Church of the Holy City

The Breath of Life

The Breath of Life
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
May 19, 2013

Ezekiel 37 John 16:4-15 Psalm 104

A little while back I busted my knuckles on my apartment doorway as I turned my key against the steel doorframe. It broke the skin. I cursed at the time, but over the days a strange wonder overtook me. I watched as my knuckles began to heal. Soon they were just pink circles. Then they returned to flesh tones and you couldn’t tell they had been scraped at all. I was amazed that there is a force in my body striving for health. There is a power in me that restores my body to its normal functioning condition. There is a life force in me, in us.
What is this life force? What is this healing energy in my body? This isn’t just an accident of evolution. Sure, it is in an organism’s interest to heal. And organisms that heal will perpetuate themselves. But this doesn’t explain that healing power itself. That doesn’t tell me what mysterious life force restores my body to the condition it is meant to be in.
Reflections like this make me wonder about who and what I am. Reflections like this lead me to think that I am not all I am. I am something with a life force in it. Maybe I am a vessel, holding a power much greater than my own person.
We are told this very clearly in the Bible. In Genesis, God forms a person out of the dust of the earth. But that creature doesn’t come to life until God breathes into him the breath of life.
Then the Lord God formed a person of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being (Gen 2:7).
To the ancient people, wind, breath, life, spirit, and soul were all the same. So when God breathes into Adam the breath of life, it is the same as saying that God gave Adam a living soul, or gave him life itself. The Hebrew word for the breath God breathed into Adam is neshamah. And its definition is a “puff of wind, or vital breath, divine inspiration, soul, spirit.” There is such a close connection between breath, wind, and life that one could say that the ancient people saw God as the wind. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve encounter God. But God does not appear as a person. Rather, God is arguably the breeze blowing through the Garden of Eden in the early evening. The Complete Jewish Bible brings this out very nicely. It says that Adam and Eve, “heard the voice of ADONAI, God, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” So it was the wind blowing through the Garden that was God’s presence. We see now why the wind, or breath that blew into Adam and gave him life was the very divine Spirit.
It is this divine breath that gives life to the dry bones in our reading from Ezekiel. After the bones came together, and sinews and flesh covered them, there was no life in them yet. Then the four winds blow into the bones as breath and they become living beings.
“Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet–a vast army (Ezekiel 37:9-10).
This relationship between wind, breath, and spirit is even more explicit in the New Testament. The same word, pneuma, is used for wind, breath, spirit and Holy Spirit. As an interesting aside, this word, pneuma is where we get the English word pneumatics from. And pneumatics is the use of air, or compressed air for power. Using the Greek pneuma for spirit appears early in the Gospel stories, as in John 1:33, 34. There, it is said that the Spirit descends on Jesus and remains on Him. And it also says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit. In both these cases, the word pneuma is used. And we find that word in our reading from John 16. There, it is said that the Spirit of truth will guide the disciples into all truth.
It is God’s Spirit that guides us into truth. It enlightens our minds, and it elevates our souls up into heavenly affections. This is what the story of the dry bones is about. It begins with dead bones. And God’s word brings the bones together, and clothes them with flesh. Then God’s Spirit comes from the four winds and breathes into them the breath of life, as was the case with Adam. We begin our spiritual journey dead to spiritual life, like the dry bones. In fact, bones correspond to the proprium. True, we do have remains of childhood innocence in us. And it is also true that we have God’s inflowing life force in our bodies and souls. But the process of elevation up, out of proprium–or selfhood–has not yet begun. That is why our early spiritual life is like that thick darkness and void described in Genesis 1.
A person before regeneration is called the earth, void, and empty; also ground wherein nothing of good and of truth has been implanted. A void is where there is nothing of good; and emptiness wherein there is nothing of truth; from which there is darkness, or insensibility and ignorance of all things that are of faith in the Lord and, consequently, of spiritual and heavenly life (AC 17).
This condition is also described in Jeremiah, “I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty” (4:23).
But God is laboring unceasingly to lift us out of our proprium, and to shine light upon our souls. Swedenborg writes, “The Lord is constantly in the act of regenerating a person, because He is constantly in the act of saving him, and no one can be saved unless he is regenerated” (TCR 577). As I said above, the dry bones are our lives before regeneration. But we become increasingly human as we let God work His healing power on our souls. We put on sinews and flesh. And we ultimately become that human being created in the image and likeness of God when we breathe the breath of the four winds and come alive.
In the New Testament, it is said that the Spirit of truth comes to us. It is called the Spirit of truth because we need truth to lead us into the paths of righteousness. It is through truth that we come to good. I can say now, that I am learning about behaviors and thoughts that I had in the past. I am learning that some of them were spiritually harmful. I am sifting through memories, and situations in my past and I see the problems in them. These reflections are teaching me how to step into the light, and what attitudes and behaviors to avoid in the future in order to walk in the paths of righteousness. These reflections are truth guiding me into good.
What makes this process of regeneration possible is a desire for good. We need to remain open to God’s breath of life. And provided we remain open, God will enliven us with spiritual heat, with vital living water. Swedenborg writes,
God is in the perpetual endeavor to regenerate and thus to save man; but He cannot effect this, except as the man prepares himself as a receptacle, and so clears the way for God and opens the door (TCR 73e).
This whole process is not only about evil–evil in us or evil in the world. It is rather about letting good thoughts, feelings, and behaviors into our lives. As we progress spiritually, we come to know what is good, and we come to enjoy what is good. This sensibility to good feelings and thoughts increases as does our regeneration. Our enjoyment with goodness takes on a central place in our world. Even if we fall short, our endeavor is to be good. Even if we slip, we still want to be good. Swedenborg talks about this in a remarkable passage. He says that as good assumes a central role in our lives, our evils are softened, tempered, and do not define our character.
in the good [people], goods with truths are in the centre, and evils and falsities in the circumference: and in both cases [with the evil and with the good], the things which are in the centre diffuse themselves even to the circumferences, as heat from fire at the centre, and as cold from icy cold at the centre. Thus . . . with the good, evils in the circumferences grow mild from the goods of the centre. This is the reason that evils do not condemn the regenerate person (DP 86).
We are in process here on earth. We will find ourselves a mixture of good and evil. I will use a present-day metaphor from my home here in Alberta. We are like the oil sands. We are precious oil that is mixed with sand. Our process is to extract the oil and leave behind the sand. Swedenborg would probably prefer a metaphor from alchemy. In that mystical system, metals are purified of their dross in order to refine them into pure gold. This is how our process of regeneration works. From dead, dry bones, we rise up as living creatures, filled with the breath of spiritual life.

PRAYER

Dear Lord, we thank you for giving us the gift of life. For we freely acknowledge that we do not live by our own power, but by the breath of life that comes from you. We humbly ask you to fill us also with the gift of spiritual life. Elevate our thoughts and purify our affections that we may breathe the air and endure the warmth of heaven. Strengthen us in every good desire. Give us to seek you in your ways always. And though we may stumble at times, though we may fall away from you, we ask that you bring us back into your kingdom, into the heavenly pastures where you are our shepherd.

And Lord, we pray that you bring peace to this troubled world. May those who harbor ill will for their neighbors learn to understand and see the fellow humanity that they share. May those who strive against each other see that they are like in their wishes and in what they want for their land and nation. And may warring factions find their way to peace.

Lord, we ask for you to heal those who are sick. As you worked miracles of healing when you were on earth, how much more can you work healing miracles now that you have risen and have all authority in heaven and on earth. Grant all who are in need your healing love and power.