The breath of God

Do you remember that part in the Last Crusade, when Indiana Jones is working out how to get through all the devious traps between him and the Holy Grail? Sure you do.  The first trap is the breath of God, and the clue is 'only the penitent man will pass.'

Now in this version, if you are not sufficiently penitent, then a massive set of whirling blades will first cut your head off, then presumably cut you in half.  But hold on a minute here, because that's not really what the breath of God is all about.  Or is it?

The point I was trying to make on Sunday was about fire and breath, specifically that almost all of us have a view of fire that is that it is extinguished by breath, by blowing on it.  This is how we are born and raised, since the first time we encounter fire, pretty much, we can make it go away by blowing on it.  Candles, matches, any of these things; they're all extinguished by blowing on them semi-forcefully.  But then comes the moment when you find someone with dying embers making up a fire, and they want to get the fire up and going again.  And so what do they do?  They kneel down before the dying coals, and do something that you never expected - they blow on it. Hard.  And what happens?  The fire springs to life again.

This is, as I said on Sunday, the most counter-intuitive thing in all of creation.  It's absurd, if you think about it as a child.  The most tried and true method of putting out fires that you've ever known and

there someone is using it to make a fire bigger.  But that's the crazy thing about how fire and air work.  Fire exists only in the presence of something called the 'fire triangle.'  What's the fire triangle? I'm glad you asked.  Fire can only exist when it has heat, fuel, and oxygen.  If you remove one of those things, then the whole thing collapses.  Any firefighting techniques are designed to do just that, to remove one side from the fire triangle.  And blowing a candle out removes the fuel from the fire.  But hold on there campers, because that same activity also adds oxygen to the fire.  So if it's a small flame, it'll go out.  If it's a big simmering fire, it'll get much bigger.  And this is the point.  The breath doesn't change at all, as you've only got one set of lungs to breathe with.  The breath doesn't change, but the fire does.

The reading from Habakkuk for Sunday was all about suffering, issuing forth the usual refrain of saying 'how long, O Lord, must we wait.  How long must we dwell in sadness and shame.  How long must we be put aside and passed over. Why must the wicked prosper, and why must the good be beaten down and messed around?  All good questions, to be sure.  And in these cases, we may very well feel as though we are a candle in the wind, We may very well feel as though we are a recently struck match that is threatening to go out with that kind of wind.  Buffetted on all sides, it may seem like the weak flame of our faith is threatening to go out.

But the Epistle reading talks about fanning into flame that gift of God that dwells in you.  Fanning into flame that spark, that gift, that spirit of God that is in all of us.  That spark that was given to us in our baptisms, when the Holy Spirit was given to you, and faith was created in your heart, that spark.  And that's the spark that we're asking to be fanned into flame.  If it's a strong faith, then the suffering you encounter will be like the suffering found in the book of Romans, which produces perserverence, and perserverence, character, and character hope.  And hope does not put you to shame.  That's what suffering does in the spirit of the great of faith, who, when they encounter suffering, have their faith fanned in to flame by it.

And is that you?  Yeh, probably not.  There's a good chance that when you see yourself, you don't think of a towering faith that can withstand all comers, and never cracks a smile, or flinches or cries for nobody, uh-huh.  You don't have that faith, do you?  No, you don't.  I'd bet that you have that faith when the days get short, and the chips are down, does that suffering fan you into greater faith, or does it threaten to stamp it out?
that wavers constantly between extreme clarity and desperate lack of belief.  Something vascillating and oscillating between knowing Jesus so clearly you could almost see him, and thinking that the Holy Scriptures and everything in them is a bunch of hokum.  That's you.  And when the storms come,

If you're a regular human being, then there's a good chance that your faith, your frail human faith, gets blown out, extinguished.  And what's left behind?  A smouldering wick, with smoke coiling towards the ceiling, and a tiny spark in the middle of it.

And that would be the end of the story, except for what Jesus has actually promised to do, and who he actually is.  This is a key difference, don't you know.  Jesus says quite clearly that he has come for the lost sheep of Israel, that it isn't the well who need a physican, but the sick.  He hasn't come to bolster the strong and uplift those who are honestly doing sort of okay.  He came for those who are browbeaten by the world, who are pushed around, who are ground into the dirt.  He came for the lost sheep, and will leave the other ninety-nine until he finds the lost.  He came for the sinners, the doubters, the liars, he came for the adulterers, he came for the frail, he came for the poor.

He came for you.

In all these discussions of candles and flames, lest we forget the words spoken of Jesus in the Gospels, where it says that he will not snuff out a smouldering wick, or break off a bruised reed.  Jesus is in the business of working with weak faiths.  He's in the business of working with what is smouldering, bruised, ready to break or go out.  He's in the business of working with one spark, one frail ember, and fanning it into flame.  And that spark, I'm happy to tell you, doesn't go out.

Have you been baptized?  Then you have received the Holy Spirit.  Luther's catechism says about it that 'when connected with the world of God, it as a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit.'  And what do you bring to your baptism?  Nothing but your sins.  What do you leave with?  That spark that will always be smouldering away, no matter how bad things get.  And if there's a spark, it can be fanned into flame again.  It's not too late.

PJ