5 May 2013: John 14:23-29

"I get the Father and the Son, but could you explain the bit about the Holy Ghost?"

My Jewish nephew approached me with that question many years ago, when he was a  first-grader in an English church-affiliated school, and I've never forgotten my embarrassing inability to give him any coherent answer. I said that "Ghost" conveys the wrong idea and recent translations use the term "Spirit" instead, but that substitution didn't solve the real problems. Like "Ghost", "Spirit" seems mostly to suggest a being that lacks such essential aspects of human existence as embodiment and visibility, rather than a living, powerful presence. And it doesn't suggest anything about what the Spirit does or why it matters.

In retrospect, I wish I had remembered the Old Testament passages that portray the Spirit as the breath of God, by which He created the universe and gave life to Adam in Genesis, and the  means by which He continues to create and renew the life of all creatures (as in Psalm 104). I didn't even remember that Christians call the Spirit "the Lord, the giver of life" every Sunday in the Nicene Creed. And of course I didn't know that the 2013 theme for Vacation Bible School at St. Andrew's would be "Breathe It In: God Gives Life"! 

Is the Spirit of Life still teaching us today, as this week's Gospel suggests? If so, it seems likely that the Spirit is urging us to love the earth and its creatures as God does, and to do what we can to ensure their continued health and vitality. Besides caring for our fellow human beings, is the Spirit calling us to protect endangered species and threatened ecosystems? lower our carbon emissions? conserve and recycle as much as possible? lobby on behalf of stronger environmental regulations? take other kinds of action that the disciples in Jesus' time could not have imagined?