All of Them

Acts 2:1-21 and FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1981 by Denise Levertov

May 24, 2026

Thank you Truitt and Reece, we have such a good team and such a good thing going on here! Thank you for being here and thank you for the privilege of your time on this beautiful Sunday on what is for many a holiday weekend and for us in Boulder, it’s Bolder Boulder weekend a special Boulder holiday! I am running again this year. Anyone else?

What a gift that we have this house of prayer and this community of care and conscience. Thank you for showing. I invite you now as you are so moved to take some deeper breaths with me, breathing in peace, breathing out fear, inviting an openness, so we can hear whatever we need to today.

Hear this prayer from Psalm 19. God of many names and expressions, help us to take in whatever we need to, may the words my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. 

Gathered in a ballroom with religious leaders and organizers of all kinds, around 2016 or 2017, Rabbi Sharon Brous stood in front of us and told us that our main job right then, was to not let ourselves become breathless. Breathe in, breathe out. She invited us to be intentional about our breath, to breathe deeply, she said that where we have lost our breath, we must endeavor to get it back. How can we not let ourselves become breathless? In some ways that feels like worlds ago, but I now understand that time as one of muscle building, a time of building capacities for this time in which we find ourselves now. How do we not let ourselves lose our breath?

These are at the same time both political and spiritual questions, mattering to those of us who are people of faith and conscience, making a difference to those of us who are rooted in religion, as a source of oxygen. Giving us the power of life and the courage that comes from a spine. May that be so! Because we are anchored in something that will not be shaken by any storm, that cannot be moved by any amount of threat, or shifted by any lucrative offer, we are infused with something different, a deeper Spirit. Rabbi Brous reminded us that one of the oldest words for Spirit is breath, a spiritual, wind, a wind of God, within us and among us, in Hebrew its Ruah, which even sounds a little like taking a breath.

In Greek, the language of most of the Christian scriptures, it is some version of pneuma, Spirit, breath, wind, and we have it no less than 383 times in the New Testament. And that is the word pnematos that we have in this text that you heard from the Book of Acts, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…” All of them were filled with Pneuma. Being open enough to be filled, all of them were at least at some level ready to show up in a group and be together, to breathe in and out together, to slow down enough to be close, to share a meal, to sync their hearts, however we understand that… In the ancient world, pneuma was a driving force, an animating power, a current of mystical air.

According to Stoicism, an abiding philosophy that grew out of the Greco-Roman world, the mind is something corporeal and the soul is more like a heated fiery breath, a pneuma that infused the physical body. And according to scholar Scott Rubarth, “As a highly sensitive substance, pneuma pervaded the body establishing a mechanism able to detect sensory information and transmit the information to the central commanding portion of the soul in the chest…The Stoics analyzed the activities of the mind not only on a physical level but also on a logical level.” Pneuma. All of them were filled with Spirit, breath, wind… infused with Ruah … It came to all of them.

In the Jewish scriptures in the Book of Exodus, and this feels so familiar. I love the wisdom these old stories have for us now. After hundreds of years of living in bondage, of being imprisoned, of being closed off from the outside, of being and feeling in captivity in some parts of the inside, God tells the people of Israel that it is time for freedom! But according to the scriptures, they can’t hear the message, they can’t take it in, they can’t see the door that has been opened, because their spirits are too broken, they are too weary and they have lost their breath, they have let themselves become breathless… they are down, despairing- feeling desperate, feeling separate from Ruah and Sophia and Pneuma…

It is there for all of them. But they are tired. Afraid. Reduced.

The wind out of their sails.

Diminished and small.

Can’t hear much at all.

Turned in.

Closed down.

Spirit…almost out.

And I understand how this happens. More than I ever did. Because of what we are living through now. Because of what it feels like when tyrants rule. 

Part of what they are doing is going really fast. 

Going so fast that the courts can’t keep up and moving so quickly that one memo contains more corruption than decades of history, shielding generations from accountability, part of how they break and take is doing it so fast,  pick up the pace, to make it feel like you have to keep up, like it’s a race, that we have to, to keep on, keep going, to keep pushing, because never before has it been so brazen, so intentional.

Do you feel a little out of breath too?

So I wonder if part of our call right now, part of our job right now together, is to not let this happen, to not let ourselves lose oru breath? To not let ourselves become breathless? To remember that this Spirit, this Ruah, this breath is with us, for ALL of US? It is the wind in our sails! We can’t let ourselves become so tired and weary and worry that we are closed off. We turn inward. How can we help one another not lose our breath? How can we ensure that we are infused with Spirit? Even if we lose our breath, may it not be for very long.

I love this story of Pentecost as it is layered with delicious symbolism and meaning. It is noted as the genesis story of the concept of the church, the church’s birthday so to speak. And this year what stands out to me is that maybe before this, before this moment here, maybe they were a bunch of weary and worried individuals, wandering around on their own, feeling pushed down by the weight of the Empire, but then they came together, and everything changed for them when it was all of them together in one place,  to pray and care and live out the peace they were taught, maybe it was only then that they could help one another find their breath? 

It was when they moved from isolation to community, from needing to figure it out on their own or get by own their own that they could catch their breath, tap into the Ruah and Sophia and Pneuma… that driving force, that animating power, the current of mystical air. I think maybe what this story is trying to offer us is this year are these questions: How can we ensure that not one of us loses our breath? What can we do individually and collectively to breathe in hope? To share that fragment of hope so it multiplies. To breathe in life and pass it along. If anyone here needs spiritual CPR, Let no one leave here without being revived! What we need is here, within us and among us together. I do believe in that sacred wind that changes everything. I know God is with us! God is in us and among us and around us. There is a lifeforce that is as close to us as our own breath, let us help one another never become separate from it. Together in one place, we are all of us filled with the Holy Spirit.

Beloved ones do not lose your breath!

May it be so. Amen.

Communal Reflection Question: Do you have a fragment of hope to share? How can our church more fully live into the invitation of Pentecost to be “all of us together in one place?”