United Church of Jaffrey
October 4th, 2020
To hear this sermon as preached from the back of a pickup truck in the UCJ parking lot, please press play below:
I’ve been thinkin
I’ve been thinkin about something that usually I don’t think about.
I’ve been thinking about breath.
We don’t think about breath – we just breath.
One breath — an inhalation plus an exhalation — takes about 3 seconds for an average adult. I’m not a mathematician, but I think that would make 20 breaths per minute. The math actually isn’t that hard — since their are 60 minutes in an hour, 20 times 60 equals 1200 breaths per hour.
Multiply this by 24 and the product is 28800. 28800 breaths per day.
28,800 times 365 equals 10 million 512 thousand breaths per year.
According to the World Health organization, the average human lifespan on planet earth is 71.4 years, so…
10 million 512 thousand times 71.4 is
seven billion, five hundred fifty million, five hundred fifty six thousand, eight hundred breaths in an average human lifespan.
That’s a lot of breaths.
And it’s a good thing we don’t have to concentrate on our breath in order to breath, because if that was the case we would spend our whole lives thinking about breathing, and have no time left at all to do anything else.
As it is, we don’t think about breathing.
We take it for granted.
And yet there is literally nothing — nothing, more essential to human life, then this activity.
We may have more than 7 billion breaths — but we need all of them.
According to mr. Google, if you stop breathing for 6 minutes, you can probably be resuscitated, but if you stop breathing for 7 minutes, you will most likely die of suffocation.
If we go back to our math, we see that 20 breaths per minute times 6 is 120. And 20 breaths times 7 is 140.
We can spare 120 breaths! But we can’t spare 140.
140!
Last Sunday, as you all know, we blessed and dedicated the quilts that were gathered together for the first time.
As I was developing the liturgy that was to bless the quilts, I started thinking about breath.
I started thinking about breath, of course, because the words on the quilts were often about breath.
While he was dying, Mr. Floyd’s kept begging Derek Chauvin. And the thing that he said, over and over again, was “I can’t breathe.”
As you know, this phrase, “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry for the Black community in this country.
These were Mr. Floyd’s last words — the words that appear on quilt number nine.
These words were the last words of Eric Garner.
These words were the last words of Javier Ambler,
of Manuel Ellis,
of Elijah McClain,
According to a 2020 report by the New York Times, the phrase has been used by over 70 people who died in police custody.
In the Book of Genesis — when God creates humans from the ground, God must do something to give the new creature life.
God wants to give this new creature life, and God wants to make this new creature in God’s own image.
So God must do something with this new creature.
God must do something to give this new creature life, and bless it as a sacred thing.
What can God do to accomplish this purpose?
Does God implant a diamond into this new creature’s heart?
No.
Does God give this new creature great power to do whatever it wants to do?
No.
Does God give this new creature the most wonderful divine ambrosia to drink to make it immortal?
No.
What does God do?
God breathes.
God breathes into this creature.
And breathing into this creature, God gives it life.
God gives it sacredness.
God gives us sacredness.
Given breath, we are given God’s image.
To give breath
Is to give God’s image.
To take away breath, is to take away God’s image.
TO take away breath is to take away sacredness.
There is nothing that destroys sacred life more effectively, then taking away breath.
All you need to do is take away 140 breaths.
140!
Ezekiel was a human,
Ezekiel was not God.
And yet in the remarkable passage we just heard, God gives Ezekial God-like power:
Ezekiel is in a valley that is filled with bones.
Old bones.
Dry bones.
Dead bones.
And God said to Ezekial:
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
And Ezekial answered,
“O Lord God, you know.”
Then God said to him:
“Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
Through Ezekial — through a mortal human being — God proposes to give life back to the bones.
The old bones
The dry bones
the dead bones,
So Ezekial prophesied as he had been commanded; and as he prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
Amazing! But were the bones alive?
No.
Ezekiel looked, and there were sinews on the bones, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them;
Incredible! But were the bones alive?
No.
Ezekiel himself complains. He says:
but there was no breath in them.
Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
If you look too long at the history of this country, you quickly recognize that we live in a valley of bones.
Our country was taken from the Native peoples through genocide
Our country was built on the blood of African slaves.
How can we live in such a country?
God tells us how.
We cannot ignore the bones in the valley.
We cannot let them lie there.
We must give them breath
We must give the bones life, so that they can speak.
Let them testify.
And we must be aware that when they testify, they will testify against us. And we must be willing to hear this testimony.
And we must give our own breath to this testimony.
And when the bones have life — when we begin to come to terms with our history — maybe we can stop taking breath away from people.
God does not take away breath
God gives breath
So when we take away breath we do the opposite of what is divine.
Give breath, don’t take it away.
To give breath is to give voice.
To give voice is to give ear.
Listen
listen to the sound of breath
the sound of blessing
the sound of life.
Amen.