Thankfully I never had to put my mouth on the plastic dummy beside the swimming pool in order to pass the lifesaving test for my Bronze Medallion. I kept a respectable inch or two away, and simply went through the motions of – pinch nose, breath into the dummy, release nose, turn head and listen for some exhalation. I remember dreading the thought of encountering a real ‘nearly-drowned’ person at a beach, and having to engage a mouth full of saliva and sea-slime.

The thought of doing mouth-to-mouth on a near-dead person is one thing. The thought of doing it on a corpse is a whole other level of horror. Not that I have done it, but it’s what has been done to me; says the Gospel. The Saver-of-Life found me dead in trespasses and sin, and despite the slobber of sin on my mouth and the foam of evil talk and vomit of evil ways, dared to touch me with his grace and breathe deeply into my soul the gift of life.

God did it once at creation, though Adam had not been spoiled by sin. But this second breathing told by the Gospel is an astonishing grace. And a grace for the world. On the evening of that first Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared to his disciples, and after greeting them with peace, he breathed on them, giving them a commission to preach a gospel that could implant life into sin-drowned souls and make our hearts to beat again.