God the Father. God the Son. And God the Holy Spirit. Three of my favorite things to talk about, and today we are going to talk about God the Holy Spirit. We talk less about the Holy Spirit than about the Father and the Son, and I think we understand the Holy Spirit less than we understand the Father and the Son, so it is worth our time to turn our attention there this morning.
Who is the Holy Spirit? We stumble a little here… we imagine God the Father, we imagine Jesus, we are able to relate to them as persons even as we recognize that it is God we are talking about, but when I ask, “Who is the Holy Spirit” we pause. Sometimes it even seems we might be more comfortable with the question, “what is the Holy Spirit”. When we talk about the Holy Spirit I even most often hear people say, “it”. That has always bothered me. The Holy Spirit is not an “it” – we believe in one God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person, one of the three persons of the trinity, and we need to learn to think of her as one of the three persons.
Gen. 1:2
We first meet this 3rd Person in Gen. 1:2. Right away, we see the Holy Spirit of God intimately involved in creation. The NIV text says, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” As we read the rest of the creation account, we see that God speaks, and what He speaks comes into being. It is evident from this verse that it is the activity of the Holy Spirit which brings the Word of the Father into being. This is confirmed in Psalm 104:30: “When you send your Spirit, they [referring to all living things of creation] are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” We see this specifically in the story of the creation of humanity in Gen. 2:7: “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (“breath” is a consistent OT image of the Spirit of God, especially when used in terms of “breath of life”).
So the Holy Spirit plays a primary role in creation. God the Father speaks, and God the Holy Spirit brings the creative will into being.
“Hovering”?
The verse from Gen 1:2 uses the word, “hovering” over the waters. The image the writer is using is that of a mother bird hovering above her nest, an image that Eugene Peterson captures in his “The Message” translation: “God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.” The only other place where we have this word used the same way is in Deut. 32:11, where God is described “like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them.”
So the image is very much a maternal image – God the Holy Spirit, like a mother bird, tending and nurturing creation. Bringing it into being.
So?
This is significant for two reasons, one theological and one practical. The practical reason this is significant is because of the parallels here between the Holy Spirit’s role in creation of every part of the universe, and the mother’s role in creation of new human life. I don’t know if you’ve ever really thought of it this way, but a mother has an incredible, unique opportunity to participate with God in creation. As the child grows within the womb, the mother is intimately involved with God in the nurturing and creation of new life. What an amazing privilege! What the Holy Spirit does in creating life and the universe is described in Scripture like a mother bird hovering over her creation, and a human mother has the incredible opportunity to participate in this ongoing creation in a personal way as a child grows within her. That is truly amazing!
The theological reason this is significant is because of the ongoing nature of the Spirit’s role in creation. It is not a one-time, static image. The image of the mother bird is not of one that lays an egg and then takes off, but of one that stays and looks on and protects and then nurtures the new life as it begins to emerge. I am completely convinced that the Holy Spirit is intimately involved in the ongoing creation in our universe. Every creature that is born is superintended by the Holy Spirit. Every seed that falls to the ground and dies, and then is reborn has, I believe, received the touch of life of God the Holy Spirit. Every beautiful flower that blossoms expresses the beauty of its creator.
“She”?
So if we begin with that foundational role of the Holy Spirit in creation (and in re-creation, as we shall soon see), seeing the maternal images, and accepting that we refuse to de-personalize God the Holy Spirit by using the pronoun, “it”, then maybe it makes sense to call the Holy Spirit “she”. Now, if anyone asked us if God was a male or a female, we would immediately reply “neither”, and argue that God is spirit and separate from us and does not have a gender. And that would be a valid argument. Yet it gets complicated, because Jesus was a male human, and Jesus taught us to pray to “Our Father”, a definite masculine image. So we say God is without gender but then we relate to two of the three persons of the Trinity through a masculine lens. And then we get to the Holy Spirit and are uncomfortable because we aren’t sure what to do so we say, “it”, or sometimes “him”.
But maybe a better answer to the question, “is God a male or a female”, is “both”. Let’s go back to Genesis: “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27). According to this verse, the “image of God” includes both “male and female”.
Years ago I was sitting in my theology class in seminary. We were discussing the theology of the Holy Spirit, and I had these same thoughts rumbling around in my head, while listening to a deeply intellectual professor, very old-school and conservative, whom I respected and by whom I was somewhat intimidated. But I got up my courage, put up my hand, and asked, “I’ve heard some whispers that perhaps we should use the feminine pronoun to refer to the Holy Spirit. What do you think about that?”
His response was amusing but unhelpful: “I’m not sure we are any better off, that way we get two men and a woman instead of two men and a bird”. I now disagree, I think we are better of with “two men and a woman” rather than three men, or two men and a “something else we aren’t too sure what to do with”. So, I think we should start calling the Holy Spirit “she” when we are forced to use a pronoun. So that is what I am going to do.
Recreation:
We talked about the Spirit’s role in creation. Recognizing the Holy Spirit’s role in the ongoing creation in our world begins to bring Her work into a better perspective. Often we view God the Holy Spirit in a small way – appearing occasionally but not very often. We subordinate the work of the Holy Spirit to a third place position and thus expect little.
Understanding the role of God the Holy Spirit in the ongoing creative bringing forth of life in our world, however, broadens our perspective immensely. No longer is God “way out there”, but rather God is intimately and actively at work in our world. In your world. In your backyard, in the air you breathe and the flowers you see and the birds you hear. Further, God is intimately and actively at work in you and in the people around you.
This is important because it helps us understand how accessible God is. How God is at work everywhere around us, bringing forth life and goodness and joy. We don’t need to go to a specific, physical location to discover God – we can meet Him anywhere and everywhere, and at any time. If only we’ll look. If only we will seek. If only we will become aware of the incredible, life-giving presence of God in and around us.
And as if the work of God in creation were not enough, well that continues, and is even more amazing, when we talk about her role in re-creation. See, we know that beautiful creation story from Genesis was contaminated by sin, and the life God created in us was destroyed. Spiritually, we were dead. But now the delight of God comes again, and recreates us through the work of the Holy Spirit within us, as we accept God’s grace through faith. The Spirit re-births us. Renews us. Recreates us. Comes once again, and breathes life into dead bones, and we live.
And what a life it can be, if we walk in step with the Spirit. Any of you ever in a marching band, or in a military setting where you had to learn how to march in step? What was that like? (invite response). Ok, how about this: did any of you ever learn to dance? I don’t mean “dance” like I perceive it to be today, where it is mostly selfish and what one person does on their own to look cool and try to impress others. I mean “dance” in the way where two people, or a larger group if you like to think of western dance, move together. Any thoughts on that? “25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Gal 5:25 NIV).
One final thought: Wind of the Spirit
One final thought, though of course I’ve barely scratched the surface of the person of the Holy Spirit. We have seen her role in creation and recreation, I’ve argued that we should personalize her and use the feminine pronoun when forced to use a pronoun at all, and we’ve imagined life in the Spirit as a dance.
Let me leave you with this. The word usually translated “Spirit” in the Bible is actually a word that means “wind” or “breath”. Jesus said, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” (John 3:5-8). So with that aspect of the Holy Spirit in mind, and coupled with that image of life abundant envisioned as a daily “dance”, keeping “in step with the Spirit”, listen again to the following story. But instead of just imagining it as an encounter with nature, imagine it as an encounter with God and as a way of living each and every day. It is from Edwin W. Teale, “The Wilderness World of John Muir”. 1954. excerpt from pp. 181-190.
The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is universal… the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten… they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result…
One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the Yuba river. The sky and the ground and the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof…
(he describes walking through the storm for a while…)
Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the AEolian music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter… After cautiously casting about, I made a choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were 100 feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed.
In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc from twenty to thirty degrees, but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more severely tried – bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows – without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb outlook…
(he describes the sights, smells, and sounds, in great detail, remaining in the tree in the middle of the storm for hours)
When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning towards the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forest hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you.”
As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm was forgotten, and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal.
