The spiritual objective

• Genesis 11:1-9
• Acts 2:1-21
• John 14:8-17, (25-27)
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37

 

Last Wednesday we held a mid-week Eucharist here, as we always do.  Quite often there are eight, ten, or even a dozen people at that service, and they are a tight-knit group that knows and cares for one another just as we do on Sunday morning.  Last week, though, only five people came, six if you include me.  Yet it struck me as I was preparing the table for the Eucharist that in its own way this small gathering was a perfect expression of the worship of the church.  It was very simple--no music, very little formal ceremony, just the Prayer Book and the Scriptures, a brief extemporaneous homily, prayers for the church, the world, and one another, and the thanksgiving meal of bread and wine.  If someone had just dropped by casually to see what was happening, they would have seen five older people and one not-exactly-young-anymore priest, standing around an old table in an old building saying old words and might have thought that nothing very extraordinary was going on.  They might not have thought to themselves that the Holy Spirit was present.  But I want to say that it was.

We hear a lot of talk nowadays about “spirituality.”  It is the term many people prefer to use in connection with what used to be called “religion,” and it has the advantage of being so vague and ill-defined that it can mean whatever you want it to.  In general, though, it refers to beliefs and practices that produce a subjective experience.   Because it is subjective, people name what they experience in many different ways.  It might be the same as other people’s spiritual experiences, or it might be completely different, and there’s no way to say for sure. 

But when it comes to “Christian Spirituality” we are talking about life in “the Holy Spirit”.  And this clearly refers not to a generality, but to a specific.  Now, it’s not my purpose here to get into what are “authentic experiences of the Holy Spirit,” and what are not.  Subjectively speaking, there might be no difference between what a Christian experiences in the Holy Spirit, and what any other person’s “spiritual experience” might be.  And the difference is not that those experiences are wrong, or that Christian experiences are better, but that Christian spirituality is not primarily subjective.  That is why we do not speak of the Holy Spirit as an experience we have, but as a gift that we receive.  It comes from beyond the realm of our own subjective experience, and our acceptance of it puts it to work, quite independently of us, and gives us life in the Spirit. 

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Spirit that matters is the spirit of the creator God, which is to say, it is the spirit of life.  Psalm 104 talks about how God withdraws the breath from living things and they die, and sends forth his Spirit and they are created, and here breath and Spirit are the same word.   You could say, then, that at its essence spirituality is simply being alive, being carried on the pulse of life that runs through and within and between all things. 

But something happens when we add that qualifier “Holy” to the word Spirit, which makes it mean more than simply the rhythm of life as it is.  It makes it to be also the renewing, transforming, liberating Spirit of life that is straining toward fulfillment.  This Holy Spirit is not only the one through whom God created the world once, long ago, and the one who sustains it in harmonious equilibrium now, but also the Spirit who is guiding the world onward to the fullness of truth.  It is the Spirit who seeks to bring about a further flourishing of life of which all that has been is but a foretaste and a promise. 

And this also is a distinctively Judeo-Christian way of looking at things.  Biblical cosmology does not describe the universe as an endlessly recurring cycle, arising from the eternal ground of existence and then dissolving back into it again and again.  Instead the Bible puts its emphasis is on the singular history of this universe, created by God for love of the beauty and goodness of these particular forms of existence.   Every one of God’s creatures is an utterly unique and precious member of the one great tree of life, united in the Creator Spirit with every other creature that is and was and is to be.   But what the Holy Spirit further reveals, first through the law and the prophets, and then in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is God’s great work of salvation.  God’s word and wisdom are coming into this world to free its precious creatures from a futile existence, bent toward negation and death, and bring them to full flower and fruitfulness. 

The work of the Holy Spirit weaves subjective experience, both ours and God’s, into the objective history of life on earth.  More than that, it creates a particular historic community to carry out God’s mission of saving the world.   The memory of this Spiritual history is the direct line that connects last week’s small gathering on Wednesday at noon, and this larger one this morning, with the event described in the story of Pentecost in the Book of Acts.   Because before there was a sound like a mighty rush of wind, and before the divided crowns of flame came down, and before the curious crowd came running to see, and hear of the mighty acts of God, each in his or her own native tongue, there was a community of friends who had come together to remember and to pray. 

They came together because there are some aspects of human experience that really aren’t meant to be kept to oneself, but need to be shared.  These are the deep and essentially human experiences, such as joy and gratitude for the wonder of life, thanksgiving for sharing in the existence of all things and for the privilege of giving and receiving love.  This fullness of experience overflows the vessel of our private subjectivity, and desires to join with others in song and dance and feasting, in play and celebration.   Also meant to be shared is our experience of deep sorrow at the transience of life and the loss of love, the burden of sickness and aging, our weariness of the world and fear of our dying.  This is experience that fights against isolation, that seeks the touch of another’s hand, and the recognition in the face of an other that we walk this road together.   And then there is our longing for deliverance, the hope that there is more, the need we have to encourage one another in the faith that God who is in heaven will in time renew the earth, and all griefs will be mended and every wound be healed.  

The people who gathered on Pentecost Day had shared these experiences together, at a level of intensity they hadn’t known was possible, in their journey with Jesus of Nazareth.  In him they saw revealed, with shattering objectivity and power, the height and breadth and depth of God’s engagement with the world.  And when they met to pray that morning, it was with the knowledge that, in their shared memory of Jesus, they held the promised future of the human race.   This is not a promise of becoming god-like, with supernatural knowledge or miraculous power.  It is the promise of becoming Christ-like, of knowing the Father through seeing the Son, and of receiving the gifts of the Spirit of truth to do the things that Jesus did. 

So that, like him, we can proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of God, and bless the poor, the gentle, and the brokenhearted; so that, like him, we can speak words of repentance and forgiveness, of reconciliation and peace; so that like him we can heal the sick, and feed the hungry, and welcome the outcast and the dispossessed, breaking bread with them at the table of God’s friendship; so that like him we can confront the powers of domination and death and bear witness in their presence to the invincible life and love of God. 

This is the pattern life in the Spirit, the worship in Spirit and truth, that came down on the church at Pentecost.  It doesn’t rule out spiritual exercises or practices of solitude and contemplation, for Jesus himself went often away alone to pray.  By definition, it does not exclude any aspect of human experience, including those that contemporary people call “spiritual.”  But neither does it privilege them over the merest acts of kindness or prayers said in desperation.  Life in the Spirit is connected with what is universally human, so it can communicate in any language, and take innumerable forms.  But it does tie all our experience back to a single center, to the remembrance of a single person, who is the objective revelation of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

The ultimate goal

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

When I was farming, near Muir Beach in Marin County, in my twenties, we had two tractors.  The Big tractor was for primary tillage.  In the spring, as soon as the ground was dry enough to work, I would hitch up the hammer-flail mower, and drive out into the chest-high stand of winter cover crops and mow it down.  I’d wait forty-eight hours for that green manure to dry, and then I’d plow it under with the disc plow.  Then I’d hitch up the chisel plow, to break up the subsoil, and rip the fields first one way and then crossways, like a checkerboard; and then I’d finish off with a lighting disking, with the ring-roller on behind, so that each of the fields, one, two, two-and-a-half acres, would be one smooth surface, like a bed sheet tucked in tight from one windbreak to the next.

Then we’d turn to the small tractor, a lightweight crop-tending machine, and start marking lines, shaping up beds for vegetable crops, or furrows for potatoes.  The goal was to make the first straight and then keep them straight and keep them parallel, because everything that came after, the planting, and laying out irrigation pipe, the cultivating, and fertilizing, and harvesting, all was done between the lines that the small tractor made on the freshly plowed ground.  I think it was in my second year on the farm that I became something of a specialist in bedding-up with the small tractor, because I knew the secret to making straight lines.  The secret was to not look back, and not look to the side. 

I would get the bedder lined up square on the three-point hitch and tighten up the chains on both sides, and I’d adjust the top bar so the spades got just the right amount of bite, and I’d set the front tires where I knew they needed to be and then I would pick a point at the far end of the field, and start driving.  And I would keep my eyes fixed on that point, not looking back, and not looking to the side, but just drive toward my mark until I got there and then I’d lift up the rear hydraulics and swing the tractor around and see my straight line.  I’d put my right front tire in the track I’d just made and sight down the center axis of the tractor and pick a point on far end of the field where I’d come from and start driving, and just keep going like that until the whole field was done.

I think about that experience every time I hear this story from the Gospel of Luke about Jesus setting his face for Jerusalem, not letting himself be distracted by the stubbornness of the Samaritans or the foolishness of his disciples.  I think about the words that Jesus says about how the man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom of God.   Jesus seems to be saying “my goal is the ultimate goal, and I’m going to go all the way there.  If you want to come with me, you need to set your eyes on that goal, and start walking, and to keep going toward it in a straight line.

Now, there’s nothing explicitly religious about the idea that we should have a goal for our lives, and be single-minded and focused in going after it.  On any given weekend in airport hotels and convention centers all around the world motivational speakers and professional coaches are charging people good money to tell them just that.  Where the religion comes in is with the faith that the only goal that is truly ultimate, that is really worthy of giving one’s whole-hearted devotion and single-minded focus to pursuing, is the goal for our lives that is in the heart and mind of God.  

Only the gift of God’s purpose for our lives is precisely suited to bringing forth the nobler powers that are latent in our created natures, and expressing them, transforming us into the persons we most want to be in our heart of hearts.  Only God’s goal for us is entrancing and fascinating enough to hold our attention and keep calling us back through all the wrong turns, and changes of perception, and reversals of fortune and course corrections, and swings of emotion that happen to us along the way, calling us again and again to consent to pursuing that which lies beyond ourselves, transcending our limited conceptions of what it is we truly want and need.

That’s what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Galatians when he speaks of the struggle between “flesh” and “spirit.”  We have to be careful here not to make the mistake of thinking that Paul is denigrating the body, as if religious life were about sacrificing the body, with it its needs and pleasures and limitations on the altar of some escape into a purely mental, spiritual, disembodied realm.  That’s not what Paul means here.  What he is talking about is the inner conflict, the daily struggle that we go through in the painstaking process of learning what it is that we truly desire.   “The desires of the flesh” is Paul’s symbolic shorthand for our maddening efforts to satisfy our ultimate longings by craving and clinging to things that never can.  And Paul knows, as Jesus knows, that the key to untangling the knot of all that frustrated desire is love. 

I just came back from a couple of weeks of vacation.  It was such a refreshing change of pace—I had to do a little work, preaching and celebrating liturgies on Sundays, but the rest of the time I was free to simply enjoy the beauty of the Sierra Nevada, and read, and catch up on my sleep, and most of all to catch up with my family.  When Meg and Risa and I get to spend long stretches of unhurried, un-stressed time together we remember how much we like each other, and love to be in each other’s company. 

And so as we get ready to begin our fourth year here at St. John’s, I’m not just thinking about my professional goals, or my goals for the parish, but also about the goal of making room in my family life for more of that kind of time.  And I’m sure this pertains to the ultimate purpose of my life.  After all, how can I preach about God’s gift of unmerited grace and unconditional love in Christ, and about the Spirit’s gifts of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, if I’m not taking the time to share those gifts with the people I’m closest to.

Because it’s not like Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem because he wanted to die.  He did it out of love for God and for his disciples, and the desire to dispel forever their misplaced hope that any kind of political or military messiah could ever really set them free.  And Paul didn’t set out on his missionary journeys, in the course of which he met with floggings, and imprisonments, shipwrecks, hunger, sleepless nights, and every kind of humiliation and hardship, because he enjoyed suffering.  He did it out of love for the Lord, who, in spite of Paul’s being his sworn enemy, revealed to him the glory of his resurrection, and gave him the grace of an apostle to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles.

As we seek for the ultimate goal of our lives, for what alone will make us truly happy and truly set us free, our only guide is love—the love we have for each other, for our families and friends, for our neighbors, for our fellow Petalumans, and Californians, and Americans, for our fellow human beings and fellow creatures on this earth, and our love for the creator of them all.  Love is what will lead us on the straight and narrow way through our tangled forest of misbegotten desires and all the lies and hurt and violence that people do to each other because of them.   And love, one and the same eternal and all-encompassing love, is the goal of the journey, that calls to each and every one of us in a voice that is uniquely our own.   

As I have loved you

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

On the table by my bed there is a little tarnished picture frame, maybe 4 inches by 6 inches, and inside the frame, arranged in a pentagon shape on a piece of blue felt are six United States coins—a John F. Kennedy half-dollar, three quarters, and a couple of dimes.  They all bear the date 1965, the year that I was born, and at the bottom of the frame, between the matte and the glass, there is a little slip of paper with a typewritten inscription that says, “Daniel’s Natal Coins.”  The coins, in themselves, are not worth any more than their face value.  And the whole package does not make a very attractive item—my wife is always trying to get me to put it away in a box or a drawer.  But I like to have it out where I can see it, because it reminds me of the man who made it—my Grandpa Ray.  And I like to remember Grandpa Ray because I know that he loved me. 

Of course my parents love me, and my other grandparents loved me, but, maybe because I was his first grandchild, Grandpa Ray loved me unreservedly and I knew it.  He was generous to everyone, and every birthday and Christmas and Easter my brothers and I knew that we could count on something special from Ray and my Grandma Lenore.  But I was the only one who ever got anything quite like Daniel’s Natal Coins, something he made with his own hands.

The upper edge of the white paper matte in Daniel’s Natal Coins is slightly bent and crumpled.  The blue felt lining is curled down away from that edge, revealing a narrow slice of the cardboard backing of the frame. The half dollar has been pushed down toward the quarters in the middle, making further wrinkles in the lining.  These imperfections are visible evidence of a boring afternoon when I was 7 or 8 years old when my desire to hold those coins in my hand, to feel their weight and see the reverse of them got the better of me.  I tried to slide the backing out of the frame at the bottom, but I only succeeded in doing the damage I just described.   When I saw what was happening, I stopped at once, and felt ashamed.

I never told Grandpa Ray about what I’d done with my Natal Coins, and it wasn’t long after that that his habit of smoking a couple of packs a day started to catch up with him.  But I know that he’d forgive me, because he loved me.  And that love is his real legacy to me.  My biological grandfather wasn’t much of a dad.  I never met him, but from what I hear he was a distant, self-hating alcoholic, with a savage wit and a jaundiced view of the world.  He and Grandma Lenore divorced when my dad was still young, and it wasn’t until she met and married Ray that he started to experience what a loving father is.  He himself was not always an ideal dad, but he did pretty well, all things considered.  I don’t have any doubt that he loves me and is proud of me, and I think a lot of the credit for that goes to Grandpa Ray.

     

In the Gospel of John, Jesus leaves his disciples a parting gift, a token of his love.  It has various names—Peace, the Holy Spirit, a New Commandment—but these are different ways of talking about the same gift.  It is the gift his life, which lives on in the community of those who follow him, and his love, which is the nourishment that sustains them, and the light that guides them, and the power that glorifies them.  Jesus’ disciples, and we who are their heirs, haven’t always done justice to that gift.  Like children trying to pry it open to grasp the treasures it holds, the church is forever trying to take the grace of Jesus Christ apart and turn it into something we control.  We prefer our doctrines about how the gift works to the gift itself, which is just a way of refusing to let it really change the way we live.

But the message of Easter is that betrayal is no obstacle to the giver of the gift.  Today’s gospel lesson begins right at that moment when Judas leaves the supper table to set in motion Jesus’ Crucifixion.  The great world-saving mission of the Word made Flesh that John announced at the beginning of his gospel is now completing its descent into the human realm.  It is coming to meet us at the point where we seem least like God, where we are letting each other down, stabbing each other in the back, breaking faith and selling out.  But Jesus doesn’t get hung up on the fact that his friend has done him wrong.  He doesn’t let the pain of betrayal turn his heart cold and hard.

And in that moment, says the Gospel, he is glorified.  He can’t control what is about to happen to him, but in spite of that, Jesus is still free.  The freedom to choose love, even in the face of betrayal and violation, is the true glory of a human being.  Anyone can love people when they are loving to us, and treat us the way we want to be treated.  But that kind of love is really just imitation.  I look like I love you because I’m doing the same kind, patient, generous and affectionate things to you that you do to me.  But let you do something that hurts me, and just like that, I’ll be looking for a way to hurt you back. 

The love that Jesus has for people is also based on imitation, but it is not the imitation of other people.  It is the imitation of God.  That is why the gospel says that he has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  His love for Judas doesn’t depend on being reciprocated, so it can’t be broken by betrayal.  It’s free, like the love of God.  It’s a gift, like life itself.  Like our bodies, and minds, and this big, wide, beautiful world to live in are gifts.  They are gifts that cannot be repaid.  But the giver can be imitated.  The gift can be passed along to others.  And that’s what Jesus commands us to do—to give the love that doesn’t expect to be reciprocated, to love, not in the hope of repayment, but in the hope of living in the glory of God.

The New Testament says that the free gift of God’s love doesn’t oblige us to do anything, but it will live in us, and grow in us, when we pass it on to others.  If others treat us with violence, dishonor, or treachery, we repay them with the love that God has for all her children, the love with which Jesus loved us.  It’s hard to believe that such a simple principle could be the lever to turn the whole sad and disastrous course of human affairs completely around.  So we don’t believe it.  We try to take it apart and grasp it in our hands.  We set up terms and conditions and contingencies on what came to us for free.  We say God’s love is for everyone, provided they meet certain basic requirements.  We say the mercy of God is on all his works, except for such and such categories of people and places; we say that God is slow to anger and quick to forgive, except in the case of certain crimes. 

Now I’m not saying it’s easy to put in to practice.  Love often means speaking the difficult truth, and defying the conventional wisdom. I’m not saying it’s always clear how to love somebody, especially somebody who’s out of control, who’s blowing people up or defrauding the poor or abusing children.  I’m just saying that it’s what Jesus commanded us to do.  It really is that simple: Love one another as I have loved you.  Nobody really knows how it works.  But the Easter gospel says that God rewarded Jesus for it.  He raised him from the dead, and exalted him to heaven, and set him at his right hand to reign in glory for ever and ever.   Not because he had to, or because he owed it to him, but because he loved him.  And he trusted him with the gift of eternal life, because he knew he would pass it on, for free, to anyone who walks in his footsteps.