Day of Pentecost (2)

What a great day! A great day for you who are being confirmed—a day for which you have studied, waited, and prayed. A great day for you parents and family members—a day you have looked forward to for years. A great day for the pastor—a day anticipated and planned for through hours of instruction. A great day for the entire congregation—a day to welcome these young members into fuller participation and responsibilities in this congregation.

A great day, most importantly of all, because this is a day when the Holy Spirit will breathe on us. The theme of our sermon is a prayer for that to happen: “Breathe on me, breath of God,” which is the first line of an old hymn Edwin Hatch wrote in 1878. The first stanza prays ( LBW 488:1):

Breathe on me, breath of God;

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love

And do what Thou wouldst do.

God’s breath gives life.

A few years ago a British film told the story of a man from Calcutta who came to London to make his fortune. The first week there he saw a woman struck by a bus. She lay on the street, not breathing. The man from Calcutta rushed to her and applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She was revived, and, pleased with his work, the little man said, “Madam, my life is now in you” (Robert H. Smith, Proclamation 5, Series A, Holy Week [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992] 64).

When God breathes on us, his life comes into us. His breath gives life. When God formed Adam out of dust from the earth, God breathed into his nostrils and the man became a living soul (Gen 2:7). Ezekiel saw the vision of a valley of dry bones. God breathed and they came to life (Ezek 37:4–10).

Today we will use several texts about the breath of God, and how that breath gives life. One of the key passages is from the story of Easter (Jn 20:21–22). Though Jesus had risen from the dead, the disciples were still hiding in their locked room. Suddenly Jesus was standing there among them. He said, “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

The Lord breathed on his disciples, and they received the Holy Spirit. That was the beginning; more spiritual power would follow. Jesus told his disciples, “I am sending you out to make disciples of all nations, but don’t go until you get the power the Holy Spirit will provide.” On the day of Pentecost, 50 days later, he finished what he started on Easter night when he breathed his new life into them.

The account in Acts 2 says that while the disciples were all together, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. . . . All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:2, 4).

The same word is used for wind and Spirit in both the Greek of the NT (pneuma) and the Hebrew of the OT (ruach). In the imagery of the Bible, when God breathes, a wind comes out of his mouth, the wind of the Spirit that gives life. When does God breathe on me and give his Spirit and life? Think of four particular times.

God breathes on me

A. In Baptism

Jesus told Nicodemus that the life we receive at our natural birth does not bring us into the kingdom of God. In order to become part of God’s kingdom—to have God’s life in us—we must be born again (Jn 3:3–5). And that happens when God connects his Spirit, his Breath, to water in Baptism. Do you remember when that happened to you? Most of us were baptized as infants so we don’t remember much about it except what our parents and sponsors have told us.

I wasn’t here when you three were Baptized, but I do remember the Baptism of your little brother, Hunter! Asher’s baptism was special for me as it was the first time in 25 years of Pastoral ministry the Dad held his son as I prayer, and poured water over his head saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” God breathed; Stacy was born again.

So, God breathes on us at Baptism.

B. Confessing Jesus

After I am baptized, I continue to learn what happened at my Baptism and what it means for my life. I learn that I am a sinner and need forgiveness of sins. I learn that Jesus, God’s only Son, died on the cross to pay for my sins.

In a small town in Oklahoma, a fireman rescued a lady from her burning residence. She was screaming all the while he carried her to safety. Not until he set her down did he understand what she was trying to tell him: her baby was still in the house. She pointed to an upstairs window. The fireman raced up a ladder, broke the window, and dove into a smoke-filled room. He felt around until he found a crib, searched with his hand and scooped up a bundle of blankets. He got out the window just as the room burst into flames. The crowd that had gathered cheered as he came down the ladder, but when he handed the bundle to the mother, she took one look and let out a piercing scream: “You saved my baby’s doll!”

What a tragic mistake! What an unnecessary death! God’s Baby died too. But that was no mistake. God wanted his Son to die. He sent him to pay for your sin and my sin by dying in our place, for the “wages of sin is death.” When I say, “I believe . . . I trust Jesus, my Savior and my Lord,” God has breathed on me. St. Paul says, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).

God breathes on us at Baptism. Our confession of faith is the result of God’s breath. A third important time for God’s breath is at confirmation.

C. Confirmation

When we are ready to make a public confession of the faith into which we were baptized, when we have been taught the faith, and when we are ready to promise to be faithful to our Lord, we are confirmed. What does that really mean? There are different ways to describe confirmation, but I like to start with the dictionary definition which stresses the word firm in confirmation. To be confirmed means that something is made firm, made certain and sure.

How are you made firm at confirmation? You confess your faith and make a promise. Does that do it? The pastor puts his hand on your head, speaks a blessing and reads a verse of Scripture. Does the pastor make you firm? The congregation prays for you. Does that do it? All of this is involved, but it is God who does the confirming. Listen to these words from the confirmation liturgy ( LW, pp. 206–207): “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, give you his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge, of grace and prayer, of power and strength, of sanctification and the fear of God.”

“God . . . give you his Holy Spirit.” God breathes and the Spirit, as the hymn says, “fills you with life anew.” God doesn’t force his breath on you. You can turn away. Some time ago I read about eating raw garlic everyday to check out its value for health and healing. Do you know what a real garlic breath is? I can’t stand it. I’ve known people who do. When they get close, I turned away.

God doesn’t have garlic breath, but you can turn away when he breathes on you. That’s what Renea Gernant did. In a Lutheran Witness article (July 1986, p. 10) Renea tells how she fell away from church after her confirmation. In fact, she said, “When I made that vow, I was thinking about missing breakfast, or that I had spilt juice on my dress.” She titled the article “A Meaningless Vow.” Fortunately, God provides forgiveness for our “meaningless vows” as well as for broken vows. Thank God that his vow to us in Baptism and in his Word is never meaningless. Through his Word, and in light of your Baptism, God is breathing his Spirit, his life, into you on this, your confirmation day, to strengthen you and help you keep your vow.

There is a fourth time that we think about God breathing on us. He gives us his life as we live out the Christian life.

D. Living the Christian life

Confirmation is not a final fix that takes care of us for the rest of life. Renea tells how she fell away from church. “My Bible got dusty. Slowly I found that church and God were secondary. I became weaker and weaker in my witness.” As this gradually happened, her excuse was, “God knows I’m only human.”

That’s one way the devil tries to lead us astray. There are many others. Barbara White explained how she became one of the looters in the Los Angeles riots. A mother of nine, she said, “We needed food. All the stores were burned down. We didn’t have anywhere to go. There was no mail, so we wouldn’t have any income. And everybody was doing it” (“Confessions of a Looter,” The Christian Reader, May 6, 1993, p. 26). Everybody is doing it. That’s another way the devil gets at us.

The devil has his own ways to get at each of us individually: rationalizations, hard times, real temptations, rejection and ridicule for our faith. What can we do when this happens? We can pray, “Breathe on me, breath of God” and go to his Word and Sacraments, because through them God breathes his life into us again and again. We may not see Jesus breathe on us as he did in that room to his first disciples, but He is still present and He still breathes on us in Baptism. He breathes on us through his Word, the holy Scriptures. He breathes on us as we receive his body and blood in our Lord’s Supper. As you get ready today to make your confession of faith and speak your vow; as those of us who have been confirmed remember our own confirmation; and as all of us think about how God has breathed his life into us, let’s pray together the four lines of this hymn stanza. Listen again:

Breathe on me, breath of God;

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love

And do what Thou wouldst do.

Now, will you repeat each line after me, one line at a time?

To help us in our remembrance and our meditation, let’s close our eyes.