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The breath of your body
When we first gather around the font we hear the prayer over the water. The prayer refers to some of the things we have been thinking about – water cleansing and reviving us; the people passing through the waters of the Red Sea, for example.
This leads to the point where the priest prays the Holy Spirit of God to be present in the waters of Baptism. We will think a bit about the Holy Spirit.
When a candidate is baptized, the priest baptizes saying the words …in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This is commonly heard through all our services. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We call this the Holy Trinity. This particular formula of words has been used since baptisms began after the resurrection of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is what we call the third Person of the Trinity, but is intrinsically God himself. So the Holy Spirit is not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’, because God is known to us personally, not as an object or a thing. So who is the Holy Spirit? This is best looked at through what the Holy Spirit does for us.
That the Holy Spirit is intrinsic to God is shown by the fact the Holy Spirit is expressed at the very beginning of time. Remember that passage at the very beginning of time?
The Old Testament was written in a language called Hebrew. In this language there is one word that means wind, breathe, and Spirit; One and the same word. So you might read that the ‘wind’ of God swept over the face of the waters, or that the ‘breath’ of God swept over the face of the waters, or that the ‘Spirit’ of God swept over the face of the waters. One and the same word. So for the purposes of this baptism talk we could say that the Holy Spirit is the living breath of God.
It is as this living breath of God that the Holy Spirit is often described in various bible stories, but we will see later that in the simple ‘picture language’ of the bible the Holy Spirit is described as both dove and flame.
Generally speaking we might think of the Holy Spirit as the life-giving force of God. For this reason it makes sense that we think of breath. When we cease to breath, we die. If we are short of breath, we struggle to live. Breath is the essential ingredient for life. If we are to think of the breath in our bodies as being God’s Spirit, then it means that it is God’s Spirit that keeps our vital signs of life going. It is as well therefore for us to recognize the source of our lives – God is the very breath of our bodies.
There is a wonderful ‘picture story’ told in the Book of that prophet we have referred to before – the prophet Ezekiel.
This passage always reminds me of that fantastic scene in the film Jason and the Argonauts where the skeletons rise up out of the ground to fight against Jason. It is also the passage that inspired the spiritual ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord.’
The dry bones story is a reminder to us of what life is like without the breath of God within us. We may have all the structure of life – such as the skeleton may have, then sinews, and skin – like all the material things we have in life – cars, DVDs, plasma screens, all inclusive holidays, mortgages! Credit cards and so forth, all the things that are considered attractive and necessary these days, but unless we have breath, unless we recognize the source of our lives, God, then as people we are dried up, like the valley of dry bones. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the bringer of life, of true humanness, of personality, of human hopes and divine aspirations.
When Jesus was baptized by John ‘the baptizer’ the Holy Spirit is present at the occasion. Here we have the voice of God the Father, God the Son, being baptized in human life, and God the Holy Spirit, described as being like a dove descending on Jesus. This is an example of the Holy Trinity. Jesus, as a person about to begin his earthly ministry of proclaiming the word and works of God, is almost authenticated, energized, approved, by the Holy Spirit of God. In a way the Holy Spirit is there in a passing of judgement – this IS my son, my beloved. This is a moment of truth.
Jesus himself speaks of the work of the Spirit in guiding us into truth. He calls the Holy Spirit
an Advocate. In the Scottish legal system the senior lawyers are called Advocates. In England they are the equivalent of barristers. An advocate in the legal system is someone committed to speak on your behalf. You bring the advocate to be your voice and to establish before the judge and jury what you believe to be the truth. He or she will bring all the skills of their profession to defend you before the powers of justice.
Jesus speaks of the Spirit as such an advocate (not that Jesus knew the Scottish legal system!) and this advocate will set us free, liberate us, as someone charged with an offence is liberated, so long as truth is established. Because the Holy Spirit is of God, then it is ultimate truth that we are facing here – truth about ourselves, those deepest most intimate things, and truth about God and our living relationship with him.
The Holy Spirit is also the one who guides the church. The church is you and me, all the baptized people, and gives to the church the courage to witness to our faith even in a hostile world.
So many people have turned away from God, and in so doing deny themselves all the wonderful gifts and benefits that come from God , if only they could recognize it. They are living less than full human lives. They may think they have everything that makes them happy humans, but we are less than fully human if we deny that all things come from God, including life itself. The more we recognize God in the very breath of our bodies, the more truly human we become, and the more satisfied we become.
After the death of Jesus, his followers lose their nerve. Even though they have all had experiences of the risen Jesus, this little group feel lost, like sheep without a shepherd. 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus from the grave they are all gathered together in a room with others who had been affected by Jesus, and with Jesus’ mother, Mary.
Here is a powerful event happening in their lives. Here we are told of that wind (breath or Spirit) and it reminds us again of the wind moving on the waters when a new creation is about to happen. So too a wonderful new creation is about emerge as the rushing mighty wind blows through their lives and their community. It is a transformation – the old is swept away, the new is swept in to replace it. They are ‘gutted’ by what has happened to them. Gutted, yes, just like a fire guts a building leaving nothing behind of its former existence. Not surprising then that they describe the presence of the Holy Spirit as being like flames. They have been torched by God’s Holy Spirit, and a new presence is within them. They are re-made, re-shaped as God’s holy people.
Holiness is often misunderstood. We are a bit shy of what we think holy people are like. We are perhaps a bit afraid of them as well. We often think that holy people are not of this world, don’t think like people of this world, don’t do the things that normal people do. But in fact if you are a holy person you will be more human, for you are accepting that humans are called by God to be holy human being. To be holy is not an escape, but a real engagement with this world
If holiness is something we are asked to think about what changes will it make to me? Will I still be the same person? Will my husband or my wife still be the same? Will we still love each other or be able to tolerate each other. The answer is surely yes!
If the Holy Spirit is allowed to work within you will simply be the same person, but you will be more ‘you’. Holy people still eat out, still have a few pints of beer with their mates, still laugh at funny jokes, still make love, still lose their temper with their children from time to time. Holiness, however, allows us to enter into a new dimension of the already existing ‘you’.
The Holy Spirit is the bringer of holiness. So when we stand around the font and the water is poured into it, we will call upon the Holy Spirit to rest upon the waters of baptism, bringing a new quality to that water, and to the lives of those who are baptized. Water is essential for baptism but it is not enough on its own.
In baptism we are born again. You may have some experience of those ‘born again’ Christians. They are not always the best publicity for the church, because they can cause others to feel distant from the faith and from the church. It’s the old ‘If that’s what Christians are all like I don’t want to be like that’ syndrome. And yet all of us who are baptized are literally born again.
Remember that first birth when the waters break and your child is born, so in the second spiritual birth, the waters of baptism are broken over the candidate, and a new birth takes place.
Each one of you here today, if you are baptized, is born again. If a complete outsider said to me,
‘What does a born again Christian look like?’ I would say just look around you here. This is what it is to be born again. Those whom we imagine as born again types are only like you and me, but they are full of the joy and the energy of knowing God in a fresh way and that is the only way they can express it.
Summary
So the Holy Spirit is like God in action giving us life and making us holy. We say that we believe and trust in him when we say the Creed together. The Holy Spirit is on our side, for he is the Advocate who wishes us to find true freedom. The Holy Spirit renews us and feeds us with a new joy in our faith. Thanks to the Holy Spirit’s work we in and through us we can relate to the Spirit as if present like a friend who is an encourager, a defender, and almost the mid-wife that brings about our second birth. | 