to formalize and regulate God’s presence.  One biblical scholar I read described what might have been going on in the background while Jesus speaks—an elaborate ritual in which priests have processed to a special pool on the temple grounds, withdrawn water in silver bowls, and are circling the altar with it seven times, while chanting their prayers.  At the end of the ritual they will pour out the water libation before the crowds in a carefully prescribed manner.  Fancy.  Meanwhile, Jesus stands there shouting, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”  The gospel writer makes sure the readers know he was talking about the Spirit.  The Spirit was not contained in sacred vessels from a sacred but stagnant pool—it was gushing freely from the heart of Jesus and the believers’ hearts.  I can’t imagine that Jesus’ subversive invitation went over big with the priests carrying out this ceremony—they might be out of a job if no one is needed to stand between God and the people.  They would rather see the Spirit bottled and branded and distributed by them.

            Speaking of bottling the Spirit, I’ve noticed that some people of faith talk like the Holy Spirit had done all its work during the span of years during which the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were written and codified.  As if everything important God was going to do was done when the last period was put on the last sentence in Revelation, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints, Amen.”  Some folks talk like that record of the Spirit’s work, bottled up in the pages of sacred text, is all there is, and the best we can do as we contemplate God’s work in the present is breathe from that ancient vessel.  I was thinking about the guy who was recently on Oprah, setting the new world’s record for holding his breath.  He held his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds—wow!  Prior to beginning the stop watch, he breathed out of canisters of purified air (maybe Oxia) for half an hour. 

            So I was thinking, sometimes churches and Christians act like that—that they got their inspiration from the Bible or from some long-ago action of the pioneers of the church, and then they spend a real long time holding their breath, afraid to take in any new inspiration, acting as if the Holy Spirit was canned and branded a long time ago.  The problem is, you can’t get a whole lot done besides sitting very, very still if you’re holding your breath.  Besides, you are not giving any credit to the wild wind of the Spirit, still on the move, still trying to access the lungs and hearts of the believers, if you are only focused on the inspiration of the past. 

If the Holy Spirit is still on the move, we need to learn not only from the texts of the past but also from the texts of the present.  The United Church of Christ has been in the news pretty often in the last couple of weeks thanks to the media tempest over Rev. Jeremiah Wright, recently retired senior minister of Trinity UCC in Chicago.  I trust this is not news to you?  Some of you have seen clips of Rev. Wright on television or YouTube recently?  There are a lot of issues that one might talk about, such as the tendency of corporate for-profit media to create a circus that will keep people tuning in; the use of such a circus to gain political advantage; the level of political discourse that would rather attend to entertaining sound bytes than complex economic issues, and so forth.  I want to set those topics aside and ask where the living and active Holy Spirit might enter into this situation.  There have been quite a number of people who have, I believe, urged the president of our denomination to try to rein in Rev. Wright.  What people in some more hierarchical or authoritative traditions might not understand is that we have a president, not a Pope.  Rev. Thomas, our president, couldn’t silence Rev. Wright even if he wanted to—there’s no place for that in our polity, our way of organizing as a church.  As a church, we believe in the autonomy of a local church within a covenantal relationship with the larger fellowship, and we believe in the freedom of the pulpit within the covenantal relationship of pastor and parish.  This is because we believe in the freedom of the Holy Spirit to inspire different kinds of speech, within the covenant of relationship with a God of love and justice. 

            I really took notice in this year’s reading of the Pentecost story in Acts of how the flame of the Spirit, which followed the wind, acted.  “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”  The story goes on to say how they were able to communicate the Spirit’s message to people of a host of different ethnic groups, not all speaking in the same language but speaking in the native language of each.  This is important.  The language through which the Spirit communicates is not uniform.  It has colorful variety.  One of the things we need to keep in mind if we listen to a different kind of speech—say, the cadence of preaching that would be more typical in an urban African-American church than in our church—is that we as a church were never supposed to be uniform from the get-go.  We must allow for the variety of speech that the Spirit inspires and blesses, even when it sounds strange to our ears.  And we cannot call for our leaders to can the fresh air of the Spirit and dole it out in little authorized and purified spurts.

            I know that some of what Rev. Wright has said has been offensive to many.  Rev. Wright and Trinity UCC church have been getting all kinds of hate mail and even death threats over some of his remarks; it seems that in our era, we can’t just be offended; some people must back up their affront with a threat of violence.  That, my friends, says as much about America as any of Rev. Wright’s most inflammatory remarks.  I think we should ask ourselves, does being offensive mean that speech is not inspired by the Holy Spirit?  If what someone says offends, irritates, embarrasses, or outrages us, does that automatically disqualify such speech as being Holy Spirit led?  Think about it. 

            I believe that the wild wind of the Spirit sometimes blows some dirt into our eyes, causing irritation and tears.  While I wouldn’t agree with everything Jeremiah Wright has said, I think his speech, amplified by the media megaphone, has blown some dust bunnies gathering around racial division and unexamined nationalism in our country out from under some furniture.  The Holy Spirit may well be powering the blowing out of dust bunnies of racism from under pews and communion tables where they have lain undisturbed for a long time.  We have not yet achieved anything like unity in our diversity either in the church or outside it; we have not absorbed one of Rev. Wright’s core messages that different is not deficient.  We have not absorbed God’s message that the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh, young and old, rich and poor, women and men, every hue, every nation, that everyone might be saved.  So the Holy Spirit’s work—in addition to the work of comforting, healing, and affirming—is to urge us forward to greater love and understanding between ourselves. 

            We fool ourselves if we think the Holy Spirit only inspires the kind of speech and action we find comfortable and comforting.  We fool ourselves if we think the Holy Spirit only exists so that we can take a little sip now and then to enable us to have clear skin, good digestion, and the stamina to party harder and longer.  We fool ourselves if we think the Holy Spirit can be canned and franchised by anyone on this green earth.

            So what to do with our current discomfort over the dust storm kicked up by the Wright media circus?  Well, “Breathing is known for its stress reducing results,” or so I’ve heard.  Take a deep breath.  Let’s ask ourselves what the Holy Spirit is calling us to be and do through these days.  Let’s contemplate how we might yet breathe in the fresh air of compassion, justice, and love.  Let the Holy Spirit breathe on us, and take us where it will.