Suffocating the Holy Spirit

Jesus was taking to Nicodemus when he said, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ (John 3:8). 

It is not very scientific to talk about Spirits, I get that. However little you believe in actual ethereal Spirits in creation, I find the metaphor helpful. I find that I am often surrounded by a spirit of frustration or the spirit of discomfort. I have seen people ensnared by a spirit of anger while others the spirit of despair. Whatever you want to call it is fine with me, I am comfortable with Spirit language. 

In my life I have discovered that there are some Spirits that need you to hold onto them in order to live. For instance, the longer I hold onto my anger the angrier I become. The spirit of anger needs someone to hold it in order to live, because the spirit of anger is too weak to survive on it's own. To be frank, most spirits are too fragile and weak to live on their own, they require a host to live in so to survive (see Mark 5 for a time when spirits desired to live in pigs rather than be with a host).

It is this that makes the Holy Spirit "Holy". It is set apart in this way: the Holy Spirit can live without a host. The Holy Spirit can move and exist like the wind and can be autonomous. It is strong enough to live without and yet gentle enough to live within creation. It is a good thing we can't capture the Holy Spirit that would mean it is too weak to live on it's own.

Of course the irony is that if we attempt to hold on and capture the Holy Spirit, we suffocate it.

It is Christianity, not Jesusism

Jesus is a big deal. Not only has part of the world measured time around his life with the less common "B.C." and "A.D." but as of 2010 there were an estimated 2.2 billion Christians. And that is the thing, the religion is centered on Jesus but is not called Jesusism. Christianity revolves around the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, but the faith is built on the foundations of "the Christ". 

Not unlike the religion that revolves around the man named Siddhartha Gautama, but it called Buddhism. Buddha is a title, not a name, and it means "Awakened" or "Enlightened" one. Christ is a title, not a name, and it means "anointed" one. While Jesus is very important to the faith, Christianity is larger than the man named Jesus. Christianity is built on the foundations of the mystical Christ that was fully embodied in Jesus but the Christ spirit is not limited to the life of Jesus.

Jesus says that anyone who believes will have the Christ spirit and may even do even greater works than Jesus. The Holy Spirit is a more common name of the spirit of Christ that came down at Pentecost. Luther said that we are all to be "little Christs". 

Again I say, Jesus is a big deal, but Jesus knew that what God was doing was (and is) much bigger than even him. Following Jesus is a great idea, however if the Jesus you follow is not able to bridge time, space, divisions and people, then you might be practicing Jesusism and not Christianity.

How Can Jesus Say Believers Will Do Greater Things Than He?

In John 14 Jesus speaks to the Disciples and says, "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

How is it possible that we will do greater works than Jesus? I have not fed 5000 people. I have not healed the sick. I have not cured the blind. I believe in Jesus as the fullest expression of God known to us, however the only thing greater than Jesus I have ever accomplished is the amount of anger I have expressed. 

When we read the Gospels it is helpful to remember that we tend to default to interpreting it as an individual. So while as an individual I have not done much greater than Jesus, I can tell you that the single body of the Church has done very great things. I was told some years ago (and I have not yet been able to recover this to still be the case) that the United Methodist Church feeds 1 million children each day. Jesus fed 5000 in one day, the UMC (a single body full of believers) feeds many more than that everyday. 

Could it be that the message of Jesus is not limited to me and Jesus but extended to we and Jesus. We do things greater than Jesus... Me? Not so much.