About Us

"In The Wake Of Fire, Comes Breath"

Acts 2:1-11
May 11, 2008

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And
suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled
the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among
them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And
at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them
speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not
all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our
own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts
of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds
of power.”

When I was in seminary, one of my favorite classes was Christian Thought, and
essentially it was Christian History and Theology, all wrapped up in two courses taught
over an academic year. One of the two professors that taught that class was Bill
Mallard, who is now retired, but not before becoming legendary in the Theology School
at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was an interesting figure to look at, not
easy on the eyes, if you I were to be perfectly honest—not much hair left on his head,
and what hair was left was usually a mess, and glasses whose rims hadn’t been
changed since the early sixties. Dr. Mallard was a specialist in the work of St.
Augustine, but it wasn’t that expertise that made him legendary to the hundred of
seminary students he taught over the decades—it was actually the way he made the
class so fun, considering the subject—and, yes, even I admit that Christian theology
and history can sometimes be a very dry subject. And the thing I remember most is
when he introduced us to the Hebrew word “ruah” which is the word that describes both
Spirit and breath. Over 8 or 9 months, he would be randomly stop what he was saying
and simply say “ruah” and that was our queue as class to respond right back to him
with our own “ruah.” I think he just liked the sound of it—it sounded like some ancient
battle cry, or some rally at a football game, as the ball is being kicked off. Well, I
thought I would reprise the ruah in honor of Pentecost Sunday, so I’m going to be Dr.
Mallard, and you’re going to be the class, and when I say ruah, you reply with ruah.
(get cheap glasses)

Well, aside from it sounding like a good rallying cry, I think the other reason why Dr.
Mallard liked saying ruah is because it sounds like what it means—Spirit, breath, ruah—
you can hear the breathiness of the word and how it conveys the idea of the Holy Spirit
being like the very air we breath, being like the God within us, which is what the idea of
the Holy Spirit is meant to convey to us. On the day of Pentecost, it was as if God was
saying to the world—“I am no longer just above you, I am no longer just beside
you…no, no, no, I am now even within you.” You see, now we carry God within us like
we carry human breathe within us—and even more importantly, like human breath, the
Spirit of God within each of us keeps us alive, keeps us moving, keeps us breathing
when it looks there will be no more breaths to take.

One of my classmates from seminary, Jan Richardson, whom I admittedly didn’t know all
that well because she was in her last year when I began my first year in school, but who
went on to do great things as a pastor, author, and artist, tells this story:

In my junior year of high school, I landed in the hospital several times because one of
my lungs kept collapsing. It wasn’t due to an injury; each collapse was spontaneous,
owing to a genetic predisposition not uncommon among tall, skinny girls. (It often
comes accessorized with a mild heart murmur, something I didn’t know until a doctor
picked it up in a routine exam a few years ago.) Normally a really healthy kid, I was
concerned about the inordinate level of excitement it stirred in my doctor’s office. After
he had his nurses come and listen to my chest, my doctor explained that I’d have to go
to the hospital to get my lung reinflated. I imagined something like a bicycle pump, a
quick procedure that would have me out in time to take a major test the next day.
Instead, I spent the next five days getting intimately acquainted with a chest tube and
the oddities of morphine.

The trip to the hospital provided only a temporary fix for my lung. When a partial
collapse the next month was followed by a complete collapse the month after that, I
knew the next step would be more drastic. The chest tube was put back in, and this
time, they poured tetracycline down it. A recently developed alternative to surgery,
tetracycline served to form scar tissue to keep the lung intact and prevent it from
collapsing again.

Painkillers and local anesthesia only do so much to dull the sensation of acid flowing
over your innards. Mostly I remember unbelievable pressure on my chest, the
sensation that I could not breathe, would never do it again, that my body would not
remember how. But in the wake of the fire came breath: breath that came without
assistance, breath that sustained itself and did not seep out. In time I came to
understand the experience as a gift, one marked by the presence of God, who did not
inflict it upon me but used it as an occasion of transformation, an experience of
initiation. With the fire and the breath came knowledge: I would never be in my body in
the same way. It altered how I experienced my own body, and it changed how I would
engage people whose bodies are vulnerable. A good gift for a girl who would grow up to
be a pastor. (http://paintedprayerbook.com)

“In the wake of the fire, came breath,” Jan writes most beautifully, as she writes about
those painful treatments to open up her lungs. But you know, the hard thing in this life
is remembering to breath, to breath in the Spirit when the times are tough, when the
bodies and the human spirit is vulnerable to forces out of our control. This is a tough
time of the year for Douglas, both spring and fall are, because of pollen in the air,
something he can’t control, something just built into creation itself, but he suffers badly
for it because of his asthma. I’ve never really known anyone with really bad asthma
before I met Douglas, but there are times when its clear that he is having an onset, and
I hear his voice fade, and his breath becomes more and more shallow, and must admit
that I get a little scared, much more so than him, I suspect, and I start saying to him,
“keep breathing, keep breathing,” and if I keep saying that, he usually goes and does
one of his breathing treatments, which, then almost miraculously opens up his lungs
again. Sometimes in this life you got to be reminded to keep breathing, to keep filling
yourself up with the God that is as close to you and I as the air we breathe—that
intimate, that close! And you know, the great thing about the Spirit of God, that Spirit
left to us by Christ when he had to go home, the great thing about breathing in that
ruah, that Spirit, is that we never know what might come out of our own mouths, and out
of our own lives, when we breathe deeply of that One left to us by this Jesus, who said
he would never leave us alone, and that he would always be near us, as near to us as
the very air around us and within us. Amen.