One wind, and the Spirit it points to

He Breathed on Them

It was the evening of the first day of the week, the very day the tomb had been found empty. The disciples were shut behind locked doors for fear, when Jesus came and stood in the midst of them and showed them his hands and his side. He spoke peace over them, and joy broke into that fearful room like light. Then, before he sent them out into the world he was reconciling to himself, he did something small and enormous at once. He drew near to them and breathed upon them, closing the distance between the risen Lord and his frightened friends. In John 20:22 the risen Christ breathed on his disciples and said to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. It is a gesture so quiet and so intimate that it can be missed entirely on a fast reading. He does not merely speak the Spirit toward them from across the room at a safe distance. He breathes, and the breath itself carries the word. In that single act the whole long story of Scripture turns a corner, for the same breath that once made a man of dust a living soul is now breathed by the risen Son upon a small gathered company, making of them the very beginning of a new creation.

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:”John 20:22

The wind in Scripture

The setting is heavy with fear from the first line. The doors of the room are shut for fear of those who had crucified Jesus only days before, and it is into that closed and anxious room that the risen Lord comes and stands among them. His first word to them is not rebuke for their scattering but peace. He then shows them the wounds, the hands and the side, so that they will know beyond doubt that it is truly he, and truly risen, the same crucified one now standing alive and bodily before their eyes. Only when their fear has turned into gladness does he speak the commission that frames the whole scene, that as the Father has sent him into the world, so now he sends them. It is precisely at this hinge, in the moment between the commission and the power to fulfill it, that John 20:22 records the act. Having said that he sends them just as he himself was sent, Jesus breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Ghost. The order of it is entirely deliberate and worth dwelling on. He does not send them out equipped by their own recovered courage or their own natural cleverness. He first breathes his Spirit upon them, so that the whole mission flows out of the gift and never the other way around. The sending and the breathing belong to one and the same moment, and the one cannot be had without the other. The verb that John chooses for breathed is a rare one, and it is heavily freighted with meaning. It is the very same word the Greek Old Testament uses in the account of the first creation, when God breathed into the man the breath of life. John does not reach for that particular word by accident. He wants the reader standing in the upper room to remember the garden at the beginning of all things, to see in this quiet breath a fresh act of creation, and so to understand that what is happening here is not merely encouragement for anxious men but the actual making of new life out of them. What follows immediately after the breath extends and unfolds its meaning. Jesus speaks of the forgiveness of sins, of sins remitted and sins retained, binding the gift of the Spirit to the very ministry the disciples are now being sent out to carry into the world. The Spirit is breathed upon them not for their private comfort alone but for a sent people who will go and announce forgiveness in his name to others. The scene first closes the distance between the risen Lord and his own, drawing near enough to breathe, and then opens the door of that shut and fearful room outward toward the whole waiting world.

What it comes to mean

The first thing to see and to feel is the sheer tenderness of it. Jesus does not command the Spirit down from across the room with a raised hand and a word of power. He comes close, close enough to breathe upon them. There is an intimacy in this that matches the whole tenor of the resurrection appearances, the wounds gently shown, the peace spoken twice, the breath quietly given. The Spirit is not delivered here as a distant transaction between heaven and earth but imparted as a nearness, face to face. The risen Christ shares his own breath with his frightened friends, and the closeness is itself part of the gift. Second, the timing of it preaches its own sermon. He breathes the Spirit upon them before he sends them, and the two acts are made inseparable. This guards the church forever against the fatal error of a mission carried out in mere human strength. The disciples are not told to gather up their resolve, steady their nerves, and go out on their own. They are told first to receive, and only then to go as those who have already received. Everything that follows in the whole life and history of the church runs on breath that was first given to it as a gift, and not on strength it managed to summon from itself. There is a long-standing and honest question about how this moment in the upper room relates to Pentecost, when the Spirit came with the sound of wind and with tongues of fire and with visible power upon the waiting church. Scripture does not force us to flatten the two events into one. Whether we read John 20 as a real and genuine impartation that anticipates the fuller outpouring soon to come, or as a prophetic sign and pledge of what Pentecost would bring in its fullness, the honest and central point stands firmly either way. The risen Christ is himself the giver of the Spirit, and the Spirit comes from him. The upper room and the day of Pentecost testify together, with one voice, to that single unshakable truth. Finally, notice carefully what the breath is actually given for. It is joined directly to forgiveness, to a people now sent out to declare that sins are remitted in the name of Jesus. The Spirit is not breathed into them merely to make the disciples feel strong or favored or secure in themselves. It is breathed to make them able to carry mercy out into a fearful and guilty world. The gift and the mission are finally one single gift, not two. The same breath that makes them alive is the very breath that sends them out to announce to others that they too may live. Life received becomes life proclaimed.