The Spirit moves, as the wind blows
ACTS 2:1-4 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
At the very beginning God’s Spirit was floating over a seemly lifeless universe, except of course the presence of God,as it is written in the Book of Genesis : “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
In this context, heavens means the vast space or with an other word the skies, meanwhile the heavenly Heaven is the divine environment which surrounds God directly.
From the Book of Genesis it looks like that God and the lifeless universe were somehow separated as the Spirit of God was hovering over the formless and empty Earth and over the surface of the waters. It may mean that in order the bring forth life in the Universe God’s Spirit must have engaged the lifeless World or matter, like penetrating it.
Modern Science tend to separate the animate world from the inanimate world, and as it looks like Christianity does the same in this case, separating the beings with souls from the non-living things without souls, occasionally vehemently debating about the souls of the animals, whether they, including our pets, do have souls or not.
However, some ancient tradition held the notion for millennia that although the inanimate might not necessarily alive in a biological sense, but still they might have some consciousness, like Mother Earth itself might be an entity, not only hosting an unimaginable variety and diversity of life, but somehow, it is acting a little bit at least like a semi-conscious entity, what even science calls an ecosystem, nowadays.
The least we can say that animate and inanimate interact with each other to breed life and to foster life. If we are able to acknowledge that all life force comes from God, and it is connected to the Spirit of God, then it means that the animate and the inanimate interact with each other as the Spirit moves.
This cooperation of the animate and inanimate makes the Creation live as one, as a united effort to be in harmony with God’s rule. The Spirit of God connects everything in the Creation, animate and inanimate, as The Apostle Paul told the Athenians, that “he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’
Thus, the Spirit of God engaged with the the created matter at the very beginning, and not only that the Spirit is present everywhere, but we, humans, we have the very Presence of God’s Spirit in our own heart, what is usually called by the poets the divine spark, and the Bible declares, that God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness.”
As it is also written same Book of Genesis, “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The Breath of God is life in us, and the Holy Spirit, called Ruach in Hebrew, also means wind, just as Jesus told Nikodemus, that “ The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
According to the advice of Jesus, as he told them at the end of the Gospel of Luke, that “ You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” , the Apostles were sitting together in the House and were in utter dispair, not only that the Master was crucified, but also that the resurrected Jesus was taken away from them after a brief period of sojourn.
Waiting together they experienced the closure of their Master’s journey on Earth, as he ascended to Heaven.
So, what now, was the question, how the community of the disciples should move forward from this impossible situation, when Jesus was not anymore with them in person, to lead them, to guide them, to teach them, to empower them, to inspire them, to cherish them as a group, and one by one.
They had to come to the understanding, one by one and as a the group of the Apostles, what Jesus told them in the Gospel of John, chapter 16, that I tell you the truth: It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I don’t go away, the Advocate won’t come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: About sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
The Apostles understood, like an enlightenment, that in the Spirit of Jesus, they have to keep fighting the good fight of God for the souls, baptizing the world by repentance, and to lead the world toward salvation by the grace and mercy of the Lord.
The Book of the Acts describes this enlightenment as flames over their head, and indeed the Holy Spirit is the powerful fire in the zeal, in the enthusiasm of faith and hope. May we have a share in their burning faith by the hope, which is given to us by the grace of the Lord and the will of God by the Holy Spirit. AMEN
