First Sunday after Epiphany; 7 January 2024; Epiphany 1B (RCL); Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11.
I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what the authors of the New Testament meant by the phrase, “the Holy Spirit.” Part of that difficulty comes from the fact that sometimes it appears with the definite article, and often without it. With the definite article, the phrase refers to some specific thing; without it, to what exactly? perhaps a quality, or some ‘stuff.’ Equally confusing is the word being translated “Spirit” – pneuma, which can also mean (always mean?) “breath.” We recognize this as the root for many words in English having to do with the lungs.
A similar case holds true in Hebrew; breath and what we translate as spirit are cognates. A good example is the passage in Genesis 2 (2:7); some translations say that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, and some say the spirit of life. The same word is being translated. John 20 seems to me to have resonances to this passage. Jesus shows up in the room where the disciples are, despite the door being lock, and exhales on them, and says, “Receive holy spirit (no article); the sins of whoever you forgive are forgiven them, the sins of whoever you retain are retained for them.” You could just as easily translate “Receive holy breath.”
The effects of the Spirit also seem widely varied. In Paul’s communities, the spirit seems to be associated with ecstatic phenomena, like speaking in tongues and prophecy. I suspect that such dramatic effects aided with attracting devotees of this new movement in the competition of the various religious cults in the Mediterranean basin. Here was real evidence of something exciting. In John’s Gospel, the Spirit seems to be the source of some kind of knowledge or insight into divine purposes — the spirit will lead you into all truth.
Luke seems to tame down the enthusiasm of Paul’s communities with the story of Pentecost. There, the spirit ‘inspires’ not ecstatic glossolalia, but the ability to communicate God’s mighty acts in many languages and dialects — something clearly useful for the spread of this new cult beyond the boundaries of Judea.
In the early church, the Spirit seems to be associated with the felt presence of Jesus in the church’s eucharistic worship. This experience almost certainly contributed to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus was no longer just an historical figure, but present to the Church, and present spiritually — which must imply three persons in the Godhead.
When Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descend on him in the form of a dove (at least in the three Synoptic Gospels), and voice from heaven declares him God’s son, in whom God is pleased. Paul seems to suggest that the same Spirit in our baptism gives us the status of adoption as God’s children (see particularly Romans 8), which has cosmic consequences.
I suppose it is appropriate that the nature of the Spirit is so hard to pin down — in John’s Gospel after all, Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Spirit is like the wind (cognates in Greek), blowing where it wills. In Mark’s Gospel, immediately after his baptism, the Spirit will drive Jesus into the wilderness where he will be tempted for forty days, neither eating or drinking. Only after that period of testing will Jesus emerge proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
In our eucharistic prayers, we invoke the descent of the Spirit upon our gifts of bread and wine, making them the Body and Blood of Christ, and upon ourselves, making us acceptable to God, and empowering us to live in the world in such a way that forwards God’s purposes of healing the world and reconciling it to Godself. In some ways, I wish the evidence of that Spirit was as obvious today as it was in the ecstatic phenomena of Paul’s communities.