Then the Lord God formed [humanity] from the dust of the ground, and breathed into [the] nostrils the breath of life; and the [human] became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22)
“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh …” (Acts 2:17)
I’ve been thinking a lot about breath recently, since the coronavirus and COVID-19 first came into our consciousness. The Scriptures present us with such rich imagery about God’s life-giving breath! Yet now we are living with a respiratory illness that confronts us with the possibility that the very air we breathe can be dangerous to our health and well-being.
I’ve been thinking about breath even more since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week. Mr. Floyd died in police custody, handcuffed, his face to the ground, with a police officer kneeling on his neck to restrain him, unresponsive to Mr. Floyd’s plea, “I can’t breathe.”
My friend Angie Shannon is an African American pastor in the ELCA. Not long after Mr. Floyd’s death, she went out wearing a t-shirt with “I can’t breathe” printed on it. Someone asked how she was able to get such a shirt so quickly. She replied that she had had the shirt for six years, since the death of Eric Garner, another African American who died in police custody while repeatedly pleading, “I can’t breathe.” Angie told friends that each time she had moved since then, she considered giving the shirt away rather than packing it and moving it. It seemed like a single-moment t-shirt that had perhaps outgrown its relevance. How tragic that when Mr. Floyd died last week, Angie – and doubtless others, too – already had appropriate clothing.
In his hymn “O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth,” theologian Martin Franzmann uses breath imagery powerfully to convey the saving action of Jesus Christ:
You came into our hall of death,
O Christ, to breathe our poisoned air,
To drink for us the deep despair
That strangled our reluctant breath.
When the air surrounding us is infectious or even toxic, breath can be deadly. Lack of breath is also deadly. I am profoundly grateful for a Savior who breathes in “our poisoned air” at the cost of his own life, and who breathes out on us the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit. Now, dear readers, we must be about the work of cleaning up the air pollution of our environment, the pollution of anger and hatred and disease and injustice, so that all may breathe and all may live.
The Rev. Kathryn A. Kleinhans, Ph.D.
Dean
