"God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ..." — Acts 2:17a
Today Christians around the world gather for Pentecost, the festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus fifty days after his resurrection. A breath of fresh air blew through a group of Galileans gathered in Jerusalem for a Jewish festival. As they spoke of Jesus, their words were understood by each in their native tongue. “How could this be?” some asked with amazement.
The miracle of God’s spirit coming on Pentecost is people understanding one another, moving beyond their own particular dialect or point of view. The refreshing part of the breath that breathed life into Christ’s church is people respecting and listening to one another. This breath of fresh air would transform the community into the “People of the Way,” bringing people together from different cultures and races to share leadership and resources for the good of all.
The uplifting spirit of Pentecost is the spirit that has been at work since the beginning of time — the Hebrew ruah which swept over the face of the waters creating the world. God’s spirit is the power that gives order to the universe and gives life and breath to us. This spirit is the same breath that Yahweh breathed into Adam and Eve, giving them life. Breath is essential for life. Our living and our breathing are one and the same.
"When Breath Becomes Air" was a #1 New York Times bestseller which our son gave to his dad on Father’s Day a few years ago. It is the memoir of Dr. Paul Kalanithi, who at the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade of training as a neurosurgeon, was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Dr. Kalanithi spent his life exploring the science of how life, the mind and the soul work. However, in this refreshing and beautifully written memoir, as he faces his own mortality, he becomes more curious about the meaning of life, the mind and the soul.
He writes: "Although I had been raised in a devout Christian family, where prayer and Scripture readings were a nightly ritual … I spent a good chunk of my twenties trying to build a frame for a scientific worldview that would grant a complete metaphysics minus God. ... The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hope, beauty, honor, and meaning. … Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp these most central aspects of the human experience."
Dr. Kalanithi, in looking for meaning within his very accomplished life as a neuroscientist, returned to the central values of Christianity — sacrifice, redemption and forgiveness, because, as he shares, he found them so compelling. The title he chose for his memoir, "When Breath Becomes Air," is based on a poem by the 16th century English writer Baron Brooke Fulke Greville:
You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath.
New names unknown, old names gone:
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.
What a thoughtful and compelling call to each one of us wherever we are on life’s journey. Let us not get so caught up in this material world that we lose sight of the spiritual and eternal. The breath of fresh air Jesus breathed into the disciples and the refreshing wind that blew through the synagogue on that first Pentecost provide resilience and a reservoir of strength in the unexpected turns and challenges along the way. May God’s spirit continue to blow through our lives!
Rev. Dr. Blythe Denham Kieffer is pastor and head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Springfield.
