J.R. Briggs

The two-minute YouTube clip that messed with me

June 24, 2011

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In my last post I listed links of several video clips that are worth your time.

But this one. Man, it may be my favorite video clip I’ve seen this year. My college-friend Martha Wood linked to this on her Facebook page a while back and I can’t get it out of my head.

Okay, try this this exercise.

1. Watch this video.

Yes. Seriously. Right now.

Click on it and watch (it’s only two minutes).

Once I figured out who “Mr. W” was I had to watch it again.

2. Now, watch it again. Yes, please. Right now.

3. Then reflect on what comes to mind when you think about the Holy Spirit.

What do you think about – honestly? Do you find the Holy Spirit impersonal? scary? unpredictable? untrust-able? ethereal? misunderstood? elusive? a tool of manipulation by many people who like to start bold sentences with “God told me…”? like this unfortunate story this past week.

For many years I treated the Holy Spirit like the third wheel, like the mascot of the Trinity, kept on short leash so as not to surprise or embarrass me in public. I thought that if I open up to the Holy Spirit I might have to attend a church that has people going crazy and running around the sanctuary naked during worship or something.

I cringe as I think about how I thought this for so long.

But the past few years I’ve grown to actually trust the Holy Spirit, to give him more access, to anticipate his actions in my life (more subtle than sensational) and to do as Paul says in Galatians: to walk in the Spirit. This has changed my life.

I turned in my final paper for my masters degree a few days ago. The topic of the paper: The 10 symbols of the Holy Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments and its implications for ministry today. It is a paper I am incredibly proud of and one that helped me grasp a more robust understanding of the Spirit’s character and expressions.

In John 14, Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as a friend, a gift, a counselor. The paracletos (a comforter/strengthener). If following Jesus faithfully is going to make all of us uncomfortable and will experience hardship, wouldn’t it make sense that a gift would be a Spirit that brings us comfort when we need it most?

One of those symbols for the Holy Spirit, of course, is wind or breath (ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek – where we get our word pneumonia).

A few weeks go on a windy, sunny Friday morning I took my four year old to a park to fly his kite. While the kite was just a dot in the sky, I explained who the Holy Spirit was – that he was like the wind. We can’t see the wind. We can feel the effects of the wind on our legs. It holds our kite up in the sky. We can see the grass waving as its being blown by the wind, but we can’t actually see it. As our kite darted back and forth, up and down, I told my son that the wind is unpredictable and chooses to go where it wishes. And then I told him that Jesus described the Holy Spirit in the same way.

I was shocked to find that my four year old grasped it. He understood the Holy Spirit like wind. Several days later, when gusts of wind came up as we were outside playing, he’ll stop what he’s doing, turn to me and say, “Daddy, its just like the Spirit.” A sacred moment.

So as I reflect on the video of Mr. W (what might be the original Nooma video) and listen to the commentary I can’t help but think how many people in North America view the Holy Spirit as the enemy (or at least a nuisance that causes more hassle than help) rather than a partner and friend.

Here is some of what Mr. W says:

I think I was always misunderstood.

People just didn’t seem to like me.

I think I annoyed them.

….

Maybe I was too intense. Maybe I came on too strong.

I don’t know. I really couldn’t say.

Yeah, it was lonely – really lonely. But you get used to it after a while…

I shiver wondering if that’s what the Holy Spirit might be thinking at times today.

I love the scene at the end when Mr. W “interrupts” the man on the bench. The man puts his paper away and invites Mr. W to sit down and engage in conversation and gives him a business card – as if it to indicate, “let’s work together.”

There is much to be gleaned from this clip.

What might it look like for you to partner with the pneuma so as to see him as a gift and a friend and not as a nuisance?

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