Breathe on me, Breath of God

“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)

We’re in the third chapter of John’s Gospel this week—Jesus’ nighttime conversation with the scholar, Nicodemus—and I can never bring myself to skip over this reading, as it contains my favourite verse in the entire New Testament.

Not the famous “For God so loved the world…”, though that is here. Not even the well-known “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Though that is also a part of this same conversation. The verse that has shaped my life more than any other is the one we just heard: “The wind blows where it wills…”

I love this verse because it feels like the story of my spiritual life, so you’ll have to forgive me if today’s reflection is a little less scholarly and a little more personal.

The Wind and the Spirit

The wind blows where it wills … and so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Jesus is playing with language in this verse. In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for wind and the word for spirit are the same word—‘pneuma’—and ‘ – and Jesus connects the two. The Spirit of God moves like the wind—unpredictable and uncontrollable, but unmistakable when it hits you in the face!

Of course, Jesus and Nicodemus may not have been speaking Greek. They may have been speaking Hebrew, where the same word, ‘ruach,’ also means both wind, breath, and spirit. Or they may in fact have been speaking Aramaic, where the same word, in this case ‘Ruha’, again carries the same triple meaning!

And the pattern continues across the Semitic family of languages. Even in Arabic, I’m told, the words for spirit (rūḥ) and wind (rīḥ) come from the same ancient root. It seems that in almost every language (except English) the connection between wind, breath, and spirit is built right into the vocabulary.

The Spirit Who Surprises

“The wind blows where it wills,” says Jesus, and that seems to have been the story of my spiritual journey.

I grew up in a conservative Christian household and learned early on that I belonged to the “true” church — Protestant, Evangelical, and Reformed—and I was taught early on to beware of those who called themselves Christians but were, in fact, deceived. And of course, that primarily meant Catholics.

The list of the spiritually suspect didn’t end with Catholics, of course. People of other religions, gay people, and — to a degree — women. Not all women were lost souls, of course, but they didn’t seem to be on the same spiritual level as men either

That was the religion of my youth, so perhaps it’s no surprise that by my teenage years I had largely abandoned it. And then, when I was eighteen, I had my own encounter with the Spirit of God, and from that moment forward, my life has been marked by a series of encounters with God’s Spirit at times and in places that I’ve never anticipated.

Early on I met young gay Christian men who were wrestling with their identity, and though I couldn’t share their struggle, I could not deny that it was the same Spirit of God at work in them that was at work in me.

I encountered that same Spirit amongst long-term alcoholic people I worked with at the refuge I volunteered in, in the prison system among men guilty of terrible crimes, and—most surprising of all—amongst members of the local mosque!

I must add too that through all that time the Spirit was educating me through as many women as men, of course, if not more.

I remember ten years ago in Damascus, sitting alongside my friend, Dr Hassoun, the former Grand Mufti of Syria. I said to him, “I feel as though I’ve known you all my life. I think it’s the Spirit of God in me connecting with the Spirit of God in you.” He nodded warmly, even before the translator had finished. The wind of God’s Spirit had blown the two of us together, and it connects us still, even with him now in prison.

The Spirit Who Gives Life

This connection between wind and Spirit is not just linguistic, of course. It is biblical:

At creation, God’s breath (ruach) hovers over the waters (Genesis 1:2).
Human life begins when God breathes into Adam’s nostrils (Genesis 2:7).
It is the wind (ruach) of God that parts the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21).
It is the ruach that brings life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 37).
And it is this Spirit (pneuma) that Jesus says gives us ‘new birth’ (John 3:6)

From the first page of Scripture to the last, life begins when God breathes.

The Spirit We Cannot Control

So much of what goes under the name of religion is, I fear, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Even if we’re not desperately chasing money, fame and fortune, we want security for ourselves and good things for our children. So we pray, we behave, and we try to do right by God, hoping God will do right by us. Religion, in its most generic form, is often little more than an attempt to influence the divine, but Jesus turns this upside down.

‘The Spirit of God moves like the wind,’ says Jesus. You don’t know where it comes from. You don’t know where it’s going, and you certainly can’t control it, but you can trust God’s Spirit because it’s the Spirit of the same God who ‘so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son…’ (John 3:16)

The wind blows where it wills, but it does not blow randomly. It is not fickle, impulsive, or erratic. It is the breath of a God who loves the world—all of it—and more than we can imagine. Breathe on us, breath of God!

Our Sunday Eucharist

It was another special Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and a big thank you to Rev. John Queripel and Rev. Alex Gillan for joining me on the panel. Unfortunately, John had to take off after the first reading to go and sing somewhere! I still remember John with his guitar, entertaining us in my university days. We’ll have to get him to do a song for us next time he’s with us.

The discussion I clipped this week is of Alex and me discussing the reading from Romans 5. We were ably supported by the team who joined us online and by AI Saint Paul, who I think outdid himself this time, though he forgot at one point that he wasn’t human (see the short below).

It’s curious how the shorts that I expect to resonate with people online often get next to zero views. though that may have more to do with the YouTube algorithm than anything else. I note that the short about the US Navy in the Persian Gulf (pasted below) only received nine (9) views on YouTube but more than 1,000 on Facebook.

Enjoy the two shorts, pasted below, and go to the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page or to YouTube for all our other content.

This weekend, being the first Sunday of the month, David Baldwin and Tom Toby are scheduled to be with us once again, and I’m reasonably confident that Tom is going to be in the country this time. I am looking forward to our time together very much.

Join us at noon this Sunday via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, Streamyard or TheSundayEucharist.com. Invite friends by directing them to the Facebook event, the YouTube link or the StreamYard registration page.

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What’s On?

February 28th to March 1st – @Binacrombi. Please join me
Sunday, March 1st – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia or StreamYard
Tuesday, March 3rd – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Thursday, March 5th – Online Bible study group meeting from noon @ www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Thursday, March 5th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Saturday, March 7th – Boxing at Legend’s Gym in Kensington from 3 pm

As the pics above suggest, I’ve boxed a good number of opponents this week, and it’s all part of my preparation for what I’m hoping will be my biggest year in boxing. And I’m not waiting for people to get inspired and challenge me. As you’ll see from the short video below, I’m planning to be quite aggressive in looking for an opponent.

I’d be grateful if you could help in finding the right opponent, and the best way you can do that is by sharing the video below. It’s intended to be the first in a series of six. Hopefully, I’ll have a couple more out by this time next week, with each video calling out a different well-known sporting or media personality. If it works, it could be huge. If it fails, or if I get killed in the ring … well, I tried. 😕🥊

I’m convinced that I still have a role to play in the ring, and that despite my age. Indeed, I was invited this week to get involved in a new boxing ministry initiative in Mount Druitt. You’ll see the team pictured below. They are a great team with a great vision, and I’m confident that I can contribute something meaningful to the process.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems to be continuing to disintegrate. Perhaps it’s a good thing that all the evil is coming to the surface. Martin Luther King used to say that we couldn’t confront evil properly until we could see its face. I guess that’s the positive thing about the Epstein files – they are bringing all the muck to the surface. Now we just have to find a way to bring the Epstein class down before they destroy us all.

That’s not a good note to finish on, so let’s go back to where we began today – with John, chapter three – and the reminder that God is moving through our world by His Spirit in ways that we cannot imagine or anticipate.

“The wind blows where it wills … So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

Stay Strong!

Your brother in the Good Fight,