“Every Breath We Take”[i]
A Communion
Meditation Preached by the
Rev. Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday, June 5, 2012
First Congregational
Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text: Acts 2:1-4
What do we do on the average of 12 to 20 times a minute,
usually without even noticing?
Breathing.
So, 15 breaths a minute, 900 breaths an hour, 21,000 breaths
a day, 8 million breaths a year.
But do we even think about our breathing? Do we even notice it?
In the third chapter of Exodus, the shepherd Moses one day takes
his sheep to a mountain called Sinai where there is plenty of grass for them to
eat and water to drink. And Moses walks
near a bush. He has probably passed by
that bush a hundred times without even thinking about it; without even noticing
it. But this time, something is
different. This time the bush is on fire
and yet, it is not being consumed. And
so Moses stops to pay attention to the presence of God.
And what God does is call Moses to liberate the Hebrew
slaves from Egyptian bondage. Moses then
asks God, But if I go to the Israelites and they ask me, ‘Who
sent you?’ what shall I tell them?
God instructs Moses, “Say to the
Israelites, ‘The Lord…has sent me to you.’”
In English, we read God’s name as Lord. But in Hebrew – the original language of the
Old Testament – this scene in Exodus is the first time God calls Godself by four
letters – YHWH --Yod, Hay, Vav, Hay. We
pronounce it Yahveh, or Yahweh.
But in many traditions, the name isn’t even spoken because
it is considered so sacred, so mysterious, so holy. Ancient rabbis believed that the name was
unpronounceable – because the letters together are essentially the sound of
breathing. Yod, Hay, Vav, Hay. Yahweh.
Is the name of God actually the sound of breathing?
Perhaps God’s name is not just God’s name. Perhaps God’s name is life itself. With every breath we take, we say the name of
God. Yahweh. God is life.
And our breathing is part of a deeper reality.
In scripture, the word for breath is the same word as
Spirit. In Hebrew, the word for breath
is ruah.
In Genesis, the Spirit of God hovers and gives
the breath of life to beasts and birds and creatures that move along the
ground. Then God forms a man from
the dust of the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and
the man becomes a living being.
When God sends the ruah,
the spirit, life is created.
In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for
breath is also the same word as Spirit: pneuma.
But the Christian faith takes it further
– we believe that the Spirit of God lives
in a person.
On the last night of his earthly life, Jesus promises his
disciples that he will not leave them orphaned, that he will
ask the Father, and he will give them another advocate to help them and be with
them forever— the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit.
And in this morning’s scripture lesson from
Acts, the promised Holy Spirit appears on Pentecost. Later in Acts [17:24-25,28a], the Apostle
Paul proclaims, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of
heaven and earth… he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything
else… For in him we live and move and have our being.” And later in Romans [8:9], Paul says, “the
Spirit of God lives in you.”
Yahweh.
God is breath is Spirit is life.
We are sacred creations of God – the divine breath is
flowing through each of us; through the person next to us; through every person
we see; and it has flowed through every person who has ever lived.
If the name of God is the sound of breathing, how does that
change the way you view yourself as a living being? How does it change the way you view others?
When a baby is born, the first thing that new little life must
do is breathe – to say the name of God.
And when we no longer breathe – when we can no longer say
the name of God -- that is when we die.
With every breath we take, may we be aware of God’s
presence.
With every breath we take, may we feel God’s Spirit within
us.
With every breath we take, may we gratefully, reverently,
humbly, continually say the name of God, in whom we live and move and have our
being. Amen.
