Some Plain Talk About the Holy Spirit
“...the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life...” ”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor...to set at liberty those who are oppressed.. is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good...”
July 25, 1982
Have you ever swum so deep that you almost ran out of air a long way from the top? Paddling up to the surface of the water, you wonder if you will ever get there, you feel just a little panic in your chest. Finally, on top a wonderful gasp and gulp of air. Air, breath, so simple, so taken for granted, but without airful breaths nothing else matters much or is possible.
The word for Spirit in the Old Testament is "ruach", in the New Testament it is "pneuma". Both "ruach" and "pneuma" have the meaning of "breath", "air", even "wind" or "storm" which are great bursts and blasts of air and breath. Our English word "pneumonia" breath comes from "pneuma". You have seen men crack concrete with pneumatic drills using the force of pressurized air.
"Ruach" and "pneuma", words for the "Spirit" in the Bible therefore refer to a reality we call God that is unseen and invisible but is like breath, wind, and storm tremendously powerful, interpenetrating all that is, the basic THAT without which would be nothing else. "Ruach", "pneuma", breath, air, wind, lifepower, the Spirit: perhaps the connections become a little clearer as the Bible and our own experience intertwine together to get across the meaning of the present-full mystery humans have named God.
The creation story of Genesis 1 describes the "ruach," the storm of God, moving across the dark, primeval waters bringing forth from that chaotic nothingness soup an ordered something. In the creation account of Genesis 2 from another point in Israel's history, God is depicted as blowing the "ruach" of life into a clay lump which becomes a living being. And in the fullness of time that wind of life has come into you and me. The "ruach" of God, the Spirit of God: LIFEPOWER. It is not totally a symbol or metaphor to say that the Spirit of God is as close as the next gulp of air which ignites in your cells.
Difficulties arise when we begin to speak of the Spirit of God as the Holy Spirit as one person in the Trinity Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The first centuries of the Christian church were filled with holy and not so holy councils and squabbles trying to haggle out just who and what the Holy Spirit is to everyone's satisfaction, which by the way, they never did. What is its or his or her relationship to God and Jesus? The sparks flew.
And lest all this sounds like dusty, yawny history, the beat goes on. A recent book in which modern theologians and Bible scholars have written about contemporary understandings of the Holy Spirit is entitled Conflicts About the Holy Spirit. Most of you have heard of the so-called charismatic movement: people speaking in tongues, in the throes of holy ecstasies, and healings. For some this has brought new fervor to their faith. For others this raises the specter of holy rollers and snake handlers. And because some have gone into the extremes of all of this, others have determined to steer clear of any of the so-called Holy Spirit business.
Thus, I come, perhaps presumptuously, to try to offer some plain talk about the Holy Spirit. I feel that those who use the Holy Spirit as an avenue to a sort of holy high on one hand and those who write off the Holy Spirit as the mumbo jumbo of the religious lunatic on the other extreme are both wrong. My offer of some plain talk about the Holy Spirit is really the product of my own attempts to sort out what it is all about.
As simply as I know how to put it, the Trinity refers to the three main ways humans have experienced the mystery called God. What the mystery is in and of itself, in its eternal being, whatever eternal being is, is anyone's guess, But we have experienced the mystery as a cosmic life-giver, giving life to all as our parents gave ús life individually. We look at the miracle of all that is in all of its mind blowing beautiful complexity and sense a universal parent: The Father.
What do we mean when we call Jesus the Son? It really does not require getting involved in the hair-splitting of virgin birth arguments. Humans have simply experienced Jesus as a/the chip off the cosmic father's block. By looking to Jesus, we have found, as in no other place or person, what God is like, what real living and loving are.
Yet the tension rises when we move to the Holy Spirit of that mysterious triumvirate. Most of us can deal with God the Father out there in space and in the nature of things. We are fairly successful in keeping Jesus at a comfortable distance back there in Nazareth where things were never, so we say, as complicated as now. But the Holy Spirit is about God not just out there or back there but right here and now in you and in me.
Hans Kung, the world renowned theologian, writer of mammoth books, shares very simply but profoundly that the Holy Spirit refers to "God's personal closeness to humans". A somewhat lesser theologian, I have tried to put it in one sentence for myself: "BY HOLY SPIRIT WE MEAN THE STRENGTH BEYOND OUR OWN. THE MYSTERY WE CALL GOD GETS TO US FROM DEEP WITHIN US AND FROM AROUND US."
Let me proceed to say three ways I believe the Bible and our own experience attest together that God's Spirit shows up in your and my life. The main reason I seek to say it plainly is that when I am finished I hope you will realize if you have not already that God's presence and strength are already with you a lot more than you thought.
First, although it sounds so simple, I believe deeply it is true: The Holy Spirit is the mysterious strength beyond our own that God gets to us to do what we could never do alone.
Accounts abound in the Bible of people experiencing God in the doing of what they could have never done on their own. Way up in years, Abraham and Sara leave the comforts of home in Haran and move to a new place. Ruth, a widow before her time, goes on with her life in a new country. What got a hold on wavering, waffling Peter who was too chicken to even admit he knew Jesus when he was arrested? From where did he get the courage to come back and live and die for a Lord he had denied? It is dangerous to put words in other people's mouths, but I believe Peter would say if he were here that it took something beyond himself to come back and dig his heels in and risk his life for something that really mattered.
Yet it is not because only of Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Peter, or Paul that I speak of the mystery of God's Spirit getting strength beyond our own to us. The ultimate authority is the witness of this I have seen in the lives of some people sitting here this morning and the personal experiences of the person trying to preach for you today.
The Holy Spirit shows up in strength for a widow to simply get through another lonely day. It comes to a man or woman who try to pick up the pieces of their life after a divorce or loss of a loved one. It happens when we fail and every ounce of us wants to give up but we do not. It shows up in the business or professional person who feels great pressure to cut a few corners "like everyone else" but does not.
Look back on the tough times of your life, maybe it is even now, and take a little hope that You have made it through although a bit scarred and tattered from wear, you are still here. You have made it through times and situations that you were not sure you could. Can you honestly say that you made it on your own steam without the steam of the "ruach" of God? Strength God bubbled up from deep within you or channeled through someone else to you?
Second, sometimes the Holy Spirit is the disturbing prod God gets through to us to do what we need to do but do not want to do.
Sometimes we conclude that God is absent in our lives because we feel so unhappy, restless and dissatisfied. But sometimes, God is the one in us causing the disturbance. He comes
in the restlessness that will not back off until we make some changes in our ways of living and loving, some changes in the way we spend our time and money, some changes in our values and how we decide what really matters.
Perhaps, the most difficult things the Holy Spirit does for us is to force us to quit blaming everyone else for our unhappiness – my boss, my children, my spouse, my parents, my friends - and face the truth that most human unhappiness is self-inflicted.
The Holy Spirit prods us to care more than we want to care about other people. Jesus began
his ministry in Nazareth by reading the words of Isaiah: "The Spirit - the Pneuma of God is upon me because he has propelled me to bring good news to the poor, relief to the suffering, and comfort to the hurting." If we read far enough in the passage we would discover that the scene ended with the people running Jesus out of town. The usual interpretation is that they resented the hometown boy they remembered as a kid with a runny nose presuming to claim God's Spirit. I have a hunch it went even deeper than that. It was probably very disturbing for Jesus to connect God's presence and Spirit with the aggravating needs of other human beings. Like many of us, they may have identified being spiritual with withdrawal from all the nitty gritty of hungry, warring, messy humans.
You do not have to agree with this point but please think about it. I believe the Holy Spirit is responsible for the great rise of discomfort in the world today about the basing of our security for survival on instruments of death. Some of it may be written off to "peace hysteria", some may write it off as a Communist plot. But I deeply believe that the Ruach of God, and remember the ruach of God is LIFEPOWER, will not give our world any peace until we stop trying to insure life with death.
Third, the Holy Spirit is the mysterious power to love and build each other up that God gets through to us who without it would only tear each other down.
There is a story of two bitter business rivals with stores facing each other across Main Street. One night, an angel came to Mr. Smith and said: "Some good news and some bad news. Make any wish and it will come true." Mr. Smith, "That's great! What could be bad about that?" "Well, any wish you make, your enemy gets double: If you want a million dollars, he gets two million, etc." The man thought for a while: "Strike me blind in one eye."
Paul's talk about the Holy Spirit in the Corinthian letter dealt with a bitter controversy there. Some people who were speaking in unknown tongues there claimed this gift of the Spirit as a sign of their superiority over those who did not. This is the context in which Paul speaks of a loveless person who can do all the great things in life not being worth the racket of a cymbal or gong. Love is THE gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the context in which Paul speaks in our reading today about the Spirit being given to each and every person for the building up of the church and human community.
Like the man in the story, our natural inclination is to get even, run others down in order to put ourselves up, bolster our own egos at the expense of others. In Corinth, like now, some even used their religion to zap others. "I've been born again and if you have not experienced Christ like I have, then you are obviously not a Christian." There are self-proclaimed religious majorities running around today attacking anyone who does not have their understanding of science, abortion, crime and punishment, the family, sexuality and all the other painfully complex matters of life. Oh, what unlove. What damage is done to the cause of Christ in our world today by finger pointing, judgmental Christians who out-pharisee the Pharisees with whom Jesus tangled.
God knows you and I need so much love, so much building up. There is not a one of you here today, with the possible exception of my wife, who knows my faults and shortcomings better than I do. And sometimes I need them pointed out. But most of the time you and I need someone to love us enough to point out the beauty marks in us when all we can see most days are the warts.
If you and I have ever been able to rise above our own worrying about our necks in order to care for another, then that love I believe is a sign of God getting into and out of us what we cannot quite bring off alone.
Many sermons could be filled on this matter of the Holy Spirit. So much we have not even touched. But today, if I have helped you identify times when strength beyond your own came to empower you to do what you would not or could not do alone, strength to love came beyond your own, then hopefully you have been surprised by God's Spirit that has been with you all along. Just take a deep "ruach". Come Holy Ghost. Amen.