"Fighting Dumpster Fires With Sacred Breath"
Acts 2:1-21
Rev. Emily Labrecque, Westmoreland UCC
May 24, 2026
[Pray.]
According to popular opinion, a Dumpster Fire is a complete disaster, a catastrophic mess, or a laughably horrible situation no one wants to face.
With that in mind, picture this: The Roman Empire owns your country. Your leader was just executed by the state. The religious establishment wants you silenced, preferably killed. Your teeny tiny movement has no money, no power, and no plan. You are scared, constantly looking over your shoulder wondering if someone saw you duck into the house where you are going to share in a meal.
If that’s not a dumpster fire, I don’t know what is.
We too are surrounded by dumpster fires.
Now, picture this: You wake up, reach for your phone before your feet even hit the floor, and before you've had your first cup of coffee you've already scrolled past a school shooting, a political scandal, and voting rights being stripped away. You put your phone down, take a breath, and think – what in the world is happening to us? If that's not a dumpster fire, I don't know what is.
Now, when there’s a real fire, our human instinct is to put it out by whatever means necessary – fire extinguisher, water, calling 911. But what do we do when things are metaphorically on fire? What do you do when the world feels like it’s burning down around you? Do you run? Do you fight? Do you doomscroll on the news or social media? Do you become frantic, trying to accomplish and control what you can because there's so much that’s not in your control? If you said yes to any of those, I can’t blame you. It’s hard to know how to fight a dumpster fire.
The followers of The Way were struggling too. Their friends were being killed, they were on high alert, they were living in a police state. But in the face of it all, they did the thing they knew how to do: they came together to celebrate. It was Shavuot, after all, the Jewish festival of the spring harvest. So there they were, gathered in one place, likely surrounded by Roman guards to make sure nothing got out of hand.
And then, as if they needed more attention, out of nowhere, God shows up. Not with an army. Not with a policy. But with breath, breath that sounded like a gale force wind. The Holy Spirit spread through all the people and they began speaking in their own languages and understanding each other.
They were blown away. No one could figure out what was going on. It sounded so ridiculous, people thought they were drunk. That’s when Peter stood “with the other disciples and spoke up. He reminded them: “no one is drunk. Rather, this is what Joel prophesied to us so long ago. ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; Your [children] will prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’”
In this time of disruption and chaos and complete catastrophe, the thing that united the people was not laws or war or hatred ... but breath. God’s breath.
As theologian Kat Armas writes, “We are all bound in the air we breathe, the earth we walk upon, the moon we gaze at. It’s the same moon, the same air, the same ground – no matter where our feet or hearts land. Our connection runs deeper than the physical, though. There’s a tether in our psyches, a thread that links our fears, desires, and longings. Every human, across every border, wants safety, love, and belonging.”[1]
‘Every human, across every border, wants safety, love, and belonging.’ That’s what the first Christians experienced that day in Jerusalem: an overarching feeling that they all belonged to each other. And God’s breath, the very breath that we continue to breathe reminded them of that.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I know I always feel better when I take some deep breaths. I was trying to share this message with my kids a few weeks back, but because they don’t really care what I have to say, I was sharing this information through a video on YouTube. There’s a YouTube channel called Go Zen. It’s designed to help provide kids social emotional tools through teaching about mindfulness, anxiety, resilience, and more. So I was showing them this one video about mindfulness in particular. I hadn’t seen it before but I trust this channel so I knew it would be quality.
The video starts out with the words: “Nelly’s morning without mindfulness.” And then shows a cartoon character running to the kitchen with her backpack on, realizing she’s running behind, shoving a notebook and snack in her bag then running out of the house and missing the bus and even getting sprayed with water from the puddle the bus runs through. So she stomps up and down and collapses on the ground mad, sad, and everything in between.
Then the video says, “Nelly’s morning WITH mindfulness.” And I was thinking oh, great, it’s going to show the kids that sitting in the quiet for five minutes in the morning could drastically change how their mornings go! But then here’s what happened, Nelly runs to the kitchen, realizes she’s running late, stops and takes a deep breath. Then she grabs her toast, runs outside to catch the bus and misses the bus. I think to myself ... this is not the way I thought this was going to go ... She gets clearly frustrated, stops to take a deep breath. Pulls out her phone to call a friend. Takes another deep breath. And then the friend picks her up to go to school.
What struck me about this, and for our resident Buddhist, this will come as no surprise to Alec, but what struck me is that she paused to breathe in the midst of the chaos. In the first scenario she let the catastrophe, the dumpster fire of a morning, overtake her life and make everything worse. In the second scenario, she took the time to breathe. To stop and center herself so she could think more clearly about next steps. It didn’t solve everything. I thought for sure that the second half would show everything working out just fine because she spent five minutes meditating. But no, the day didn’t work in her favor, but she still found a way to move through it a little more peacefully.
And friends, that is exactly what happened on Pentecost. The world was not fixed. The Romans didn't go home. The religious establishment didn't stand down. But the Sacred Breath swept through that place and those people paused long enough to receive it – and it changed everything.
I believe that is the message for us on this Pentecost Sunday. We are all so busy and stressed out and worried about the future of our country and our world. And sure, there are protests to attend and letters to write and advocacy to tend to. But we can’t forget to breathe. We can’t forget that we have the power to pause ... to tap into the Sacred Breath ... and to breathe. For God is always as close to us as our very breath. And whether you use that breath as an opportunity for meditation or prayer or simply a pause, I do believe that in centering ourselves in the Sacred, we can fight dumpster fires more faithfully and effectively.
It doesn’t serve us or the Peaceable Realm to run around frantic yelling ‘FIRE! FIRE!” Or to become so unhinged that people think we’re drunk. But what does serve us is to tap into the same Sacred Breath that was breathed on the early Christians ... to breathe it in deep. To pause. To consider what might come next, knowing that God will meet us there. Because God is always with us, and one step ahead of us, even in a dumpster fire.
Amen.
