It seems right and proper, during this blustery March, to write about the Holy Breath (RUACH) of God. We visit this often, in Scriptural stories: in Creation, where God blew a holy breath into the people of mud; at Pentecost, where disciples report that they heard the “sound of a mighty wind”; and in various healing stories in the Gospels. This weekend’s scriptures remind us that God’s Grace blows into history to remove the pollutants and to assure us that a Holy Wind has come to restore and renew.
The story of the Field of Bones (EZEKIEL 37:1-14) is famous for Sunday School pageants and yields a good song, “The toe bone connected to the foot bone…” But restored Israel was still incomplete and lifeless until the prophet is commanded to call in a holy breath from the four winds–and the dead were again alive! Even when the trappings of life are taken away, Death will not have the last word. “Our earth has been fashioned into massive graveyards of dry bones….[internationally, in city streets] all those places lacking food or drink or clothing or shelter or any respect for life….Today we hear a promise only God can give.” (James A. Wallace, FEASTING on the WORD, A 2:125) The moral is that even very dry bones CAN live again, enlivened by the Breath of God.
Paul continues, “If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” (ROMANS 8:11) Gender issues aside, the Apostle says that all who believe may claim such breath, which is a restorative to life from the deadly collapse of What Used to Be. Some will claim that the generation of the Church is dead–but not necessarily.
And Lazarus (JOHN 11:1-45) now lives! Once safely dead, he’s called back to bemoan the trespasses of the Romans and to live the Old Life. AND to die yet again! The writer plays this story up, introducing Mary & Martha and setting the graveyard scene. Jesus seems pretty confident that his friend will come back to life, since he waited until death had done its work to visit the family at Bethany. John is the only evangelist/Gospel writer to include this, leading us to suspect that it was included here for the express purpose of encouraging his own spiritual community [the Church of 90-something AD].
This audacious claim led Edwin Hatch to write in 1878, “Breathe on me, Breath of God, so shall I never die; but live with thee the perfect life of thine eternity.” Also the poetry of Henry H, Tweedy, in 1935, “Blow, wind of God! With wisdom blow until our minds are free from mists of error, clouds of doubt, which blind our eyes to thee.” “It was never about the bones anyway,” says Dempsy R. Calhoun in FEASTING on the WORD, op. cit. p124, “Rather a glimpse of pure power A reminder of who’s in charge of restoration Real hope lies in the Source” Breathe deeply!
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Join me every Tuesday at horacebrownking.com to be challenged by the scriptural texts for the upcoming weekend
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