....in the Holy Spirit... continuing the series on The Apostles' Creed

(We're now getting towards the end of our series of posts by one of our members on The Apostles' Creed).

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

‘In the beginning … the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the water’ Genesis 1:1

‘The Spirit of the Lord, indeed, fills the whole world, and that which holds all things together knows every word that is said’ Wisdom of Solomon 1:7 (Roman Catholic Bible)

‘No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’ Mark 1:10-11

In relation to this bit of the Apostles’ Creed I could have kept quoting little moments like this from all over the Bible, like the part of the Creed where the community reflects on the Jesus stories.  But in the Creed there is only one straightforward statement about Spirit.  Seemingly, the community isn’t talking about Spirit in the same way it was talking about Jesus. I say seemingly, because I will argue that that is exactly what it does; but we will get to that.

There is a schema, or story dynamic, that comes again and again from Genesis right through the Bible tradition; and that is the movement of the Spirit.  The movement or action of God in the world, known through the vehicle of creation.  We hear of that movement occurring over the water, before the world (as we know it) even existed, and it is no coincidence that the book of Luke talks of the Spirit coming over Mary, nor that the book of Mark has the Spirit descending on the baptised Jesus.  The narrative of the Bible is the movement of the Spirit through history, a tale of the working of God in and through God’s people; and when the authors of the various books in the Bible want to highlight the beginning of a particular work of God, when they want to highlight a new beginning that is in fact a re-beginning of that first work of God, they do so with a return to that ‘breath’ of God, that movement of the Spirit.

It is not going too far to say that, if I believe in any of what I’ve reflected on in this series of posts so far, it is this that I believe in.

If I can hear any whisper, feel any waft, see any ripple, smell any back note, get any aftertaste of God in the world, in my own life, in the community that values the Bible tradition, in the narrative of Jesus: then what I believe I have found is the movement of the Holy Spirit. 

We may see all sorts of other things at work: greed, pride, power, fear, alienation, shame, hurt; but so long as we can see the Spirit at work, we can be together, we can share the joy of that, the awe of that, the readiness to re-begin of that.

In the book Acts of the Apostles, the author presents the nascent community of believers as having the Holy Spirit come down upon them in wind and tongues of fire.  The author presents this moment as another re-beginning, another movement of the Spirit, and it is this continuation of God creating, this continuing of God at work in and through God’s people, this continuing of God being made flesh in Mary’s womb, this continuing of Jesus coming up from the river Jordan, that this last section of the Creed points up, and reflects on.

Just as the community was reminding itself of the God at the start of the story of how it understands the world; just as it was talking to itself around the narrative of Jesus; at this point, it is recognising the ongoing work of the Spirit in the community itself, in the world here and now, and affirming its firm hope that such a work will never end.  Again, this is neither a list of philosophical concepts argued over, nor a test of loyalty to a power structure: this is a community in conversation, using its shared stories and experience to give shape to a shared exuberance that wells up and spills over into a way of living in the world.

I believe in the Spirit as that which I recognise as ‘more’ in the world; that which runs through the Bible tradition and the Gospel narratives as the breath that gives it all life.  And I believe in the Spirit as the Wisdom and the Brightness, still there all over the world to be found by any who seek (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 6: 12-16).  So before we move on to reflect on what this means for Church, for the wider community, and for an understanding of how we live in the world, I just want to pause and affirm that I believe in the Holy Spirit.