In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
So, many of you know how much I love the Old Testament, and those of you who took my Genesis class know how much I especially love that book. The hours and hours...and hours...I took taking you through it is evidence of that. And the cool thing is that I think every single verse is something that we could spend so much time teasing apart and savoring.
Our translation in the NRSV is fine enough. It'll do. But when you get down into the original Hebrew, the beauty and majesty of these verses...y'all, you just have to hear it:
“At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters – God said: Let there be light! And there was light.”
That rushing-spirit has a name in Hebrew – Ruach. It is God's breath, “bringing forth life and giving growth.” It is God around us and God in us. Ruach is the very, very thing which the authors of Genesis, just a few verses later, will describe this way: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God did he create it, male and female he created them.” Ruach is what makes us the image of God.
But just as God set aside light, there was something left behind: darkness. And too often, so very often, it seems, we abandon the breath for that place where there is none, where there is an absence of that rushing-spirit. That place, that total destruction and desolation: the Hebrew people call that “Shoah.”
Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi leaders and their government collaborators in Germany and across Europe, systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through hard labor and starvation in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, culminating in burning the bodies 24-hours a day in ovens in those camps. Remember their names: Treblinka, Belzec (Buw-zhets), Chelmno (shelmino), Majdanek (myDAnik), Sobibor, Auschwitz.
Ever since World War II, we've called this event the Holocaust. In the Torah, the Holocaust is a term for burnt sacrifices where the sacrifice is totally consumed. And it's easy to make the link from that sacrifice to the sacrifice of six million human beings. But for many Jews, this term, holocaust, simply causes more pain. Because the holocaust sacrifice was made for God and to God. It was an offering of repentance and thanksgiving. And the Jews, rightly so, question this. They were the ones being sacrificed. How is this an act of thanksgiving? Where was the repentance?
So instead they call this horror – Shoah. A time and a place where God was NOT. A time and a place where the rushing-spirit...rushed out, leaving behind the darkness and destruction that will be remembered long after the last Shoah survivor is gone from the earth.
It did not happen over night. It wasn't spontaneous evil. It took wicked men worming their ways into positions of influence. Then those men putting up other wicked men into positions of power. And it took millions of other men, looking the other way, assuming that the worst could never happen, that the guardrails of Western Civilization will hold. Bit by bit, pushing the Ruach aside a little at a time, embracing the darkness that cannot begin to comprehend the light. Until what they assured each other couldn't happen...happened.
The world fought back, of course, we know that. And eventually God's Ruach returned to the world. At least parts of it. But it hasn't been easy. Billions of lives have been lost to that darkness, to that Shoah. Large swaths of the planet still live under dark totalitarian regimes. And sometimes it seems like things aren't much different now than they were then or ever.
Last week's events showed us just how fragile our guardrails are and just how tempting power and violence are and just how destructive mobs and can be. And most of us are frightened and we are angry that our way of life so easily and so quickly could have evaporated – Phew! Like a child blowing a dandelion. But maybe we've stepped back from the brink. For a while at least. But I fear we aren't through, yet.
But here's the thing: Ruach is not a political thing. The political things are there, sure, and we need to address them in a civil and civic manner, turning away from the temptations of violence to achieve our goals and turning out those who would lead us down the path to a different kind of Shoah.
But Ruach is not a political thing...because God is not a political thing. God doesn't bless America because of our policies or our parties or our patriotism or our greatness or our borders or our monuments or our flags or our leaders. God tries so hard to bless America because God tries so very, very hard to bless God's creation.
Ruach. God's rushing-spirit. Still among us, still WITHIN us.
In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is doing his thing: calling for the People of God to repent and pointing to the coming on one greater. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
That Holy Spirit? That Holy Spirit that comes to dwell in us, each of us, at our baptism? Y'all that's Ruach. That is rushing-spirit, hovering over the face of the turbulent waters of our lives and our country's life and our planet's life. That Spirit is IN us. And as the Apostle Paul says, this Spirit is not some benign thing – it is power!
It is the power to counter the darkness of Shoah with Light. It is the power to counter the destruction of Shoah with Love. It is the power to counter the desolation of Shoah with Life. Ruach is God in us, working the divine will through us, healing our world for us. Ruach, the breath of God, is the very thing that makes us precious to God, makes us the image of God. We are his breath, spreading through the world, bringing forth life and giving growth.
Because Ruach is the very breath of God, and it is ours. It is our birthright as God's creation, and, as Christians, it is our gift at our baptism. And it is plentiful, because our God is generous. And we know what to do. We know how to spread Ruach to every corner of the world. We know, y'all. It's right there in our baptismal vows.
As Christians, filled with this rushing-spirit, we are called to resist evil and repent when we fail. We are called to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. We are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.
This work? This hard work? This is what that rushing-spirit is for, this is what that Ruach is for. It is God's gift to us...and it our gift to the world, this very hurting world.
And, y'all, it's too precious to keep to ourselves. It's to precious to waste that way.
Amen