Remember, You Are Alive!
The doors are locked…
The disciples are boxed in by fear…
Locked in dread
Fear of the Jews…
Not all Jews, but the Jewish leaders who just handed Jesus over to be crucified…
And Peter knows that he is known to be a Jesus sympathizer…
The ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ posters could be going up all over Jerusalem!
The disciples sit in their darkened room, listening for the foot-fall of a soldiers march…
The disciples are boxed in by fear…
Locked in dread
Fear of the Romans…
The Liberation, the Freedom they had so longed for…
Was dead… in the tomb…
If the Jewish leaders did not come for them…
Perhaps the Legions would
And they would stand before Pilate
And suffer his lash…
The disciples are boxed in by fear…
Locked in dread
Maybe Jesus is alive…
And maybe he is angry…
Angry at their failure to follow him
Angry that they abandoned him.
They once saw Jesus in a fit of anger curse a fig tree and
Within a few hours it was dead!
The disciples are boxed in by fear…
Locked in dread…
What will their families say when they return defeated?
Peter and James abandoned family to follow Jesus
Left behind a family business and a community
To put their hopes in a man found guilty of treason and blasphemy.
Will their families take them back?
What will the towns-folk say?
Will they be mocked? Made fun-off?
Will they be considered a danger to the community and run off?
With nowhere to go, no place to hide or lay their heads?
Disciples, we today may find ourselves boxed in by fear or dread…
Fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday…
Dread that the sinking feeling that greeted us when we awoke will last the day…
Fear of the past which held addiction will continue to haunt us…
Dread of the voices from our past, that made us feel unworthy of love or respect,
Voices that proclaimed our worthlessness will echo in our minds today…
Fear of paying the bills, that we will run out of energy,
Dread of getting laid off,
The list of our fears and that which causes us dread could probably go on
For some time this morning…
I hope you are getting this image…
The disciples crouching, cowering in fear…
Trapped by these external forces so far out of their control
By their own emotions, guilt, pain, mourning…
And if you are not in that space right now, that you at least recall a time when you too were
Trapped and frightened and in hiding…
Because that is when some strange and amazing happens in today’s story…
Jesus appears
And
Well
Breathes on them
Odd isn’t it?
I have to admit that was the first thing that struck me was how odd it would be to have someone, even Jesus, just walk up and breathe on me.
I had this image stuck in my head of Lance and Isaac.
They will go upstairs to brush their teeth and sometimes I’ll do these random tests to see if they actually do brush their teeth and make them breathe in my face and check for minty!
I know this sounds irreverent but I just couldn’t get that out of my head…
Jesus walking around and puffing in the disciples faces…
Now here is what is going on…
The greek in John is emphusao…
To puff, to blow at or on…
But Jesus is doing this to remind the disciples of another bible story, actually three…
Take a guess…
What is Jesus re-enacting…
Ge 1:1-2
1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Spirit… Ruach…
It can mean spirit, life, anger, air… and breath
So one possible way of understanding the creation of the world
Is that God breathed on the chaotic waters and life began…
The breath of God brings life…
Jesus is re-enacting the creation story in our story from John today
Jesus breathes on the chaos caused by the crucifixion and creates life.
The same theme of breath and life follows in
Ge 2:7
7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Breath of life… ruach again…
The final story, for this morning anyway…
Eze 37:1-6
37:1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'"
Israel is once again enslaved…
This time in Babylon…
It isn’t the same kind of slavery…
They aren’t in camps, forced to do manual labor…
But they too are boxed in by fear and dread…
For they have witnessed the destruction of their city Jerusalem
Their homes, the Temple…
Everything has been destroyed…
God takes Ezekiel to a battle field strewn with corpses and says…
Preach to these bones
I will make breath… ruach, enter you…
Just when life seems hopeless
And despair sets in…
And we cannot catch our breath
God breathes for us…
Because I live, you also shall live… Jesus said the disciples before the crucifixion…
And he appears to them today to remind them of life
Remember, you are alive…
And I couldn’t help it as I was thinking about this story
Imagining it in my mind…
I couldn’t help but think that maybe Jesus didn’t just breath on them
Maybe he blew in their ears…
A playful teasing way of shocking them back into the joy of life…
These are difficult and troubling times…
Around the world we hear stories… Haiti and Chile
In our own nation we mourn for the loss of life in West Virginian
The poverty in our own state, in our own community…
Which we devote so much time and energy and effort too…
Wondering if any good will come of it…
If any change will result from our efforts
Which seem meager in comparison to the problems…
Not to mention the personal trauma’s
Loosing loved one’s
Paying off debts
Caring for sick children or aging parents
Jesus blows into our ears to remind us not to give up in hoping.
Ezekiel preached life before any life was apparent…
This story reminds us to not stop imagining life
Even if the evidence is contrary…
But it also reminds us…
And this is the main point I have today…
It reminds us to Remember that we are alive…
To savor and delight in the life that surrounds us…
I’m not saying that we ignore the suffering and the struggle
Pretend that these things don’t exist…
But that we not let the struggle be the only thing we see…
Remember, you are alive…
Because I live, you also shall live…
So take time to savor in and delight in life…
Take time to savor one another and delight in one another…
We work so hard together
And are so faithful to the call of Christ to serve
That I sometimes think we forget to enjoy life together also…
Remember that you are alive!
Make time to celebrate the life that Christ has breathed into you, into us together…
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