The Alley Theater in Houston is winding up its production of Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town.  The third act of the play is set in the cemetery on a hill overlooking Grover’s Corners.  The stage manager briefly describes the scenery and then peers into the audience and says, “Now there are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often.  We all know that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.  All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it.  There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”

“There are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often.”  Today we take this message of eternal life and look at it.  We have heard, through “The Bluegrass Mass”, about a God who loved the world so dear he set aside his crown.  We have just looked for God in the valleys and asked, “Where are you now, our Savior, when we are all undone?” and have heard the eternal assurance, “I come.”

The author of Genesis begins our story with one sentence, actually just one phrase of a sentence that has the power to transform our view of life, death, and life beyond death.  We find that one phrase in Genesis 2:7.  Hear now the Word of the Lord:

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed

into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

This is the Word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.  In this one verse the author of Genesis introduced both the temporal and eternal nature of human life.

Our lives are the dust of the earth merged with the divine breath of life through the tenderness of the Creator resulting in a living being.  This gives a whole new meaning to the saying, “Don’t waste your breath.”  I have often heard this expression as one of futility, like a child trying to plead her case to have bedtime hours extended.  The child is told, “Don’t waste your breath.”  But here it is not an expression of futility, but of divine endowment.  God has breathed into you the breath of life.  Don’t waste your breath.

There is something so intimate about this verse.  Up until this time in the biblical account creation occurred by the will of God.  God said, “Let there be light!” and light appeared. God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly…” and it happened.  But here, God sits down on the ground (the Hebrew word is adamah) and as delicately as a potter makes a sacred vessel, God forms man (the Hebrew word is adam) from the dust of that ground.  But as Ezekiel reminds us in Ezekiel 37, form without breath is still lifeless.  So God leans down and breathes into man.  Derek Kidner noted in his commentary on Genesis, “Breathed is warmly personal, with the face to face intimacy of a kiss…this was an act of giving as well as making; and self-giving at that.”  Kidner then reminded his readers that Jesus breathed on the disciples in John 20:22 when he proclaimed to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Have you ever blown into a baby’s face?  I know it sounds strange, but I used to do it all the time to my kids.  They would be lying unsuspecting in their car seat, or on the floor, or in the bed and I would lean down and blow into their face.  They would first react with startled wonder, “What just happened?” and then would smile with delight as if to say, “That was cool.  Do it again!” 

So God breathed into man the breath of life – the divine endowment – and man became a living being.  The Hebrew word is nephesh and it has all sorts of words that are used to translate it.  Perhaps if I run through the catalogue you will get a sense of what is being said.  The Brown, Drivers, Briggs Hebrew Lexicon of the Old Testament lists these words beside the word nephesh – soul, living being, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, and passion.  It is more than breathing in and out, it is the insatiable desire not to waste one’s breath.

Gerhardt Von Rad identified this one verse as “the locus classicus of Old Testament anthropology”.  He further noted that there is, “the undertone of melancholy: a faint anticipation of post-Adamic Man when God withdraws his breath.”

We often take the time to celebrate the breath of those whose lives have touched us.  Many of those names appear in this morning’s bulletin and will be read aloud in a few moments.  Of course, the passing of a year does not change the impact of a life on our lives.  We think of them every day.

Emily Gibbs is the newest occupant of the cemetery in Act Three of Our Town.  She longs to go back and relive just one day.  She chooses her ninth birthday.  However, she not only relives the day, she watches herself living it.  Soon she realizes that this was a mistake.  She says, “I can’t. I can’t go on.  It goes so fast.  We don’t have time to look at one another.”  Then she asked the question that rings in my heart so frequently, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?”

Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed

into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

Don’t waste your breath.  Spend it as the divine endowment that it is.  Receive it as the divine gift through others and when this part of life is over we will understand that the dust returns to the ground from whence it came and the breath returns to God who gave it, but the breeze which that breath brought into our lives refreshes us still.  Amen.