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Take a breath                        Acts 2: 1-21                   May 23, 2010

I recently read a story about an Indian Yogi who claims that he can live without food or water. The man insists that he's had nothing to eat or drink in 68 years!

Speaking physiologically, this story is simply not believable. A human being can only survive a few weeks with nothing to eat, and perhaps a few days with nothing to drink. Period.

It doesn't matter how holy or ascetic a person may be. Presuming this Yogi is human - and nobody seems to be making any supernatural claims - he has to eat and drink, or he will die.

Actually, the practice of fasting as a spiritual discipline is pretty much universally embraced and acclaimed. It is something that is common to almost all religions. But the leap from a day-long, or even week-long cleansing fast to a suggestion that life can continue without nourishment is another matter.

Food, water and air are the basic requirements for human life. It is the way we were created. We eat, we drink and we breathe.

And all three of these common parts of human life can also be made holy. Jesus was clear about that. When we eat and drink together as the people of God, we evoke the presence of our Lord. A little bit later in our service this morning, this ordinary table will become a holy place - a sacred space. "Do this," Jesus said, "eat this bread and drink this cup, in remembrance of me."

We seldom think about the third of the three requirements for life.

We decide when and what we eat. We decide when and what we drink. Breathing, though, is so natural and automatic that we have to think about not breathing.

But breathing can also be a holy practice.

"What happens between us when we come together to worship God," writes Barbara Brown Taylor, "is that the Holy Spirit swoops in and out among us, knitting us together through the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the breaths we breathe.ⁱ"

Take a breath. Now blow it out. Our breathing in and breathing out is God's gift to us. And today, on this Day of Pentecost, we are reminded, more than any other time in the year, that when we do that together we open ourselves up to the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit.

Fifty days after the first Easter Sunday, about a hundred and twenty of Jesus' followers were sitting around with long faces, wondering what they were going to do without him.

And then, before they could even react, a mighty wind had blown through the house, setting off flames above their heads, and they were filled up with God's own breath. So much so that when the air came out of them - when they exhaled - they spoke in languages that they did not even know that they knew.

All of that racket drew quite a crowd, according to Luke. People from all over the world - Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Africans and Asians and more - who were in Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost, came in through the doors and were surprised to hear these Galileans speaking their language. As one preacher put it, they expected to find people from their own country, but "what they saw instead were a bunch of Galileans, rural types from northern Israel dressed in the equivalent of first-century overalls, all of them going on and on about God's mighty acts like a bunch of PhDs in Middle-Eastern languages.ⁱⁱ"

It would be impossible to overstate the power of that mighty wind.

"Shy people became bold, scared people became gutsy, and lost people found a sure sense of direction. In short order, Jesus' followers were doing things they had never seen anyone but Jesus do, and there was no explanation, except that they had dared to inhale on the day of Pentecost. They had sucked in God's own breath and they had been transformed by it.ⁱⁱⁱ"

We often refer to that first Pentecost following the Resurrection as the "Birthday of the Church," and it certainly was that. According to Luke, three thousand people joined the movement that day.

But it is more than just a birthday celebration.

Peter's address to the crowd, beginning in verse fourteen of our text, is important. He quotes from the Prophet Joel, and makes it clear that he believes that what happened at Pentecost was the beginning of the long-awaited time when God changes the order of human history. Peter says, "In the last days it will be, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh."

The question for us, this morning, is twofold. First, do we actually believe in a God who can blow through closed doors and set our hair on fire? A God who can transform us? Or is our God just an old friend; one to whom we direct our prayer requests - but not anyone who can be expected to really make a difference in our lives?

And second, if we do believe in such a powerful God, are we willing to breathe in and allow the mighty wind of God's breath to stir up something that might just be totally unexpected?

When the disciples took that breath on that first Pentecost they became ten times the people they were during Jesus' time on earth. Who knows what we might become?

Let's take a breath, together, shall we? - And see what happens.

                                                                             AMEN

ⁱ      Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way, p. 143
ⁱⁱ     Barbara Lundblad, "When Pentecost Ends Too Soon," a sermon preached on Pentecost 2005 ⁱⁱⁱ    Barbara Brown Taylor, IBID, p. 145

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