“Take My Breath Away”
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
June 6, 2010
Acts 9: 1-19; Galatians 1: 13-27
Our second lesson this morning connects directly to the first. In our first lesson from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Paul reflects on his transformation from persecutor to evangelist. Then in our second lesson from the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts, we hear the details of the great change that God brought about in Paul’s life.
These past two weeks on Pentecost and Trinity Sundays we’ve focused on the coming of the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew, the word for spirit and breath are the same – Ruack. As we begin the life of the church in the summer month of June, as school lets up and work slows down for many of us, we can begin to breathe more easily and to exhale from the businesses of the year. In light of Paul’s example, let’s consider what it is we might do well to exhale.
Losing one’s breath can be difficult. I can remember too well as a boy being taken to the hospital from a cabin where my family was staying in upstate New York because I could not breathe on account of allergies and asthma. I can remember sitting in my bed as my parents tried to figure out what to do and how scary that was.
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, one measure of life was by the breaths a person took. We read in our call to worship from Genesis about God’s breathing God’s spirit into humanity in order to create life. Interestingly, the third section of the Koran also describes how God’s “breath” helped create people. God’s breath animates the “dry bones” in Ezekiel. The prophet Daniel writes of God sustaining our breaths.
At the same time, in the Bible, the absence of breath is associated with death. 1 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah and Job, contain examples of situations when death is described as people losing their breath. On Good Friday, we typically read the Gospel passage of how Jesus took his last breath and gave up his spirit on the cross. Today we say we are “out of breath” when we have been exercising strenuously and we have to stop to “catch our breath,” as if breath is a particular substance or thing to be caught.
Losing our breath is not all bad if we don’t like what we or others are breathing. Sometimes, like Paul, we need to lose our breath in order to gain the Holy Spirit. You might be familiar with the phrase, "Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Among other places, that saying is written on the inside cover inscription of a wonderful little travel book I have called “1000 Places to See Before You Die.” I like this book because it contains reflections on unforgettable experiences the authors had in amazing places.
Our first lesson contains Paul’s reflections on the most unforgettable experience of his life, his conversation to Christianity on the road to Damascus.
Our second lesson, the famous account from Acts of Paul’s conversion, begins with the phrase “(Saul) Paul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” went looking for Christians in order to arrest them.
Given the close connection between breath, spirit and life in the Bible, when we read that someone is “breathing” something, that something is usually central to their spirit and life.
Paul’s life for a time was focused on hunting and hurting people who had different religious beliefs from him. He was a fanatical Pharisee, strictly schooled in the Torah and the rules of the Temple. Paul believed his faith encouraged him to oppose people with different religious views.
I don’t have to tell you that such a mindset is still present in our day, often resulting in abuse, exclusion, oppression or violence. We saw such violence stemming from religious worldviews roaring in the Middle East last week as it unfortunately does most weeks. Such a worldview is present in parts of all religious traditions. For our Susan Andrews lecture last fall, interfaith leader Eboo Patel spoke eloquently about his book, Acts of Faith, in which he argues that the great fault line of the 21st century is the “faith line,” a line not necessarily between peoples of different faiths, but between people within the various faiths who are able to find common ground and those who threaten people who disagree with them.
Part of the value of perspective in education is the ability to see and appreciation real differences between peoples. One of the great joys of serving such a diverse and educated congregation at Bradley Hills is to see your appreciation of the differences of each other. Last evening we held an event here at the church to benefit our endowment for higher education in Asia. It’s a program to help support the education of women through Forman Christian College in Pakistan that builds on the work of many inside our congregation and outside who see cooperation between different peoples as key to the development of that portion of the world. Our speaker last evening, Akbar Ahmed, explained that “at the basis of every world religion is education.”
In our own day, within our own Christianity and even within our own hearts, there are times when other people, and when we, might be tempted to believe that our faith allows us to act negatively towards those who see the world differently. We might think our frequent church attendance and good behavior might allow us to look down on others within our own Christian tradition. But that misses the mark for the central Christian message of grace. One central message of Christianity is that our salvation does not depend on what we do, but on what Christ has done. We are not saved to be with God because we earn that right through our perfect attendance record at church or by our strict adherence to religious doctrine, but because God loves us through Christ and has chosen to save us despite our lack of perfection.
Pastor Tim Keller has written eloquently on this point and says that understanding that “(we) are accepted by God through sheer grace is profoundly humbling.” If we feel strongly about our faith, therefore, we should become more tolerant of others, not less so. Keller writes that “people who are fanatics in the church about having all the answers are so not because they are too committed to the gospel but because they are not committed to it enough.” Keller says beware of people who emulate the Jesus who studied in the temple, but not the Jesus who said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Now all the talk about tolerance can make mainline Protestants equally prideful about their lack of orthodoxy. We might feel good when we don’t judge others, or when we are open to interfaith dialogue and so might distrust those people who seem too passionate about their faith.
The problem is that this approach can lead to complacency and apathy in our faith. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your faith. Being passionate is a good thing. Eboo Patel shared with me that during the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to the U.S., whenever the Dalai Lama would meet someone coming to talk about interfaith dialogue, he would spend the first part of any discussion asking about the person’s faith beliefs and the depth of their practices. The Dalai Lama said the point was that people must take their own faith seriously before they can take seriously dialogue with another tradition. As Keller suggests, the key for Christians is being passionately “empathetic, forgiving, humble, loving, sensitive and understanding, as Christ was.”
That was part of the experience of Paul. He was blinded on the road and taken to Damascus. Paul experienced not only having his breath taken away, but his eyesight too. As a result of his experience he gained a whole new perspective on people. And he learned to love them. The second act of Paul’s life was just as passionate as the first, but it was full of caring for people rather than criticizing them.
Paul was always on the go. He went on three missionary journeys. It seemed like he was trying to see 1000 places before he died. He often risked life and limb to get to them. God freed him from breathing “threats” to do amazingly positive things. As a result, as Paul put it, “they glorified God because of me.”
When you are wondering whether the words you are breathing are helpful or hurtful, the one rule I’d suggest we be orthodox about is the golden rule – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
As God did with Paul, God wants us to lose the prejudices and criticisms that we are breathing, and to be free to do acts of love and grace that we won’t be able to imagine doing when we are so headstrong.
For the wonder of God, as Paul discovered and later wrote, is that if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. The past is gone, the new has come.
When we draw closer to God through education and worship we begin to lose the toxic illusion of superiority. God’s coming into the mess of our world as a servant leader demonstrates that God is not interested in our status anyway, but in our service. One opportunity God gives us through our drawing nearer to each other in the Lord’s Supper is to wash away the taste of any venom we are breathing from our mouths so that it doesn’t poison us or others.
Think about the moments that have taken your breath away. That amazing sunrise or sunset while on a special vacation. Or looking backwards after a long hike to see where you have been and noticing the beautiful valley below. Or watching your child play the sport you wished you could play. Or seeing two million people gather on the mall in Washington D.C. for an inauguration.
For me, I have loved recently telling our son Andrew what his first hours of life were like. Telling him about what it was like when the doctor handed him to me for the first time. That moment took my breath away.
I hope you’ll add to your list your realizing that God loves you. The idea that God loves us, takes our sins away and ultimately takes death’s sting away should take our breath away.
Life is not a straight line. It’s kind of like the white line that used to be on the shoulder of the road out here on Bradley Blvd earlier this spring. Do you remember how crooked that was? I’m glad they took that away.
If Paul’s experience teaches us anything it’s that life is not a straight line. It can have several acts. It’s never too late for one’s life to make a difference in the world. It’s never too early to be passionate about God and Christ’s call. For we only have so many breaths to take on this earth. And we need to remember that in the end, we are all breathing the same air anyway. Thanks be to God. Amen.
