Breath
John 6: 35-51 (NIV)
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
What is a soul?
Over the course of this weekend, our Church observes two important days: All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. All Saints Day is officially on November 1st, and All Souls Day is officially on November 2nd. Most of us Protestants tend to focus more on All Saints Day than All Souls Day, and we observe All Saints Day generally on the first Sunday of November. So today, we celebrate the Communion of Saints--all believers, joined as one in our love for Jesus, both here on Earth and in Heaven. But, being that today is November 2nd, I invite us all to spend just a little time thinking about All Souls Day, this day that the Church sets aside in particular to remember our loved ones who are already in Heaven. The souls that are now in the care of God.
What is a soul? What does it mean to have one? What do we mean when we say that God is taking care of the soul of someone who has gone to Heaven?
For me, when I think about how God created us and where we go at the end of this life, it comes down to one Hebrew word: ruach.
Ruach. Ruach is a complex word that doesn't translate well into English because no one word in our vocabulary fully captures what ruach means. In spite of that, a lot of you have heard me use this word ruach before because it's just such a deep, meaningful word. The best way to try to translate ruach for you is to say that ruach means two different things, both at the same time: breath, and spirit.
Ruach is used 389 different times throughout the Old Testament to describe God being present among his people. But the reason why this word is so important for me, and the reason why this word helps me understand who we are to God and how God cares for us, in this life and after we pass on, is because this word is used in Genesis to describe God's creation of our world.
Genesis 1:2 says: "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:2 NIV)"
The word we translate as "Spirit" here is ruach. Ruach is God, hovering around our planet before we even had a planet, delicately crafting our world into being.
Then ruach gets used again, later on.
Genesis 2:7 says: "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7 NIV)".
The word used for "breath" is ruach. God made Adam's body from the earth, but made him a living person when he breathed his ruach into him.
This is where each one of us came from. Our bodies are a thing of this world. They come from this earth. But we become living people, we become us, when God breathes his ruach into us. The very air we breathe is the spirit of God, and we are filled with it. And during this whole earthly life we hold onto that ruach, that breath, that spirit, of God with these bodies, and we use our bodies and everything we have here on this earth to show the spirit of God to other people. Other people can see God within us because God is within us. God dwells in us.
From the moment of our birth, God offered God's self to us, so that we could live. In this morning's Gospel reading, Jesus starts to teach all the people listening to him that he offers the same thing. Jesus reminds us of Moses taking the Hebrews through the wilderness, and he reminds us that when the Hebrews were struggling so greatly to get by, God gave them bread to eat every day. He gave them manna. Jesus says, I am that manna. The difference is that manna expired at the end of the day. But Jesus stays with us forever. Jesus nourishes us our whole lives. By breaking his body for us on the cross, he is the broken bread that feeds us.
When we join together in communion today, we will nourish our bodies and spirits with the bread of life. We will remember that we survive by the daily bread that God provides us, and that that bread is Jesus. We will remember that it is because of Jesus that we live.
Your soul is the ruach. Your soul is the breath that God breathed into you, the breath that both gave you life and made you you. And during this life we sustain that ruach, the breathing spirit of God, by depending on Jesus, the bread of life, to nourish our soul.
These bodies come from the earth. They are a thing of this world. We need them here on earth. They make us look like us, but it's that your body that makes you you. That's the soul. That's the breath that God gave you that makes you you.
We don't keep our bodies forever. We have a temporary lease on them, and we keep them just as long as we need them. Genesis tells us they're dust. Ecclesiastes 12: 6-7 tells us:
Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 NIV)
Like you hear on Ash Wednesday: Remember, mortal, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. This body will return right back to where it came from someday.
But what about your soul? What about that ruach of God, the spirit dwelling within you?
A woman by the name of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who specialized in end of life issues, once said,
"Death is simply a shedding of the physical body, like a butterfly shedding it's cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow."
When you're ready someday, there will be a day when you don't need your body anymore, and you will shed it, just like a snake sheds its worn out skin. And that body will return to the dust God made it out of.
But that spirit within you, that ruach, that breath of God breathed into your lungs that makes you you, at the end of this life that ruach also returns to where it came from--to God. And in eternity, that piece of God that once dwelled within us goes back to be with our creator, and, at last, you will be perfectly at one with God.
Today, on All Souls Day, may be remember and celebrate that ruach of God that we saw in those we loved, and may we trust that, as surely as God brought us here, someday God will bring us back home.
Amen.
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