The Spirit is the wind or the breath of God that stirs the waters of chaos into giving birth to creation in Genesis 1.2. The Spirit animates and gives life.
At Jesus’ baptism the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus, first driving him into the desert to be alone with God. Then the Spirit impels Jesus into his public ministry. Jesus preaches the nearness of God, heals the sick, frees many from evil spirits, forgives sins, and gathers disciples.
Our experience of school spirit can help us understand the Holy Spirit. School spirit — the shared feelings and experiences of a student body — has many visible signs. Posters in hallways advertise dances, candidates for class office, drama performances. Boxes pile up during a food drive. Students wear letter jackets. Trophies jam glass cases and championship banners hang in the gym.
These outward signs make visible the invisible belonging students feel in the excitement of teams winning, in the anxiety of final exams, in the anticipation of summer vacation. Students share feelings such as sadness at the tragic death of a classmate, anger at neighbors’ complaints about their cars, or frustration with policies that end pep rallies because the school can’t hold them for every sport. School spirit is sharing cafeteria food, walking to class with friends, wondering who is seeing whom this weekend.
Like school spirit, the presence of the Holy Spirit is visible in many signs. Creation suggests the animating presence of God in our daily experience. A baby grasps one’s finger with its tiny perfect fingers. A butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. We experience our own capacity to change and think.
All the traditional images of the Spirit in scripture — blowing wind, flowing water, burning fire — picture the invisible Spirit visibly moving. On Easter evening the risen Jesus breathes his Spirit upon his gathered friends (John 20.22). Jesus teaches that like wind, the Spirit blows where it will (John 3.8), and like flowing water, is a deep well within each of us from which the desire for God bubbles up (John 4.14). On the first Pentecost, the Spirit comes like roaring wind and sets fire to the tongues of Jesus’ disciples to preach his resurrection to people of every nation.
The story of God’s love for us begins with creation and continues in Jesus. But God is more than the Creator — ancient, infinite, and beyond us. God is more than the Son who became one of us in Jesus so that we might become one with God. God is also Spirit, continuously present within and around us, always at work urging us to connect, bond, and build community. We live, move, and have our being every day in the invisible but present Spirit.
The Spirit is the giver of our lives — our sorrows and joys, threats and moments of wonder, tragedies and reunions, breakups and breakthroughs, angers at injustice and delights in sharing. The Spirit breaks down walls and boundaries, moving us to share our lives. The Spirit is moving wherever people break stereotypes such as racial or gender stereotypes or those teens have about older people or those older people have about teens. The Spirit urges each of us to treat all others as respected equals.
The Spirit urges us to build a justice-seeking, peacemaking, forgiving community among us on earth like the shared community of three persons in one loving God in heaven.