Today we are between two great feasts of the Christian year—Ascension and Pentecost. Both of them tell us something about power. In the Ascension, we see the Son go up to the right hand of the Father—from whence, the Creed says, he will come to judge the living and the dead. At Pentecost, we see […]
Today we are between two great feasts of the Christian year—Ascension and Pentecost. Both of them tell us something about power. In the Ascension, we see the Son go up to the right hand of the Father—from whence, the Creed says, he will come to judge the living and the dead. At Pentecost, we see the Spirit come down. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” Jesus promised the disciples at the Ascension; and when the Spirit comes they speak about “God’s deeds of power” in the languages of “every nation under heaven.” Pentecost redeems Babel—the pretense of human beings to ascend to God and usurp God’s power that God punishes with the confusion and multiplying of languages—by bringing God’s power down to human beings so that in the diversity of their languages they may all hear the power of God.
Yesterday we learned about the killing of George Floyd—a murder brought about by one police officer abusing power entrusted to him for the protection of life and others declining to use their power to intervene. His last words, “I can’t breathe,” haunt.
In Genesis 2 God breathes into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. At Pentecost the Spirit comes as Jesus had promised at the Ascension. The Spirit to the disciples as a rush of violent wind (or breath—wind, breath, and Spirit are all the same word here), enabling each to speak. To speak about breath in the Bible is to speak of God’s power to give life and to save it.
Any murder causes a person’s breath to end, and thus it is an affront not only to the victim but to God. But George Floyd’s cry—like Eric Garner’s before—“I can’t breathe”—illuminates what seems to be happening again and again. A person, again and again a black person, made in the image of God is crushed by corrupt power presuming to be God. Their breath, God’s breath, is strangled from them. To murder a man in this way reveals what murder is—the supreme denial that he has God’s breath, the denial that he is made in the image of God, the denial of the power of God to speak to us and to save us. It is violence borne of rebellion against God. We may say much the same of racism. As Esau McCaulley (a New Testament scholar at Wheaton whose new book you should check out) has put it, “Racism is a heresy because it doubts the full imago Dei in persons by creating moral and intellectual hierarchies based on skin color. It’s a different account of creation than we find in the Bible.” Not all racism results in murder, but both arise from the same falsehood about God. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22).
You may ask, “Isn’t it enough to say that his killing is wrong? Why bring religion into it?” I bring religion into it because, one, that’s my job and, two, there are people who say they believe in God who will deny or excuse what happened to George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, and every other name we have heard, remembered, or forgotten. And there are many of us who will decline to take a hard look at our own internal prejudices and heresies. But if we believe in the power and life-giving breath of God, we need not fear difficult examination. And if we really believe in the power of God—the power shown in Jesus’s resurrection and ascension and in the Spirit’s coming—then we can trust that neither heresy nor death will have the last word. God’s power to create life is God’s power to raise the dead—and the Spirit of God will breathe life and power into us—because the one who ascended will come again to make all things new and can make us new even now.