Ruah: Breath, Wind, Spirit
As one listens to the final moments of Gustav Mahler’s 9th
Symphony, there is only the sound of a few string instruments. And it is easy
to overlook which strings play the essence of what is left of melody. A few
violins are playing a sort of long, drawn-out ostinato. But they almost
distract from the viola – yet it is a lone viola that is given the final say,
almost the final breath as all sound is extinguished into an utter silence.
Like the blowing out of a candle’s flame, with a mere wreathe of vapor
extending upwards.
Something similar seems to be going on at the beginning of
evangelist John’s third chapter and the all too familiar story of Nicodemus’s
visit with Jesus in the dark of night. Familiar, since it is the only passage
of all Holy Writ that has given us so many end-zones in football stadia, and in
the seats behind the catchers and plate umpires at so many baseball games: a
poster simply emblazoned with “John 3:16.” More on that later. For such
familiarity with John 3:16 and the philosophical-theological conversation
between Nick and Jesus, and the misunderstandings of a word with more than one
meaning, we almost overlook the main character on the stage: one of the first
characters in the whole Bible; one that plays a central role in creation
itself: Ruah.
Ruah. Ruah can mean breath, wind, and spirit.
And not just any breath, wind, and spirit, but the Ruah is the power,
purpose, and agent of God, YWHW’s, will. If one has ruah, one has life.
If one has no more ruah, one is dead. “29 When you hide your face, they
are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their
dust. 30 When you send forth your breath, they are created, and you renew the
face of the ground.” [Psalm 104]
Nicodemus comes in the dark of night (which for John is the
darkness the world) to visit what evangelist John has identified as the Light
and Life of the World: Jesus. He has witnessed, or at least heard about, things
Jesus has done: turning water into wine, and overturning the money-changer’s
tables at the Temple. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come
from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of
God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the
kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where we and Nick
get hung up. The text, which is in a sort of patois of Greek, uses a word, anothen,
which like ruah, can mean several things: ‘above,’ but also ‘anew,’ or
‘again.’ Jesus, no doubt, speaks in Aramaic, and neither we nor the translators
have any idea what word he really spoke to Nick. What we do know is that John
has intentionally chosen a word that carries a certain amount of ambiguity –
because Jesus speaks, and John writes, in metaphor; really a kind of poetry, often
leaving interpretation to the one who hears what is being said.
Nick thinking Jesus says he must be “born again,” a phrase,
unfortunately, heavily freighted with specific meaning among some Christian
communities in our own day. “How can this be,” says Nick. “I cannot
crawl back into my mother’s womb!” Thus, introducing the challenges and
problems of biblical “literalism.” Despite all the poetry of his tradition, the
poetry of the Psalms and the Prophets, Nick is mired in a literalism that
misses the very meaning of what Jesus had come to proclaim. Jesus answered, “Very
truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of
water and Spirit (ruah). What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born
of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be
born from above.’ The wind (ruah) blows
where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it
comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Enter, the central character, not only of this conversation,
but the essence of Biblical Religion itself: the Spirit, capital “S,” the agent
of the very purpose and will of God, is like “the wind!” The late Water
Brueggemann offers the following: “Categorizing the various uses of ruah
is a mistake, for in Hebrew it connotes any and all of them in a more wholistic
sense that refers to an invasive power at work in the world, deeply linked to
YHWH’s will and purpose, capable of disrupting and transforming earthly
reality. Thus, the Godness of ruah is attested to assert that God
finally orders and wills lived reality, for good or for ill, beyond the ken and
control of human capacity. In short, God’s Holy Spirit-Breath-Wind cannot be
placed in a flow chart, let alone easily “understood” that due to something
beyond our every-day existence new possibilities open to us! [Brueggemann, Reverberations of Faith, p.200]
Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” And who
can blame him? Jesus continues, “Our tradition suggests that as Moses lifted
up the Serpent to heal the people in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be
lifted up, i.e. crucified … that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who
believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not
send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him.” Enter, the essence of the Message that has
been turned into a slogan, a poster, without context and without nuance. For
Jesus, and John the evangelist, “eternal life” is not some sort of magical
immortality, nor is it a future life in “heaven,” but is itself a metaphor
for living here and now in the unending (eternal) presence and love of God.
Eternal life is John’s way of speaking of the “kingdom of God,” which Jesus
inaugurates, and commissions his followers to continue down to this very day.
One can only begin to understand what “new life” is, says John, when the
crucifixion is in full view.
These verses at the heart of this story help us to see how
Jesus’s death and God’s love are related. God gives Jesus in love to all the
world, and whoever accepts this gift will receive, and enter into, eternal life
here and now. Jesus gives his love to all the world. Not to the Church, nor to
any particular expression of his gathered community of Love, but to and for the
Life and Light of the world. As John repeats “eternal life” twice in two verses,
Jesus gives God’s Love to all the world.
We may as well admit, as a slogan, all notions of ruah,
Spirit, have been cheapened. We have exported it to School Spirit, American
Spirit, Christmas Spirit, the Spirit of ’76 – leaving the wholeness of the
breath, wind, and spirit of YHWH’s will, purpose, and Love pointing to
something you know is supposed to get you to your feet cheering but which you
somehow cannot rise to. God’ ruah is far more elemental to life in the
Spirit.
Like the viola in the Mahler 9th, the central and
last word in this meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus, is God’s ruah, God’s
Spirit, which is the gift of Life. Which is Light. Which is Love. Life, Light,
and Love which the darkness cannot and has not overcome. Embrace God’s gift of
Spirit Love and enter into eternal life here and now. Choose not to embrace the
gift of God’s Love, and one might never
know the grace that such love brings and offers to the whole world and everything
therein. May God’s Holy Breath, God’s Holy Wind, God’s Holy Spirit move us to
embrace God’s gift of Love, in Christ Jesus, who is present and with us now
until the end of the age. Amen.
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