Text: Ephesians 2:4-5 (read 2:1-10)

Have you ever tried to play basketball with a ball that had so little air in it, it would not bounce? The ball was no longer alive. It was dead. There was no bounce in it.

Not only do some of us know what it is like to try to play with a dead basketball, some of us (if not all of us) know what it is to be like a dead basketball—to be flat, for our lives to have no bounce. The problem I am talking about is more than mere physical fatigue. It is a weariness of living. It is when for reasons more troubling than sleepiness, we do not want to get out of bed in the morning. "Get up?" we ask. "Why? For what?" We are like a deflated, dead ball with no bounce. Our eyes grow dull; we sigh a lot, and we merely go through the motions of doing what is expected of us.

Others of us try to deal with this emptiness in a constant flurry of activity. We keep the ball in the air so that we can avoid facing the truth that it is flat. We keep our schedules full to overflowing so that we stay busy and in our busy-ness are able to ignore and deny the quiet terror of our loss of soul, our loss of spirit.

This loss of spirit, this loss of soul reflected in our difficulty in moving or our reluctance to stand still is a sure sign of being spiritually flat. This inactivity or this hyperactivity is an expression of the death Paul was talking about in the passage we read today. Just as a basketball that has lost air has no bounce and is dead, a human being drained of the Spirit is also dead.

By the way, to refer to our loss of spirit being like the loss of air from a basketball is a pretty good simile. The word for breath or wind in both Hebrew and Greek is also the same word for spirit. For example, the passage from the story of creation in chapter 2 of Genesis that says God blew the breath of life into a lump of clay and Adam became a living soul can also be translated (and perhaps more accurately translated) as saying God breathed spirit into that lump of clay, and it came alive, a living soul.

How do we lose this spirit of life that God has breathed into us lumps of clay? Our loss of Spirit, is more like a slow leak than a blow out on the highway. Paul wrote: "You were dead through your trespasses and sins …" That is the translation we read today. However, Marcus Barth, in his two-volume commentary dealing with the Letter to the Ephesians, tells us that the word in today's reading that was translated as "trespasses" is more accurately translated as "lapses;" and therefore, a better translation would be: "You were dead through your lapses and sins …"

The point is that the cause of our spiritual death is not a surprising, sudden rebellion against God. In the passage we read, Paul implies that spiritual death results from lapses, a string of misdemeanors. Rather than being a single, dramatic rejection of God, spiritual death is much more likely to be the result of slowly drifting away from God. Little by little we spiritually die as little by little we become more self-centered and less God-centered in our living.

When we are spiritually dead, few of us are involved in criminal behavior such as robbery or stealing. Our spiritual death is more often reflected in our unwillingness and our reluctance to share. Our spiritual death seldom motivates us to become involved in obviously evil causes; what usually happens is we simply have no desire or motivation to work for good ones. We do not become persons driven by hate as often as we become persons who are insensitive to others and apathetic about their pain and problems. It is not that we rape or assault others; we simply use others for our selfish purposes.

When we are in the process of spiritually dying, disciplines such as prayer, Bible study, and worship are seen as optional activities that we might get around to doing if there is any time left over and if we feel like it. Of course, when we are spiritually dead, spiritual disciplines such as these look like a waste of time. When we are spiritually dead or dying, anything other than looking out for ourselves and those most dear to us simply does not make sense. When we are spiritually dying or dead, caring and sharing look like either foolish behavior or amazingly heroic acts of self-sacrifice rather than simply the way God intends each of us to live all the time.

I suspect most of us, if not all of us, have some sense of what Paul meant when he wrote: "You were dead through your lapses and sins …" We know something of what it is to be like a dead basketball with no bounce. We know what it is to be spiritually dying, if not totally dead.

But there is more. And those of us who have gathered here today are aware there is more. To some extent, each of us is aware of the rest of what Paul was saying.

The way Paul said it was: "… God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead through our lapses, made us alive with Christ …" We who have been like lifeless basketballs have been given new life. We who were flat, have been given new bounce.

We, along with Paul, are aware that sin is not the only reality at work in life. God's redeeming grace is also a reality at work in life. The Gospel of John tells the story about the risen Christ coming among those flat, bounce-less disciples who, after the crucifixion, were frightened and hiding behind locked doors. The risen Christ came and did what the Genesis story said God did to that lump of clay in the beginning. Christ breathed life into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. And the disciples began to be spiritually alive.

It is not unusual for us to be like those disciples, hiding from life. However, the way most of us hide from life is not by dropping out and living behind locked doors. The way we hide from life is in our hectic pace of living. That way, our physical and emotional exhaustion can keep us anesthetized so that we are insensitive to our spiritual decay and death.

When this is the way we are, how does God's redeeming grace come to where we are in life and breathe the Spirit of God into us? How does God do for us what Christ did for those disciples? When we are spiritually drained, how goes God put the bounce back in our lives?

It is a mystery. It happens, but there is no one formula, no routine way. A word, a gesture, another opportunity; forgiveness comes and we accept it. Someone sees potential in us, goes a second mile for us, gives us that cup of water we needed, not merely gives us clothes for our nakedness, but protects us in our vulnerability. Someone cries with us, laughs with us, embraces us in our loneliness. Someone says the word we need to hear; someone cares enough to remain silent when there is nothing that can be said, but stands with us through the ordeal and embraces us in our grief. Someone who has seen us at our worst does not lose sight of the best in us and will not let us lose sight of that either.

How does the redeeming grace of God breathe the breath of eternal life into us? Through the extraordinary ordinariness of the multitude of ways unconditional love touches and transforms our lives. Through the extraordinary ordinariness of the bread on this table becoming more than bread, and this Methodist grape juice becoming more than juice, even more than wine—even the very vitality of Christ. God's redeeming grace comes to us through the sacramental ordinariness of ordinary bread and ordinary wine and ordinary words and ordinary deeds. Through the extraordinarily ordinary words and deeds of love from people we know, from people we hardly know, from people we never heard of—through their extraordinarily ordinary words and deeds of love, God's redeeming grace breathes on us the breath of life.

Let us pray:

Breathe on [us] Breath of God, fill [us] with life anew, that [we] may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do. Amen.

God, we believe you are always with us and that nothing separates us from the love you revealed in Jesus. We believe your grace is sufficient for all we must face and do. We believe; help us with our unbelief.

God, inspire us to earnestly seek your will. Teach us in our praying to do more than talk; teach us the patience and discipline of listening for your special word for us. Protect us from our impatience. Help us open ourselves to the working of your Spirit in our lives.

And as we strive to be more sensitive to you, enable us to be more sensitive to others—especially those who differ with us and those who seem to be different from us. Teach us how to love even those who scare us or who make us angry. Help us be open to the pain behind our neighbor’s cantankerous behavior. Enable us to discern our neighbor’s fear, even when it comes boiling out at us in the form of anger. Show us how to live in harmony with one another without sacrificing honesty and integrity.

God, give us the faith and courage that will enable us to do your will, inspire us to try what you would have us try. Enable us to believe that all we do trying to serve you will somehow or another be used by you for good.

God, in the name of Jesus we ask you to help us seek your will and to help us do it. Amen.