Jesus breathes in-to the disciples the Spirit of life. This Spirit will create and free, organize and make them and others responsible; with this Spirit of God, the disciples of Jesus are invited to undo one world and make another, to loose and to bind its peoples. Receiving this Spirit is serious stuff. When unbound, it is a factor out of our control, God as the revolutionary challenge to what we have been and what we may want to become.
We know the Spirit from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Yet the Spirit is every bit as present in the cuneiform script of Babylonia and the accordion pleated papers of the Maya. In all Scriptures, the stories of the Spirit are a chronicle of God's presence in our daily concerns and actions. The Spirit is not foreign to us, arriving as an occasional visitor to history, but the very weave of God's presence in what we do. Spirit is the name of God dwelling with us in our best and most demanding responsibilities.
The Spirit, 'Ruah' in Hebrew, can be heard whistling across the rims and margins of creation's void or crying out in re-cognition, "...bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh". God's Spirit splashes color over Noah's ark as a sign of covenant. This same strength of life and creativity counts the desert's sand and the heaven's stars to chronicle the future of Abraham's tribe. The Spirit will plant Israel in Egypt and then tear its people whole from history's womb to create a path in the desert and a city upon a hill. As they fall away, the Spirit will bring them back over twisted, angry roads of war and exile to hear once again the loving words of alliance and compassion.
The Spirit...is God who weeps and groans in our heart |
It is the Spirit that moves Mary to wrap "the first-born among the living" in the clothes of the poor and put him in a place of nourishment. When he is baptized by John, the Spirit arrives with the delicacy and gentleness of a dove that lands over dry ashes without disturbing even one gray grain. The Spirit pushes Jesus into confrontations with chaotic evil and manipulative power, toward an embrace of lepers and a walk with disciples to a cruel hill in Jerusalem. It is the Spirit of God who cries out for love and justice brought to life in a new creation called God's Reign.
The Spirit calls together the force of life in flame and wind until the doors of fear unlock to apostolic voice and mission, not in one, but in many tongues and for all peoples. In Samaria, the land of heretics, after Baptism in Jesus' name, the power to organize the Gospel's communities comes with the "laying on of hands" and the consciousness of God's Spirit in a people's movement toward be-longing and hope. The Spirit tells Peter that no one can be excluded through ritual and diet, but that, in the breaking of bread, all come to share the life of the Risen Lord. Apollos and Simon the Magician, Aquila and Prisca, John Mark and Barnabas, Paul, Timothy and Lydia have their hands stretched out by the Spirit to bless and heal a world cut and scarred by confusion, pain and death.
The Spirit, as Paul says, is God who weeps and groans in our heart for the dead children of Africa, who looks with trembling at the violence of other children in the gangs on our city's streets, who sees refugees at every frontier, peoples excluded and excluding from the life that should belong to all and is only for the few.
The Spirit dwells with us and looks for those who can begin to organize their lives in the process of freedom. The Spirit searches for those willing, not merely to groan as individuals, but to cry out together for dignity and sustenance in a world that builds walls of exclusion, sin and death.
Spirituality means belonging to God's Spirit, recognizing what ties us together in prayer and action, making crumble the structures of society that poison the human heart and hopes. The Spirit looks to subvert this disorder once again and turn the world right side up for everyone. Let's help.
