A couple of years back I was sitting in the waiting room at Seton Hospital down in Austin with my mother as my dad was having his lung operated on. As part of his surgery…the most dangerous part of the surgery actually…his lung had to be deflated…sometimes the lungs don’t inflate back and the person is forced onto a respirator. Fortunately this didn’t happen with my dad and it was just a benign tumor they cut out. I can remember though…as I was sitting there…I began to think about his collapsed lung…and about how breathing is such an underappreciated bodily function. Obviously breathing is one of the non-negotiables of life itself. Breathing is part of the process that carries oxygen to the different organs enabling them to participate in the overall operation of our bodies. It’s one of the vital signs that we measure in establishing whether or not someone is alive.

Breathing is so basic to our existence that we don’t even think about it…so much so that when someone is recovering in the hospital form lung problems they often have to re-learn how to breathe. In many ways we’re way more aware of a cut on a finger than we are about this integral part of our everyday existence. What else is interesting about breathing is that the air we breathe…Oxygen in and Carbon Dioxide out…is the very same air that people have been breathing since the beginning of time. The air that surrounds us…the air in our immediate atmosphere…has been present in our world…in one form or another…since God said...Let there be air. In other words there has never been any new air injected into the earth’s atmosphere. It just recycles over and over and over again.

So my air…is your air…and your air is his air which is her air…which is the same air that humans breathed a hundred years ago…the very same air that people breathed a thousand years ago…the very same air that Jesus himself breathed…the air breathed by countless generations all the way back to the beginning of time when Adam and Eve first breathed. In this room right now…we all…equally…share that same air…just look around you…your loved ones…your friends…complete strangers breathing in and out the very same air. It’s very intimate actually. Why am I talking about this? What could breathing possibly have to do with today’s gospel…the story of the generous land owner and the jealous workers? I think…a lot.

Mary Joe Leddy is a Canadian spiritual writer and she understands just how important breathing is to the human person. She writes…The air you breathe out into the world is the air that the world will breathe back at you…and if your spirit is right it will renew itself through this very exchange of air…but if your spirit broken…it will not only contaminate your own body but also the air for others around you.

You might be interested to know that the word for breath in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word Ruah. It even sounds like breath right?…RUAH. And you might be interested to know that the Hebrew word for Spirit is Ruah. The same word Ruah for breath and for spirit. And if we remember that wonderful creation story from Genesis where God breathes into our nostrils the breath of life; we begin to understand that God breathes into our nostrils not only air…but more importantly…He breathes into us His very own animating Spirit. God breathed…he Spirited himself into us and we became living beings. So breathing is more than just a bodily reality. Breathing is the very essence of being…physically and spiritually…it’s the exchange of our spirit with God’s spirit with each other’s spirit…In and back out and right back in and then right back out for the entirety of our lives.

So the question is…what does the air look like that we inhale and more importantly what does the air look like that we exhale? What am I breathing in from this world…spiritually…and what am I breathing back out into theatmosphere of my relationships…into the atmosphere of my work…into the atmosphere in my family life? I’d like to think that I am breathing out the purified air of gratitude…the purified air of generosity…the purified air of kindness…of blessing…of goodness to everyone with whom I come into contact. I’d like to think that my air…my exhaling Spirit…my Ruah…into your atmosphere…is the clean air of concern…of understanding and reconciliation with every gasp of my life. But I know that doesn’t always happen. And I suspect…sitting in those pews today…it doesn’t always happen with you either. It’s precisely what the problem was for the workers in the vineyard who arrived early in the morning and worked a full day. Their breathing…their Spiriting…had become toxic. They had received the purified air of the Landowner’s generosity…taking it in like a cool spring breeze deep down into the very depths of their being…but what they exhaled something very different…which means that the workers who arrived later in the day had only contaminated air to breathe. We’ve all met people like this…and maybe even said…don’t talk to that person…she’s toxic. The early workers in the story probably didn’t even realize what they were doing...we don’t normally either…unconsciously exhaling the smoggy air of…self-interest…pettiness…unhealthy competition. The air that says You don’t deserve what I deserve…you haven’t worked as hard as I have worked…my life is way more difficult than yours.

We don’t like to admit that we too…just like the workers who arrived early…have these thoughts…the painful sighs. All too often that’s the air that we breathe out into the space of our lives…among our loved ones…among the people we work with…among out neighbors…and among the rest of the Body of Christ. Is it a mystery then that our lives are plagued with jealousy…judgment…ingratitude…and dis-satisfaction?
The problem is that we have to breathe in order to exist. And if we breathe like the early workers in the vineyard…we’ll expel these dysfunctions out into the very air that we need to breathe back in to live. The air we breathe out is the air that must breathe back in.

And so, what’s the challenge here? To the big of heart who breathe out what’s large and honest and pure and full of blessing…we all know people like this…for these purified people God’s Spirit filled air will come back into them a hundredfold in kind…in goodness…and in blessing that inflates their Spirits even more. And conversely to the dishonest of spirit…the world will also breathe back in kind. And their spirits will choke because the air they breathe will be toxic. What is the air that you are breathing in? And more importantly what is the air that you are breathing out?