Wind Power

I always title my sermons. Typically, you don’t hear the title, but giving each sermon a title encourages me to focus, I hope, on one specific topic. I want to tell you this week’s title up front. It is "wind power." Wind Power.

Thinking first about power, in general. God has given us human beings quite a bit of power. We have a lot of power to affect our surroundings. Our physical strength, our intelligence and ingenuity, enable us to significantly change the world we live in. We are not the only one of God’s creatures that has power, but we have the most. Among living beings, we humans have the most power to affect the world around us… to change the course of history, to help or hurt one another, to alter the physical landscape. By God’s gift, we have immense power.

Senseless acts of violence occur all the time. We have been singularly aware of some of them recently. In times like these people wonder where God is. Where is God when the innocent die? One response is that God gave us human beings free will. Neither we, nor God, desires for us to be mindless, soulless puppets. Rather, as human beings we are beings with the potential for creativity, for love… and the individual free will that is necessary to choose and live into that potential for creativity and love. But with free will also comes the potential for some to choose hate and destruction. Most of us most of the time would probably commend God for taking the risk and offering us originality, individuality, creativity and love and the free will that enables them to flourish. And in the end, whether we want it or not, we have it. Free will. Yet that free will wouldn’t mean much if we didn’t also have power. We have immense power to enact the choices we make, good or bad. We have immense power, but ours is not the only or the greatest power on earth.

There’s wind power. Or more specifically the power of the Spirit. In the familiar Gospel story we heard from Saint John’s Gospel this morning, Jesus uses the image of the wind to describe the power and presence of the Spirit. The wind is unseen, but real. Its source and its end are beyond human control. And it bears remarkable power.

The image of wind, breath, spirit is a powerful one throughout the Bible. In the great mythic stories of creation it is ruach that stirs the world into being. Ruach is a Hebrew word that means breath or spirit. It is ruach that moves over the formless waters and creates order, separating the land from the waters. I don’t believe those mythic stories in Genesis literally, but I do believe that it is the power and breath of God that propels and inspires the creation and evolution of this world of rich beauty and wonder. It is ruach’s power that creates our world out of chaos. The Spirit, God’s Spirit, creates something out of nothing. Creato ex nihilo, the theologians say. Creation out of nothing. We cannot do that, but the power of the Spirit can. Create something out of nothing. Wind power. Spirit power.

The power of God’s spirit, the wind power, that created a world is still stirring in our world. Still creating something out of nothing. Creating hope out of despair. That is the spirit’s work, a power beyond human ability. To create hope. To create beauty and love out of chaos. To create healing in the midst of disease and pain. Theologically, there is a difference between curing and healing. Sometimes we human beings have the power to cure, sometimes we don’t. But the Spirit has the power to heal. Spiritual wholeness, a heart that is at peace without fear or rancor, a soul that is generous and compassionate, sometimes in the very midst of disease and pain. These are the gifts of the Spirit’s healing power.

When Jesus describes the Spirit to Nicodemus in this morning’s Gospel, he speaks of new birth, new life, eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. Wind power. The power to create new life. The Spirit creates new life, both in the midst of our current lives and also after death. To be born again by water and the spirit is to know the new life of reconciliation after sin… to be cleansed and renewed after we, with our human power, have messed things up. The Spirit gives us new life… the chance to be reconciled to one another and to God. And the Spirit’s power gives us new life even after death. Death, the ultimate limitation of human power. But the Spirit breathes life into us after death and blows open wide the doors of heaven. Powerful stuff, wind power. It blows open the doors of heaven so that we might enter.

It is easy to forget or overlook the power of the Spirit in our lives, the unseen, but very real, wind power of God’s spirit moving in the world. We tend to cling to what we can see, the powers of our own devising. Today’s psalm speaks to us. It is a popular one, but often, I think misunderstood. I lift up my eyes unto the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Somewhere recently I read that we should place a long pause after the first line. I lift up my eyes to the hills. Pause. Lift up your eyes to the hills surrounding the holy city of Jerusalem. On some of those hilltops are pagan idols, monuments built to human idolatry. Over the tops of others foreign armies are emerging from hiding to attack. I lift up my eyes to the hills—seeing monuments built to human power and pride, seeing the literal power of human armies—I lift up my eyes to the hills, and I do not see anything that will help me.

From where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. That same Lord, whose ruach created all that is. My help comes from the unseen, but real wind power of the Spirit.

Psalm 121 is comforting, I think, largely because it reminds us that God’s care for us never lags, never sleeps. God’s care for us accompanies us wherever we go, whatever we do. God’s awareness of us is constant. Even when our awareness of God may fade, God’s awareness and concern for us never ceases. And the psalm tells us that God’s awareness and concern is shown by protecting us from evil. Keep us safe from, as the Great Litany says, "all evil and wickedness; from sin; from the crafts and assaults of the devil; and from everlasting damnation." Good Lord, deliver us. Save us from acting with evil and wickedness. Protect our hearts from the crafts and assaults of the devil that would turn us to sin. Only the Spirit has the power to protect our hearts from turning to evil and sin. Save us from our own evil and sin, from whichever of the seven deadly sins tempts us… sinful pride in our own power, sinful covetousness of others that leads to a lack of generosity and compassion, sinful gluttony and lust that feed our appetites of the moment without regard for the holiness of life, sinful anger or sloth which deface the creative potential of life and love. The Lord is with us always to preserve us from the evil that threatens to infect our hearts.

"Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure," says the hymn (Hymn 508). Wind power. "Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure. Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew." Or from psalm 51 with which we launched our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." That is the power of the Spirit: to create healing and hope, to renew life and to protect our hearts from evil. Unseen like the wind, but powerful beyond human imagining, the Spirit is always with us. To renew our lives and guard us from evil’s temptation.

But the Spirit is also with us stirring us to choose, of our own free will, to use the immense God given power we have, as human beings, for good. To act, with the Spirit, as agents of reconciliation, healing and creative renewal in our world. We have great power to affect the world around us. The Spirit is stirring to help us. But we must choose to act for good.