Texts: Genesis 2: 4-9; John 20: 19-29

Back in the dark ages – even before I was born – a common way of expressing that someone had died was to say that person had breathed their last. In fact, holding a feather under the nose of a person used to be a way of telling whether a person was really dead. That's because although the heart may have stopped beating, the person could be reflexively breathing. Of course, that was before all the fancy equipment that now spends tons of money to tell us what we already know.

Breathing seems so regular, so normal, so automatic, that we really don't think much about it. We normally breathe in about 12,000 quarts of air daily. It's only when we exert ourselves, either physically or emotionally, that we become aware of our own breathing. In fact, it's a good thing that we don't have to think to breathe, or most of us wouldn't last very long on this earth.

In Scripture, however, the breath of God is not automatic. It is quite deliberate and with clearly intended results. In the version of the creation story we read today, God breathes the breath of life into the lifeless form he has made. And later on in Genesis, it is recorded that God destroys “everything on dray land in whose nostrils was the breath of life.”

God's breath is also destructive when it is the vehicle for justice against iniquity and sin as in Isaiah, when God strikes the earth with “the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips,” thus killing the wicked. And, finally, Wisdom literature uses the breath of God as a metaphor for divine power.

In the Gospel story this morning, Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit to ten of the remaining disciples by breathing on them. It is as if he has practiced CPR on them? Have you ever watched someone else give a person CPR? You take the other person's mouth and cup it so only your breath, only YOUR breath, will go into that person. You are literally giving life to the person who would die without your intervention and assistance. Jesus does the same thing as he revives the disciples, gives them hope, and empowers them to go on although he is no longer with them in earthly form. Their experience of Jesus is one of life, of life-giving breath.

Some time ago, the daughter of a friend of mine had cystic fibrosis. There was a time when babies born with this condition literally did not last more than two or three years. Cystic fibrosis is a congenital disease. Imagine giving birth to a child who will die because with life you gave the illness. CF, as it's called, causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus that lines such organs as the pancreas and the lungs, causing an inability to digest food and a number of pulmonary disorders. Young children often cannot breathe. They get pneumonia and suffer from shortness of breath. Over the past twenty years because of medications, children with with cystic fibrosis live longer, sometimes into their early twenties.

I met Kristen and her parents about thirty years ago, before many of the advances in treatment. She was a beautiful green-eyed blond haired child, fair and slight. At that time, medications were not well advanced and children often suffered shortness of breath. Her father had learned CPR because he was terrified she would get a breathing attack and he would not be able to help her. Kristen was only 8 years old when she had her final attack. I was on duty in the ER the night they brought her because she simply could not breathe. Her father kept telling me over and over again that he had used the standard CPR and it hadn't helped. She just kept slipping away. Rushed to the hospital, she was put on a breathing machine, the kind of respirator they had in the late seventies. She was so tiny under all of those big machines, so desperately trying to breathe. It was really awful. Gasping, she kept reaching for her parents' hands. The nurses kept telling them to be careful and not to touch her because she might die. Of course, she might die. They knew that. Fortunately, for all concerned, Kristen's parents told the nurses what they could do with their advice and held her hands until she died.

Kristen has stayed in my mind all these years because I had small children at the time and I just kept thinking: what if she had been my child. Several nights ago, Kristen came back to me in a really powerful way: I had a nightmare that my younger granddaughter was dying from the inability to breathe that comes with Cystic Fibrosis. I looked up cystic fibrosis not jut to get my facts straight but also to update myself on the condition. On the CF Foundation website, there are pictures of mothers and babies, possibilities to enroll in clinical trials and a story of a Kristina – the name was too close for me not to go on. She is a graduate student in clinical psychology, wears a mechanical vest that continually pumps to break up the mucus that could cause her death, and believes that God had given her Cystic Fibrosis so she could, in her words, “change and inspire the world” through her life.

Medically speaking, CF is the result of two recessive genes jut happening to hit it off; I do not believe that God goes around inflicting people with life threatening illnesses just to inspire or challenge them, but it is natural to try to make some sense of such a terrible affliction. Her story is a poignant one and I can understand the need for faith in the midst of such an illness.

Most commentary on this reading from John's Gospel usually revolves around Thomas, who was not there the night that Jesus breathed the power of the Spirit into his followers. The story is usually told as one of the importance of having faith without sight. But I wanted to focus on the first part of the story when John has them receiving the power of the Spirit. As an aside, most scholars believe that the last chapter of the Gospel, which follows the Doubting Thomas story, was added by a later editor because the Gospel seems to have two logical endings, but all the ancient manuscripts, the earliest of which dates from the third century, are substantially what we have in our modern day Bibles. The additional comment attributed to Jesus about giving the power to forgive and retain sins also reflects the later authorship of this Gospel, which was written as the church was forming as an institution, not just a loose community of followers.

What is it in these two readings that affect us now in our twenty-first century world? First, the story from Genesis tells us that because God has breathed life into us we are intimately connected to God. The second story reminds us that as the spiritual descendants of the early community we have the power of the Spirit in us. If we really think about it, to have someone breathe on us means that that person is physically pretty close to us, closer to us than most of us are comfortable with having someone. But it's more than mere physical closeness. It is also indicative of an intimacy, a closeness of the spirit. John's Gospel is one that reminds us again and again of the intimacy of our relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. As he faces certain death, he tells his followers that they are his friends and that no greater love has anyone than to lay one's life down for one's friends.

When Kristen died, her father sobbed, “Why could I have not died in her place?” It is indeed the height of love to give oneself for those we love. After her death, her parents worked as tirelessly for the organization that became the CF Foundation and although I have lost touch with them, I am sure that they continue to work with other families affected by this dreadful condition. Let us consider the ways that the Spirit of Jesus breathes on us today as we live and breathe in today's world with all the ways we can share love – a love that is stronger than the grave, a love that gives life to others.

Let us pray: Spirit of God, continue to breathe on us energizing us to do your work in the world so that the love of Christ may shine through us opening us to endless possibilities. Amen.