As a Latin student in both high school and college, one of the “holidays” we noted on the calendar was March 15^th. It was on that day, 2053 years ago, that Julius Caesar died. “Beware the Ides of March,” as the saying goes, because on that day one of the great leaders in the history of Western Civilization died, not in battle, not of old age…he was assassinated by his closest allies. “Et tu, Brute,” as Shakespeare’s rendition of the event would have it. He was stabbed on the Senate floor, and being mortally wounded, he exhaled, and died.

That much is well known. What is less widely known is that Caesar’s last breath is the subject matter in many chemistry classrooms today.

 

It turns out that Caesar’s last breath released an enormous number of molecules—mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Science teachers with some extra time on their hands have at some point calculated the number of those molecules to be something in the range of 0.5 x 6 x 10 to the 23^rd. Just the 10 to the 23^rd is a ridiculously large number—10 with 22 zeros after it. A trillion trillion molecules. If the molecules were money, it would make the economic stimulus package of a trillion dollars look like chump change.

 

So what happened to all those molecules? Well, some were absorbed by plants in the process of photosynthesis, to be released again as oxygen and by-products; some were breathed in by animals through the years; most were absorbed into the ocean over time; and a significant portion floated free in the atmosphere, dispersed around the globe in a pattern mathematically predictable enough to conclude that at this moment we each have at least one of the molecules in our own lungs that came from Caesar’s last breath.

 

What this means is that what Caesar, and Shakespeare, and Lincoln, and your great-great-grandmother all breathed out, you breathe in. Whether you like it or not, we are all connected in that way.

 

Now as a preacher who happens to be a scientist, you know I can’t just leave it there. Seeing as how Jesus died less than a century after Julius Caesar, I am interested in extrapolating this hypothesis for our purposes today. What if we pondered the possibility of Jesus’ last breath offering a molecule of his life to each and every person who has lived on this earth since then? It is a profound theological notion to consider, and perhaps it offers a slight twist on the notion of abiding in him, and he in us—even if that might be hygienically unsettling to some of us.

 

That last breath of Jesus—that exhale of a trillion trillion molecules—consisting of fleshy elements like nitrogen, oxygen and carbon released by Jesus into the atmosphere and now, having been breathed in by us, have also been taken up, in part, into our constitution. It could be a carbon atom in your retina; it could be an oxygen molecule in my bloodstream…

 

Perhaps you find this line of thought too earthy, even offensive. But then again, Jesus speaks of eating flesh and drinking blood, hardly dainty language. It is messy imagery, to be sure, but our God is not a delicate God, and nothing in God’s creation is too messy to be used by God to reveal to us the truth of who we are—we are God’s beloved.

 

But we can’t stop there. If we conclude that something of Jesus’ breath has disseminated across time and space such that each of us now, in the breath you take right now, will take up a molecule of his flesh and blood—that line of thinking would lead us naturally enough to also conclude that we are connected by the breath of life to every other person as well. Not just those we would call family or friends or neighbors—but everyone. Which is why, I think, it becomes so poignant to consider Jesus’ commandment that we love one another.

 

You know, every time we baptize someone in this place, we are all invited to renew our baptismal covenant. One of the vows we make in that covenant is “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving others as yourself?” And the answer is, “I will, with God’s help.”

 

If we were to parse this question, we would have to say that there is a presupposition upon which it is based—that Christ is in all persons. I guess one could argue whether that is true, but for those of us who have committed our lives to Christ, there is no wiggle room—Christ is in all persons, and to say otherwise is anathema to our faith.

 

The tough part, it seems to me, is not to accept that notion—that all humans are endowed with a certain divine essence which dignifies each and every person and makes us all worthy of respect—but the tough part is orienting our lives as if we really believe it—loving others as ourselves.

 

And make no mistake—such love can be no more selective than the gas molecules that we breathe in—there is no one—absolutely no one whom we have been given permission to demonize. We are to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving them as ourselves.

 

Of course, we can only possibly respond to such a commandment with a hedge—that I will, with God’s help. But in that hedge is not a release from the commandment, but the invitation to earnestly pray to God for the inspiration required to love others. To be inspired…

 

So I invite you to ponder this week—ponder as you walk past this font of baptism that calls you into covenant with all persons; ponder as we break bread together and receive the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven; ponder in your workplace and in your home; ponder as you read the newspaper or watch the news—who is it that you have not loved? Whom have you placed outside the bounds of Christ’s embrace, which is, of course, your embrace?

 

In the end, it is not the molecules of gas in the air that binds us together so much as it is the love that God has for us—each and every person—and the love that Jesus commanded us to have for one another. 

 

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

I will, with God’s help.