My focus today is on the small but important story in John 20:19-23, the story of Breath.
Having introduced touch in last Sunday’s meditation, perhaps we should rush past the Breath story in verses 19-23 to the Thomas story (24-29), where touch is equally important, though in a different mode. For Mary Magdalene, it’s a hug. She doesn’t want to let go. “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus says and sends her off to be the first evangelist. For Mary, the transition is from Jesus as teacher (Rabbouni) to mission, a hard transition for all of us.
For Thomas, it’s not a hug but a jab, not haptō but ballō “throw”: “Unless . . . I cast my finger into his nail prints and throw my hand into his side, I will not believe” (20:25). Do I sense anger, a feeling of betrayal, in Thomas’ reaction? The one with whom he lived is now gone.
When Jesus appears to Thomas, he graciously invites him to “lift a finger,” as if to say, “If you must. . .” But he blesses those who do not touch or see and still believe (20:29). For Thomas, the transition is from anger at being apparently abandoned to a new kind of faithfulness.
Both Mary and Thomas want resuscitation not resurrection, as do many Christians still. But resuscitation is not resurrection. Lazarus awoke from death, but it was not resurrection in the Easter sense. It’s important to see the difference.
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A clue to the difference are the wounds. The wounds are still there in the hands and feet of the risen Lord. It could not be otherwise. One of the puzzles of resurrection is who we are when we rise. Suppose we live until we grow old and weak. Powers we once had we no longer have. And, at the same time, other abilities, some born of weakness, arise in us. Perhaps we learn compassion in a new way.
Which of these versions of ourselves will we be when we rise? Who we were at the end of our lives? Who we were before the debilities of old age set in? Or some perfected version of ourselves—a version we never were? The Easter stories suggest that there is something wrong with these questions. They are resuscitation questions, not resurrection questions.
Ponder the wounds. The difference between resuscitation and resurrection is the difference between a pause and an ending. Lazarus’s life paused for his days in the tomb. After Jesus raised him, it went on until it finally ended. Resurrection requires an ending. The life of Jesus of Nazareth ended. It was, is, complete–down to the wounds of the cross. What was raised up was not Jesus at a certain point in his life but his whole life.
What resurrection promises to you and me is that our whole lives, our entire body of work, will be raised up. This means that whatever wounds we bear belong to our resurrected selves along with the compassion we gained with age and the powers we had when we were young. All of it. Our entire life.
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Which brings me to breath – the Easter story resonates with the creation story in Genesis 2. Genesis 2 and 3 are about who we are as humans. The story is impressively economical. We are just two things: we are dust of the earth and what we breathe. The dust includes all that we are biologically and more: our DNA, our development from birth to death, our contingent history on earth among other creatures—all that can be accounted for by science and story. Our human lives in all their particularity.
But we are one thing more. We are the creatures who breathe God. To be human is to breathe God.
But unlike the dirt from which are made, the breath of God is not something we own, something we just are. Breath is not soul in the story. There is no proper word in Hebrew for soul. Breath is relationship. Breath is God.
It’s to this that Jesus gestures on Easter evening when he breathes on his gathered disciples. As Paul has it in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, the breath of God now has a face, the face of Jesus. And this breath is a promise that as God breathed life into Jesus, God will breathe life into us. Quoting Paul again, “If the Breath of the one who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his Breath indwelling you” (Romans 8:11).
A promise, as I said, and also a caution that in this life we not forget to breathe. Easter is a reminder to take a breath, to take Jesus deep into our lungs where new life can begin. Resurrection begins with breath.
Header photo by Amr Elmasry on Unsplash
Smoke Photo by John Lord Vicente on Unsplash
3 Responses
Wow! Resuscitation vs Resurrection. That definitely qualifies as “I never thought of it that way.” Much to ponder. Thank you for this aha moment.
So many associations and fascinating parallels to the concept of God as breath, breath as God. Forest breathing, which we have been practicing on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage path in Japan, is opening yourself in silence to the breathing of the trees around you. Practicing yoga means first of all attending to our breathing. And I can’t help thinking of the echo of George Floyd’s final appeal: “I can’t breathe.” Thanks for opening these doors.
I think I must dispute your use of the word “resuscitation.” It means to “revive from apparent death or from unconsciousness.” Lazarus stank. Perhaps you agree with liberal scholars that the seeming raisings of the Shunamite widow’s son, Jairus’s daughter, the young man of Nain, and Dorcas were all just resuscitations, although I don’t. I prefer to believe that all these were truly dead, not just apparently so and unconscious. True, all these must also die again, so they are resurrections not yet at the level of Our Lord’s, but I suggest that, judging by Our Lord’s conversation with Martha in John 11, the resurrection of Lazarus is a divinely chosen Sign of the true Resurrection and the Life. And therefore I also disagree with your statement that the Easter stories suggest that these are the “wrong questions.” I believe they are natural questions and therefore good questions, and while certainly not the place to end up at, certainly the place to start. They are the kind of questions children ask, and seekers, and new members. Of course these questions lead to answers beyond our experience and expectation, but they can’t be wrong.
In St. Luke’s account of Our Lord’s transfiguration, Jesus appeared in “dazzling apparel,” and the “two men” were Moses and Elijah. In St. Luke’s account of the Resurrection, he reports “two men” at the tomb, “dressed in dazzling apparel.” St. Luke certainly knows the word “angel,” but departing from Matthew he uses “men.” And in St. Luke’s account of the Ascension, he reports that “two men stood by them in white robes.” Again, not angels. Who are these? The new humanity? The population of the Resurrection? Witnesses sent back like Schwarzenegger from the New Heaven and New Earth? Passing through time and space as the Lord Jesus passed through the locked door and the walls? Or rather that we are given a sudden glance through a window in them? I don’t know, and “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” is certainly more than mere physicality, but I don’t think it’s less, because the “breath of God” likes bodies to breathe it, and the Biblical signs of it are more than mere resuscitation. At least, that is what I believe.