‘God told me to call the wind and say: “God says: Come from the four winds, O Spirit; breathe on these bodies, so they may live again.” So I spoke to the winds, and the bodies began breathing; they lived and stood up – a great assembly.’ (Ezekiel 37:9-10)
Last November, I was sailing in a small-ish coastal ship in Norway called the MS Finnmarken. Now, the Finnmarken is a pretty hardy ship, as she has sailed all the way to Australia, as well as the South Pole. We hit a storm crossing a stretch of open water – a storm which had gone through England with destructive force – and (we found out later) it was a Force 10 gale. When we commented to the crew later, they just smiled and said ‘Yes, but it could have been much, much worse.’
Winds and fire are the two elements we associate with the Holy Spirit. The ‘ruach hakodesh’ means “holy spirit”. The literal translation is “spirit of holiness”, and is the Hebrew term to refer to YHWH. In usage, it carries the divine aspects of prophecy and wisdom. ‘Ruach’ is a feminine creative force. The term ruacḥ haqodesh itself does not occur in the Tanakh, but the form with a possessive suffix occurs once in Psalm 51:11 and twice in Isaiah. (Isaiah 63:10,11) However, the noun ruacḥ – in various combinations with “God” is used often; the noun kodesh (“holiness”) is also used often. Ruach can mean ‘breath’, ‘wind’, or some invisible moving force (“spirit”).
In the church we often talk about the Holy Spirit as a force – and I am going to say both destructive and creative. We know something is happening within our churches – indeed all around the world. There is a new spirituality taking hold which has very little to do with what we do in church, and very much to do with what people are searching for, and don’t find inside our church buildings. In my opinion the Holy Spirit has begun to tear down our illusions of faith, and gone where She can do the most creative work. Creative faith doesn’t mean buildings, or hip music groups, or throwing out lament and just focusing on resurrection – in our race to re-fill our churches and have money in the coffers again, we’ve by-passed the Spirit and tried to hang on to what we’ve had, thinking we are smarter than She is.
For me, creative faith means listening to the wind, listening to the sounds of a force of change, even if it means some trees have to get blown down in our internal landscape. As I continue in ministry, I see more and more people who just don’t need or want easy answers to questions they are asking – they want to grapple with the questions and work through them, in a place where it’s OK to ask questions that might not have an answer at all. That’s what the Spirit does – turn everything upside down, make us lose direction so that we can find it again. …and so we pray…
“It was the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow we die. In the skin at the tips of our fingers we see the trail of the wind; it shows us the wind blew when our ancestors were created.” Be in our breath, O God; be in all that we breathe in, and all that we breathe back to the earth. May it be so.
