The First and Last Holy Breath. A Sermon for Pentecost. Sunday 28th May 2023.

 

▶ John 20.19–23    

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’  

 

Heavenly Father, I pray O Lord that these words may be to your praise and glory. Amen. 

I promise that I will talk about Pentecost in a moment, but also have to let you know that I will be talking about death and dying, in a personal way so if you’re not in the right place for that, this is some advance notice. However, saying that, there will be some notes of hope and joy as well. 

So, this is the first time I’ve preached for a while, unless you count last week at Evensong, but then I was using a slightly modified version of Ken’s sermon. 

In fact this is the first time I’ve preached since my father died at the end of February, when for me, the season of Lent was spent helping to plan a funeral at the end of March. 

Then at the end of April I was licensed as associate priest to the benefice and on Tuesday next week I’m starting a new job, outside the church. So with all these changes, I want to say thank you to Louise, Fiona, and everyone who has supported me along the way. 

It’s seems right to be speaking at Pentecost, where we mark the gift of the Holy Spirit from Jesus, often portrayed as fire, or a dove but today as a breath or wind, and it’s also a time of renewal and new beginnings. Pentecost occurs fifty days after Easter Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead, to the great astonishment of the disciples. 

Three days earlier, Jesus had died on the cross. At the point of death, in three Gospels, He gave up his spirit, or in Luke, he breathed his last. 

Now the word breath in Hebrew is Ruach, which means both breath and spirit. 

The same thing in Greek. The word Pneuma also means breath, air and spirit (as in pneumonia or pneumatic). 

So, when we talk about breath and spirit in the Bible, the words are often interchangeable. 

And this is helpful because I spoke to a wise person after my father died, because I had struggled with my faith a bit, wondering, what is the point of all this struggling in life, when we just stop. We just stop breathing. 

The wise person I spoke to said the first and last breaths were holy. As in the line, from life’s first cry, to final breath, in the hymn In Christ Alone. 

Because that is what happened, a peaceful final breath. 

For a few days, my brother, Mum and I had sat with my Dad. On the Saturday morning, my Mum had been there all night, so she went home and I went and had about two hours with him alone, and said the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23. 

After a while his breathing slowed and the nurse said I should tell my mum to come back, which I did, and she got there ten minutes before my Dad died.

When the breaths were thirty seconds apart and we wondered if that was it, he would breathe again. Then he didn’t and was gone. 

In a slightly odd moment, I then found a nurse and said, I think he’s gone. But nobody came. Someone else soon came along and helped But a bit later, I saw the first nurse who said, I’m really sorry, when you said he’d gone, I thought you meant the toilet, I’m ever so sorry. All I could do was smile! 

When we came back to the room later on, the window had been opened, to let the soul depart. 

Now my Dad wasn’t very religious, but he was baptised and I knew he was proud of me. When I told him I was going to be licensed the week before he died, he whispered, oh that is good news. 

All of this brings me to the point in todays Gospel when Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room and said peace be with you and he breathed on them and said, receive the holy spirit. 

He breathed on them. 

Fitty days or so before, he breathed his last. And now here he was, breathing on them. We don’t know exactly how this happened. 

Was it one big breath? or one breath per person? Maybe it doesn’t matter. But he probably wasn’t wearing a mask… 

Because a man who had publicly died, who had given up his spirit,

his last breath,

now breathed again,

and in fact, gave the spirit as a gift to his followers, and we are inheritors of that gift today. 

Jesus did not want to leave us alone, without anything of his to guide or help us. 

And if like me, and my father, your faith wavers a little. Be assured of God’s love for you, whether you believe it or not. His love is His truth. However strong your belief, our God of love, loves each one of us, of you, today. 

The very nature of Jesus tells us he wants us to be with him in paradise. 

Remember how he told the thief on the cross next to his, you will be with me in paradise.

And remember the boy who met Pope Francis, worried his Father may not go to heaven after he had recently died. And the Pope said, he got you baptised, yes, he loved you, yes, he was a good man, yes, then he will be in heaven waiting for you. 

And if the loved one you lost met God in heaven and asked them, who did you love? And they would give some names, and I’m pretty sure God would say, come on in, I love them too. 

And if you worry if the Holy Spirit even exists, Thomas Merton, a spiritual writer and monk, once said this, there is no greater evidence for the existence of God, than the whisper of a breeze through pine trees. 

God never gives up on us, not even after death. We are reminded with every breath of wind. 

There is always hope for us and for those we love.

It doesn’t mean loss is any easier to face or understand or recover from, but the Holy Spirit is also in us, in every breath we take, in the wind, in the air rising on a hot day, in the air rushing past on a bike or with car windows open, or in the panting breath of an excited dog.

And the Holy Spirit is breathed onto and into and through us, all the time, for we are never left alone, and that is the true, eternal gift we remember at Pentecost.

We are loved, always and forever. By God and all who have, do and will ever love us.

I’d like to finish with a prayer which is from Paul's letter to the Ephesians:

I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

(Ephesians chapter 3: 14-21)

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/04/16/my-dad-heaven-little-boy-asks-pope