TRIGGER WARNING: This document contains lots of metaphors. A metaphor is a word or term is used in place of another to suggest a likeness, a comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated. A good metaphor never posits an exact correspondence. Consider yourself warned... 

Writing or speaking about the Holy Spirit necessarily requires us to tread boldly into the world of metaphor. Consider first Rabanus Maurus’s “Come Holy Ghost:” a metaphorical nosegay written by one of the great theologians of the 8th century “O Comforter/Thou Gift from God on High/Thou Font of life/And Fire of Love/And Sweet Anointing from above.” Not a Ghost yet mysterious like a ghost, God’s incorporeal Spirit acts in human flesh, human hearts. Neither fire nor water nor fragrant oil, but like them.

Consider too the great hymn called the “Golden Sequence” we sing at Pentecost in various translations. Composed in Latin (probably by Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton) in the early 13th century, it is a lavish thicket of metaphors that tries to illustrate what cannot be seen or adequately expressed: the Spirit of God at work in the world.

“Come, Father of the poor/Come, source of all our store/You, of comforters the best/You, the soul’s most welcome guest/Sweet refreshment here below/In our labor, rest most sweet/Grateful coolness in the heat/Solace in the midst of woe/O most blessed Light divine/Shine within these hearts of yours/And our inmost being fill/Where you are not, we have naught/Nothing good in deed or thought/Nothing free from taint of ill/Heal our wounds/On our dryness pour your dew/Wash the stains of guilt away/Melt the frozen, warm the chill/Guide the steps that go astray.” And so it continues on for several more extravagant stanzas. God’s Spirit isn’t a fire, but acts like one: heating, defrosting, thawing icy hearts; God’s spirit isn’t water, but nevertheless washes, and refreshes, cools us. And so on…

I went to bed last night not knowing what to write about Pentecost. I woke at 3:15 am with a word clearly etched in my head. That verbal insight, that word admittedly, I apologize, lacks the early medieval poetry of Rabanus, or the enthusiastic outpouring of Langton. Still, it said something to me: The Holy Spirit as SYSOP.

SYSOPs, or systems operators, administer, direct, and oversee multi-user computer system and networks. They confirm membership, detect and correct error, assist sometimes with direct online help. Their work, though, is largely invisible, behind the scenes; both creative and supportive. Their work has the capacity to update and upgrade users and resources, to keep things moving. We don’t usually attend to their actions, but we are painfully aware of their absence.

Sounds a lot to me like how the Holy Spirit acts, and does, in the church. From the infusion of grace into the waters of baptism, to the transformation of bread and wine into the living reality of Jesus blessed, broken, and shared for us, to guiding the members of a conclave or synod or parish, the Spirit is, in a manner, of speaking, the SYSOP of the Church, and its DEVOPS, development operator, as well. The spirit inspires and develops us, not only as our systems operator, but also our development operator, bringing about transformation and growth. Planning, Building, Testing, Translating (coding?) moves into releasing God’s power, deploying the message, all under the watchful, loving wings of the Spirit, illumined by the Spirit’s warm and loving fire.

The wonder of metaphors is that they are infinitely flexible, and often fungible.

Come Holy Ghost, SYSOP Divine.

Breaking of the Bread, Greek Chapel, Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome, late 2nd cent. AD