Embodied Spirit

Often when I talk to folks about the universality of God—that God is everywhere and that God is indescribable—I hear from them that of course, then, God is spirit. And I agree, but with some hesitation . . . I also wonder if that means that they are uncertain about God’s embodiment, that God exists with some substance, not as ethereal stuff. Spirit is one of those churchy kinds of words that has been influenced more by Western philosophical understanding than through the understandings of the biblical tradition in the old testament.

In western philosophy, spirit and body are two separate things—one eternal and potentially perfect and the other mortal and terminally flawed. This comes through Plato and Aristotle from Socrates—you might not think that’s important to you, but it is because it is one of the ways that Christianity has been informed by culture rather than scripture. Plato regarded the objects of the real world as being merely shadows of eternal Forms or Ideas. Only these changeless, eternal Forms can be the object of true knowledge.[1] But our knowledge is, by virtue of our limitations, only a perception. Aristotle proposed a group of universals that represent the common properties of any group of real objects. The universals, unlike Plato's Ideas, have no existence outside of the objects they represent.[2] It is through Aristotle that we have an understanding of ultimate function of the ideal—that an object can look like one thing, say a loaf of bread and be another thing, the body of Christ.

These ideas are pervade our culture, such as when we deny the importance of the physical body and its needs—people starving themselves for the sake of “ideal” beauty when a healthy body needs so much more care. Or we deny the importance of the physical when sexual infidelity is swept under the carpet because it doesn’t “that’s just how men or women are.” Or it is denied when we regard only sexual fidelity within marriage as important when emotional or mental fidelity is just as crucial to its health.

It also helps to understand how important these are when we are encouraged to forget physical suffering because we’ll be rewarded for our faith in that eternal someday—when the physical suffering of the oppressed: historically slaves heard this message and more contemporarily when the poor are encouraged to be good rather than to strive for the betterment of their lives and the lives of their families. In South America, for example, abject poverty was deemed the inevitable plight of the poor and it would be reconciled in eternity. This comes from the idea that the accepted form of social structure is God planned and God-ordained.

Christianity began to be influenced more by these western ideas of dualism very early in its history, but not right away. And Jesus in himself denies this dualism—that flesh is evil and spirit is good—because he was flesh, he was embodied. Beyond the time of the first century, that became a problem when people began to believe that all flesh was evil. They had to find a way of understanding how the flesh of Jesus was not as sinful as all other flesh.

And sometimes, with the background and understanding that we have as inheritors of the ideas of flesh and spirit, we read the New Testament as if it also supported this idea of flesh as evil and spirit as good. The gospel of John can be misread this way—but it contains its own defense against the dualism. This gospel is about God enfleshed in Jesus Christ—it is about God tabernacling or dwelling in the tent of humanity as the first chapter of John explains.

Despite the mortality of the human body—that it is impermanent, limited by time and durability—it is not by definition evil. Jesus was resurrected as a body of flesh, blood and breath, as is described in this gospel, too. In this gospel, Jesus visits the disciples several times embodies, eating, drinking and breathing, partly to reveal that he was a enfleshed still as they were. And on this day of Pentecost when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, we also celebrate that the Holy Spirit dwells in flesh within people who are members of the body of Christ and within the body that is made up of all of Christians. The individual person and the church of Jesus Christ are together and separately vessels of the Holy Spirit.

In John’s gospel, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples as they gathered in a secluded room, quietly and intimately. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.[3] His very breath—the air expelled from Jesus’ lungs—was Holy Spirit, Holy Breath, Holy Wind. The life it contained, his spirit incarnate, was conferred to the flesh and bodies of his disciples as they shared the very air he breathed.

Breath and wind are synonymous, identical things in the Old and the New Testament—using the same word to describe how it is that God enlivens flesh, ruach. The wind of God blows in the first few words of Genesis; the breath God blew into the body into the human being that God made of the soil; the winds of all directions blown into life in Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. It is also the same in the New Testament—breath and spirit, wind, life—pneuma. Jesus said that we must be born from above, by water and spirit; John the baptist describes Jesus as the one who would baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.[4] Jesus assured his disciples that in the words of their breath, the Holy Spirit would be present. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.[5] The body of Christ continues and lives according to the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit does its work and moves through the people it inhabits.

Luke described the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts in a very distinct way from the way that the Holy Spirit is depicted in John . . . there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. [6] Still, it was as enfleshed in the bodies of the disciples, now apostles—but filling them, enflaming them, inspiring them to speak in the known languages of all the Jewish people who lived in the lands beyond Israel. As the disciples spoke, as they were deemed drunk, they reveal God’s Spirit—God’s life—in a way that had never been experienced before. And it had come to them with a noise like wind—it had come to them as tongues of fire, settled on each of them.

I don’t pretend to understand the hows and whys of these two very different descriptions of the initial gift of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. What I know is that between John and Luke we have a more complete picture of what kind of gift that it was God gave to the body of Jesus Christ. It is simple and intimate, full of the warmth of breath and living flesh. It is comforting and comfortable, revealing that we are never alone with the Spirit of God within. It is the life of the body of Christ, ever incarnate, ever present in the flesh and blood of its members. And it is passion and fire, ceaseless energy, diversity of tongues and races, the movement and dance of the whole body and of each member in that body. The Holy Spirit is intimate, warm and close; the Spirit is scary, mysterious and risky to live with.

And within all of its manifestations, it is the source of all that we bring to the body of Christ. It comes to us through the waters of baptism and in the words of the preacher. The Spirit is conferred by the hands of those designated by the church as pastors and elders and it is given by the hands of kindness by each Christian who gives love to those in sorrow or who are in need.

The gifts of the Spirit can be revealed in the most educated theologian, the most charismatic and moving preacher, and in a smile of welcome from a child or in a caress of caring when that’s what is needed most. The Holy Spirit fires our blood in some manifestations and calms us serenely in others. We must have both, the comfort and the serenity—the passion and the fire.

It is the incarnation that is important—living out the manifestations of the spirit, however they exist within each one and within this community of faith within the body of Christ. I have seen outstanding generosity within this body and I have seen profound theological action. I have seen righteous anger in many faces—some with whom I have agreed and some with whom I have not. I have seen courageous dependability in the faces of those facing tragedy or death.

And the Holy Spirit gave each one according to what was needed and to whom it was given. Each one of us has the ability to carry out ministry through the gifts of the spirit, through the membership in the body of Christ and through the waters of baptism. We are called upon to live them as we are taught by those who know how to love, as we are taught directly through the presence of the spirit.

Julia Kasdorf, a poet born into the Mennonite and Amish community of Miflin County, Pennsylvania wrote it this way.

“What I learned from my mother”
I learned from my mother
how to love the living
to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn
black ants still stuck to the buds.
I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad
for a whole grieving household
to cube home-canned pears and peaches
to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds
with a knifepoint.
I learned to attend viewings
even if I didn’t know the deceased
to press the moist hands of the living
to look in their eyes and offer sympathy
as though I understood loss
even then.
I learned that
whatever we say means nothing
what anyone will remember
is that we came.
I learned to believe
I had the power
to ease awful pains materially
like an angel
like a doctor.
I learned to create
from another’s suffering
my own usefulness
and once you learn how to do this
you can never refuse.
To every house you enter
you must offer healing
—a chocolate cake you baked yourself
the blessing of your voice
your chaste touch.[7]

What we do, how we live, where we go and what we say as embodied and very fleshly human beings inhabited by the Holy Spirit are, by our nature and those to whom we must ministry, are embodied, enfleshed, physical kinds of things. We feed the sorrowing and those in need of food. We touch those we love and those who are in need of our touch, to be clean, to be clothed, or to be assured of their own worth and existence. Without flesh and body and what we do with them, the Spirit within us serves no purpose not even to ourselves. When we deny the passion or the comfort, we deny the gift we are given. Without the Body, what is Spirit? Without Spirit, what is Body?

[1] http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761563506&pn=2
[2] Ibid.
[3] John 19.21-22
[4] Matthew 3.11b
[5] Mark 13.11
[6] Acts 2:2b-4
[7] Julia Kasdorf