What are we afraid of?

Second Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 7 – Year A

June 22, 2014

Matthew 10:24-39
[Jesus said:]
"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!
"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
"For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one's foes will be members of one's own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

What are you afraid of? There are lots of things that people are afraid of. Some people are terrified of spiders or snakes. Some people are scared to death of heights. Some people are afraid of deep, open water. Others are afraid of being attacked by sharks (even in the Mississippi River). Some people are overly scared of being robbed in their homes. Some people are incapable of speaking in front of a crowd of people. All of us are afraid of different things; sometimes really afraid, and sometimes just a little bit uneasy. Now, don't tell my kids (who think I'm pretty brave), but there are things that make me really uncomfortable, there are things that freak me out more than a little bit, and there are things that I'm downright afraid of. Me, I'm afraid of heights. I really, really don't like roller coasters. One of my biggest fears is being paralyzed, the thought of not being able to use my arms or legs scares me to no end.

Those are the fears we are willing to share with others. Then there are the fears we keep to ourselves. The fear of people finding out our deepest secrets, the things we fight hardest to keep from being seen. We don't want people to see how uncomfortable we are in crowded rooms. We don't want people to know how depressed we are. We don't want people to know our confidence is actually a cover for our feelings of inadequacy. We don't want people to know about how our kids are doing in school. We don't want people to know the things we did when we were in college. We don't want people to know how rocky our marriage really is. We don't want people to know how unhappy we are. And, we are terrified of people knowing the truth.

Fear is a powerful and controlling emotion. All of us from birth on are essentially taught to fear. Worry about our survival, worry about how the actions of others will impact our ability to survive and live the way we want. Fear is used by politicians to manipulate us. Fear is often used by parents to control their children, and by children to control their parents.

Pretty much every fear we have is in some way related to dying. Often it has to do with truly dying; like being shot, or falling off a cliff, or drowning. But, often it has to do with somehow losing the life we are so attached to. Losing the friendships we have cultivated, the job we have had for years, the status in our community, the love and respect of our families. We're scared to death that if they were to find out what we have so carefully hidden away, our lives as we have come to know them would come to an end. Fear can be a powerful thing.

Our text from Matthew talks about fear. It talks about the fear that was being experienced in the early church by the first Christians. No one knows for sure if these words were truly spoken by Jesus, or if they were put in Jesus' mouth by Matthew so that the early church would hear a word of comfort in the midst of the persecution they were experiencing. Whether Jesus spoke the words or not, doesn't matter as much as the message that is delivered: why are you afraid of what others say, of even death itself, your lives have been bought and paid for, salvation is yours. As children of God heaven is your destiny, do not be afraid, stand strong and be of good faith.

How often are you in fear because of your faith? For us in this country, fear that comes from what you believe, from what church you go to isn't common. That is, unless you happen to be a member of a minority faith within a community that is far from welcoming. Think about the Islamic communities that have had their mosques burned down around this country. Think about the hate that was directed at churches in the south that opened their doors to non-whites only 50 years ago. Think about the messages of hate that were received by our own denomination because of our willingness to allow congregations to follow their conscience in matters of sexuality and gender.

Taking a stand for what you believe can indeed be scary. Are you fearful of because of your faith? How often when your asked about the weekend you had do you mention you were in church on Sunday? How often when you are out on Saturday night, do you excuse yourself early letting people know you have to be up for church in the morning? How often when you are asked do you proudly declare the church you attend? How often do you duck your head and try to hide when the conversation of religion comes up? I know I sometimes find myself trying to avoid having to say or admit that I go to church every Sunday, that I am a pastor. What am I afraid of? What are you afraid of?

I know that I'm afraid of being lumped into some generic category that the public has created for Christians and pastors. A category that declares that we all must believe the same things, act in the same way, think the same things about the Bible, about the church, about our sisters and brothers in faith and in other faiths; and if we don't hold to those same beliefs and standards we are not really pastors. I'm scared that if the truth were known I would have to stick my neck out and defend myself, defend my faith, get into a theological fight over doctrine or polity; maybe it's safer for people to simply assume I'm just some guy sitting in a coffee shop working on “The Great American Novel”.

It's not that I'm ashamed of my faith, or my church. To the contrary, I love the church I'm a member of, I appreciate the stances that have been taken by the United Church of Christ. I can easily defend why I hold the positions I do on divisive issues. What I'm afraid of is being judged, being excluded, losing a status (real or perceived) because I don't fit into someone else's nice little box they have created. I'm not afraid they will literally stone me, or drive me out of town; I'm in fear of what could happen to my position of importance in their mind. It's not something I'm proud of, and something I am working to change.

Jesus declares that he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. That faith in him brings division. Is it division that must separate us though? Is it possible that when Jesus speaks of how he has come to set parents and children against one another, how families will be divided, that he does not want it to be understood as division meaning hate? There are lots of things that my wife and I are divided on: I like beer, she doesn't. She loves to go to concerts, I don't. I like to sleep with the ceiling fan off, she wants it on. We are divided, we both know the differences we have. We respect each other for those differences, and we would never say that either one of us was more right than the other.

Pretty much everyone in the world likes music. We like to hum along with songs, sing along with the radio, we all have our favorite hymns. We all like music, in that we are united. But, we all have our favorite types of music, our favorite groups, our favorite songs, our favorite radio stations. If there was only one station to listen to on the radio, there would be a lot of people who would be upset. Our faith is like music. Regardless of the specific shape it takes, our belief in God is common, just like our love of music. It's in the specifics that things begin to be different. It's in the rhythms, the melodies, the harmonies, the words, the instruments played that we are differentiated, we are divided. To not be true to our love of a specific type of music would likely make most of us more than a little depressed. God desires us to sing the song of faith that is deepest in our hearts.

Jesus wants us all to take a stand for what we believe, for the faith that we have. And in so doing we will be divided, we will declare our differences of opinion between ourselves and others. But, we will also be being true to ourselves and the personal revelation and understanding of God that we each have. Jesus desires that our faith be something that is an active, powerful, influencing part of our lives. Jesus wants us to declare our faith as the reason we do the the things we do, hold the positions we do. Not, so we can declare ourselves as different, or better than others. No, but that we may be more fully who we are, allow God to be more active in our lives. In that there will be division, but the divisions need not divide. As sisters and brothers in Christ, we are not all alike, but we are still united as family. We do not, and we need not all agree on everything, but we agree on what is most important: that in Jesus, God acted in a unique and powerful way that has transformed our lives both here in this world and in the world to come.

Jesus does not bring peace because he calls into question all the allegiances we have and are controlled by: the families we were raised in, the churches we came to faith in, the communities we have come to call home. Do we trust in those powers or in Jesus? Which controls us? Are we controlled by what others have told us is right or wrong? What others have told us a good Christian believes, how they act? Are we controlled by the interpretations of scripture by others (including the pastor), or do we trust in Jesus? Do we trust in the Bible, or do we trust in Jesus? Where is our trust? What are we so afraid of? What are you so afraid of? Listen for the song of faith God has placed in your heart, and sing it out. Amen.

Light in the Darkness

Trinity Sunday

June 15, 2014

Genesis 1:1-2: 4a (translation from The Tanakh)

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fertile and increase, fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.” And it was so. God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”

God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.” And it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done. Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.

Have you ever been in a room that was completely and totally dark? I’m not talking about a room where the lights are off, the shades drawn, the door closed. Not, I mean completely dark. I’m talking about being in a room where there isn’t even a sliver of light anywhere, where there isn’t that muted darkness that we most often speak about as dark. If you’ve ever been in a room that dark, in a place that dark, how did you feel? Did you feel safe, did you feel comfortable? For most people, complete and total darkness is not something that brings with it comfort. In fact, for most people, being in a place of complete and total darkness is terrifying. Darkness is cold, impersonal uncomfortable.

I would wager that most of us probably sleep with a little bit of light somewhere. Maybe it’s a night light – whether in our room or just outside in the hallway. Maybe it’s a sliver of light that peaks itself around the curtains from a light outside. Maybe it’s the glow of a clock. Maybe it’s the glow of a television that scatters the darkness. Both of our girls like to sleep with a light on. We tried early on having them sleep in darkness, but it didn’t work. In the beginning it mainly didn’t work for us. When they were much younger and cried at 2 o’clock in the morning and we tried to make our way to their side in darkness, we tended to bring our toes into contact with doors, or dressers, or the legs of beds; and that contact was not gentle. The darkness of the room sometimes caused us to use some rather dark language in response to our stubbed toes and banged knees. It was just easier (and far less painful for us) to have a light of some kind in the girls room. Now, they sleep with night lights on. If we forget to turn on the light, we are definitely reminded to do something about it. Light, the presence of light in a dark room is comforting, light is good.

That’s the way the beginning of the creation story ends, ‘God saw that the light was good.’ Light is good; and it makes sense then that the opposite would be true: darkness is bad. Light good, dark bad. It reminds me of the old western movies, of the Lone Ranger, or Roy Rogers; the good guys wore white hats, while the bad guys wore black ones. It was an easy way to see in a glance who was good, who was bad. That works great until a bad guy decides to put on a white hat, or Batman puts on an all-black costume, then our nice little order that we create dissolves into chaos.

Most theologians speak about the creation story as one of ordering chaos. Darkness and water were both seen by ancient people as being chaotic. In the first few verses of Genesis we find both water and darkness combined; an image more chaotic to an ancient person than darkness covering the face of the deep, darkness covering the immensity of waters, would be hard to come up with. God creates, breaks into the chaos, breaks into the darkness; light pierces the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it, a sense of order enters into the chaos.

I think it’s safe for me to say that most of us find order to be far more comfortable than chaos. That when we are surrounded by chaos, by things that just aren’t working right we are far from being at ease. However, when we are in a situation that seems ordered, where we know what is going to happen, or what should happen, suddenly we feel better, we feel much more at ease, comfortable, comforted by the relative lack of chaos.

According to Genesis, God came into a universe that was chaotic, without form and feature, and brought structure and reason. God came into the chaos that had been, and created an order that God himself declared ‘good.’ Life can often seem like whatever it was before God acted, a little chaotic, a little dark; it might be hard to see the order around us; and that’s when we look to the continuing breaking in of God into this universe, this world, our lives.

When we think about God, when we think about the ways that God breaks into our lives, that is one of the times when it’s easy to see God fully. Today is trinity Sunday. Last week we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, today we remind ourselves of the fullness of God: traditionally referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God breaks into our lives in each person of the Godhead, and in each one we see more of who God is, and understand ourselves and our relationship to God just a little bit more.

Paul reminds us and the church in Corinth of this when he writes: “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” The grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Grace, that free gift of God that is given to us without us having first done anything to be deserving of it. Grace, the gift from God that keeps on giving. Jesus came to save us simply because we needed to be saved, not because we had done something right, not because we had prayed hard enough or followed the right commandments, or recognized him as Lord. No, he came and did all that he did for us before we had done anything, before we knew who he was, before we had come to love him. Grace, salvation, was opened up to us while we still didn’t have a clue we needed to be saved.

The grace of Jesus was offered to us through the incredible love of God. We all know what John 3 says,” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (vs. 16,17). God’s love was so intense for us that it would not even allow him to keep his own beloved Son from suffering. God’s love reaches out and embraces us, brings us in from where we have been and claims us as his own. God’s love for his creation has never ceased or diminished since he named it good.

We have been claimed, and in our claiming we have been named God’s children, and have become sisters and brothers. Through the love of God we are claimed, and through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we are united. That’s really what that word communion means that Paul uses: united. Through the Spirit we come together in communion, we come together in fellowship we come together with one another and with God. The Holy Spirit is that glue that connects us. It opens up our hearts, minds, and eyes to see God more fully, and to see those around us. The Holy Spirit helps us to break down the barriers that keep us apart, those walls and boundaries we are so fond of creating as humans; those things we like because we can then define who is on our side of the boundary and who isn’t. The Holy Spirit helps us to see beyond those walls, it helps us to see that the barriers are of our creating, and as such against God’s will. It helps us to reach out, when our human parts tell us to keep to ourselves, to worry about our own needs and not those nameless who we name ‘the least of these.’

The love of God, the Grace of Jesus and the communion of the Holy Spirit; the fullness of God expressed; to bring order to the chaos, light to the darkness, freedom to the captive, comfort to the distressed, forgiveness to the sinner. The idea of the trinity, the fact that we worship a God that is three-in-one, can be difficult to understand, in fact I know many good, believing, church-going people who have problems with it; but our understanding of the nature of God doesn’t change the way that God acts. It doesn’t change the way God loves us, it doesn’t change the incredible gift of grace that God gave us in Jesus, it doesn’t change the way that God unites and brings us together. It doesn’t change the comfort we receive from all that God has done, does, and will do for us. From time to time it may seems as if the darkness is closing in on us, we may feel alone, we may feel unloved; yet God is there, the love of God embraces us and we are reminded of our having been claimed by God as his own, as his own sons and daughters. And that truth can scatter and shatter any darkness. Amen.

Pentecost 2014

Pentecost Sunday – Year A

June 8, 2014

Acts 2:1-21
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." All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

'In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
   and signs on the earth below,
     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
   and the moon to blood,
     before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

The summer months have finally arrived. I've been waiting for the last nine months for this time of year. As much as I can appreciate the colors of fall, the still beauty of winter and the burst of new life in spring, I really, really like summer. With the arrival of summer all sorts of other things have begun. We send the kids outside to play. We her their shouts and cries through our open windows. The sound of lawnmowers in the neighborhood has become an almost daily occurrence. We get to spend more time outside. All of our winter clothes have been packed away, or shoved to the back of the closet. Instead of having a hot meal all the time for lunch or dinner, we sometimes will have something cold. We see our vegetable gardens slowly growing, and look forward to fresh salads and meals prepared from our own produce. The kids go swimming. We all tend to get a little tanned. Summer is awesome.

Of course, not everything is always wonderful with summer. With the suntan can also come the discomfort of sunburn. The summer months can also be filled with the buzzing and biting of bugs and insects. As the really warm months come, most of us will close our windows to the fresh breezes and turn on our air conditioners. With the longer days and later sunsets, just try and get your kids to bed at a regular bedtime – every night turns into a battle, and every morning comes too soon. And of course, with the arrival of summer also comes the arrival of storm season.

Just this last week southwest of us storms came through with hail and tornadoes. The pictures of what baseball sized hail and 70 mile-per-hour winds can do to the siding of a house were amazing. Thankfully, we have been spared destructive storms for the last few years, but we too know the power and chaos that comes from summer storms. Our prayers go out to those whose lives have been affected and will continue to be affected in the coming months.

Here, in the Midwest we know a little bit about the power of wind, and it's not just tornadoes I am talking about. Driving on the highways and interstates can sometimes be an adventure as we are buffeted from one side to another. Driving on country roads we see the dust devils, those little spinning vortexes that can pop up, seemingly out of nowhere. I remember when I was much younger driving past farms with old battered windmills poking up above the house. Now, windmills are used for much more than pumping water out of the ground.

We have tons of wind, and thankfully in the last few years as a state we have begun to make us of this resource that we have been given. Iowa is rising quickly as a producer of wind energy. The latest figures say that almost 28% of the electric power in Iowa is being produced by our increasing number of wind farms. When you head just a little bit northwest of us toward Charles City, there are literally hundreds of wind turbines to be seen. There are plans to have even more added in the coming years.

Wind has likely always been seen as being something beyond our understanding. Our ancestors looked to the wind as a sign of the presence of the holy. The first few verses of the Bible declare how the Spirit as wind swept across the primordial waters of creation. When Moses stretched out his hand at the Red Sea, a wind came and held the waters back. We think about Elijah and the wind rushing by as he hid in the crack. We think about Jonah and the wind that forced his ship to turn, and the wind and sun that weakened him after his protective tree had withered. We remember a Spirit-filled King David dancing before God. We think about the wind-driven storm that battered the boat the disciples were in as Jesus slept. And of course, we think of the winds of Pentecost that heralded the arriving of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Most of the time in the church we think of the Spirit in welcoming terms. We pray for the Spirit to be present (like it ever isn't!). We pray for the Spirit to guide us. We declare the Spirit having strengthened us in times of weakness and need. We thanks and praise the Spirit for equipping us with the abilities and gifts we have. But do we always welcome it?

This past week, a study was released that revealed that the public responds differently to the powerful wind storms we call hurricanes depending on their name. Hurricanes with female names tend to cause a greater loss of life than those with male names. The study revealed that hurricanes with male names tend to be respected more so than those with female names. The public 'believes' that the male-named storms are more powerful and the warnings of their potential destruction should be heeded, thus there is less loss of life from those storms than from equally powerful and destructive storms that have female names. How often do we look at the Spirit in the same way, thinking that some forms are safer than others?

We pray for a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, but when someone tells us they can speak in tongues because of the gift of the Spirit we may roll our eyes. We thank the Spirit for strengthening us, yet we may wonder about the visions the Spirit allowed another person to see (especially if those visions challenge what we think or believe.) How often do we explain powerful, spiritual, unexplainable events in the lives of people (I've seen God) as moments of lunacy in the other? “They must be crazy, they must be seeing things!”

The Spirit can be frightening, Look at the early church, the initial freedom of form and function that was so Spirit led and Spirit driven gave way rather quickly to a hierarchical form where theology and forms of expression were either affirmed or condemned. “You can't let people just do whatever they want, can you? There has to be some order to this.” As that structure increased in size and power, the freedom of the Spirit lessened, and our questioning and distrust of the 'effects' of the Spirit became commonplace, even as we continued to pray for the presence of the Spirit.

The presence of the Spirit brings vitality and freedom, but it's not something we can control. Even in the early church the Spirit fostered differences of thought and theology among the believers; think about how strongly Peter and the church in Jerusalem disagreed with Paul about witnessing to non Jews.

So, if we can't control the gift of the Spirit, what can we do? The powerful winds of the Midwest are being used to create electricity. So, the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit must also be used. Our reading from 1 Corinthians today (1 Corinthians 12:3b-13), tells us that the gifts of the Spirit are many and diverse. Yet, they are all to be used for the same purpose. The many gifts we have are for the support and building up of the people of God, of the people that God has surrounded us with. The Spirit is given so that we might in our lives declare and witness to the glory of God, the Spirit is given that we might be free.

As frightening as wind can be, we have to remember there is a phrase about a 'breath of fresh air.' The Spirit is a breath of fresh air into this world, a world that is in need of breathing free. The breath of God, the fire of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is given that the love of God may be declared and in so doing people may be set free from the things that bind them, the things that keep them from breathing freely. It is through the church, whose very life is dependent on that breath of Christ, and whose very life is itself a gift, that God's breath of fresh air will stir and renew the world. So breathe deeply, that we might breathe more freely and then be used to breathe new life into the lives of those who yearn to breathe free. Amen.