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.

Power of truth

2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm 132:1-13, (14-19)
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

On Wednesday morning I came to work and opened the church for our public service of Centering Prayer.  It was still early, so I went to my office for a time, and when I returned at 9:25 I was surprised to find some people in the church I didn’t know.  They were two women and a man, I would guess in their mid-twenties, standing uncertainly back by the baptismal font, and I asked them if they had come for Centering Prayer.  They said that they had, and they’d never done it before, but wanted to try.  So I invited them to follow me up here to the chancel and said “Let me put out a couple more chairs, and then I tell you what we’re going to do.” 

Just then, Jeannette Myers’ cousin Lani arrived, as she usually does, and she engaged them in conversation while I arranged the furniture and lit a candle.  The man said his name was Martin, and he lived in Texas, but was out here doing some work.  On the plane to California, he’d read a book, The Wisdom Jesus, by an Episcopal priest named Cynthia Bourgeault.  And although he is Jewish, this book had moved him deeply, and he was inspired to want to try for himself some of the contemplative practices it describes.  So that is how he did an internet search for “centering prayer,” that turned up our website, and drove down that morning from Healdsburg, and brought his sister-in-law and her friend along.  When he finished telling his story, everything was ready, so we took our seats, and I gave a brief instruction to guide us into meditation, and we sat together for a half-hour in silence and stillness, bringing our awareness again and again to our desire to know the intimacy of God.

When we think of how it is that people come to the Christian faith, and pass it along to others, we don’t always imagine a kind of simple truth that becomes evident when people put it into practice, and verify it in their experience.  It is more common to see it as a set of beliefs that come down from above.  We accept its testimonies and articles of faith because we trust the authorities who hand them down to us.  But people nowadays are inclined to be suspicious of authority, and prefer to rely on their own judgement.  If they place any stock in religion at all, it is because they have had, or hope to have, personal experience of the reality of which religion speaks. 

And this has led to a great enthusiasm for what is commonly called “spirituality,” which has come to mean the psychological and mystical dimension of religious practice, and the search for illumination of the self with the experience of God.  With this there comes a renewed interest in Jesus, not as a cosmic redeemer, but as a historical teacher of practical wisdom for the transformation of personal consciousness.  Such is the figure we find in The Wisdom Jesus, who led Martin and his friends to St. John’s in search of Centering Prayer.

And some find corroboration for this image of Jesus in the so-called Gnostic Gospels, recently-unearthed texts from the early centuries that didn’t make it into the official New Testament.  These documents, such as the one known as the Gospel of Thomas, are collections of Jesus’ sayings without the elements of his life story that we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Many of these sayings are not found in the canonical Gospels, or differ significantly from their more familiar form, and this adds to their allure.  Reading them can give us the thrilling experience of catching snatches of lost conversation, and listening with fresh ears to the living voice of Jesus.   We can imagine that this is his teaching, not as it has been mediated to us by religious institutions, but as direct communication from mind to mind of religious truth.

But there is something missing from the Gnostic texts that is at the very heart the canonical Gospels’ portrayal of the historical Jesus.  If all we have are words that he said, we amputate the limbs of his teaching.  Because Jesus didn’t simply give private instruction in inner development—he acted.  He welcomed sinners and ate with them, and healed the untouchable.  He took his teaching abroad in the world, out onto roads, and into the villages and the city squares. 

And when crowds gathered to hear him because he spoke with the authority of personal experience, he gave them practical instruction.  Not only about prayer, and the love and generosity of God, but also about the world they lived in—about social and economic relations, about wealth and poverty, conflict and forgiveness, solidarity, perseverance, and hope.   He spoke of the arrogance, and violence, and hypocrisy of those who styled themselves as rulers and lords, and he taught the crowds to look close at hand for the signs of God’s kingdom.

Jesus bore witness to God’s truth about us, and the political powers killed him for it.  But God raised him up, the first-born from the dead, to vindicate the truth of what he said.  And his disciples experienced this event as a decisive shift in the balance of power in the world.  They went on, bearing their own witness, not only in words, but in the life of a new community in which God’s truth of wholeness and unity overcame divisions of social class, and gender, and ethnic and religious identity.  They began to call Jesus “Lord” and “King” and “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords” because they refused to acknowledge any greater power, any higher authority, than the truth that Jesus knew, that Jesus spoke, and Jesus enacted on the stage of human history.

This makes the Christian religion more than a search for timeless truth—it is also a practice of historical remembrance.  The central ritual of Christian worship is a not only a celebration of the spiritual power of God’s transforming love—it is also a commemoration of the decisive event that manifested that love to us.  Likewise, the ancient practice of pilgrimage, of going to the places where the martyrs lived and died, of walking in their footsteps and venerating their relics, springs from the desire to know, from one’s own experience, that those people really lived in those places in the world, where those things truly happened.  Which helps us remember what they proved with their witness—that the powers of the present darkness are not the real rulers of the world.   

And no less than the indwelling presence of God, this is a truth we can experience for ourselves, if we do our religious practice.  When Mohandas Gandhi set out to liberate India from British colonial rule, he did so trusting in what he called Satyagraha, or “truth-force.”  His political strategy was nonviolent resistance, taking confrontational actions in order to make what was invisible and unconscious plain for everyone to see.  By breaking unjust laws, his campaigns of civil disobedience aimed to tear away the façade of morality from a social order based on relationships of exploitation and oppression.  The more the British resorted to violence and terror to maintain their control, the more it revealed about the underlying logic of their rule, and undermined their legitimacy.  But this strategy was not complete without the spiritual philosophy of Satyagraha, which holds that if the oppressed can maintain their faith in the humanity of the oppressor, and continually meet his hatred with love, sooner or later the truth will out. 

The truth is that we are all brothers and sisters in the family of God.  The truth is that when we violate and oppress one another, even if only by our complacency, we obscure the image of God in ourselves.  But when for love a faithful witness bears the truth, unwavering in her heart, through fires of hate and storms of dread and even down into the grave, the true human image rises out of the darkness.  In its light, no ideology of racial or cultural or religious superiority, no rationalization for oppression and violence, no denial of the spiritual cost to both sides of an injustice, can stand for ever.  The transcendent worth and promise of being human comes into view, the truth of which doesn’t derive from any human institution, but only from the purpose for which God created us in love.   Only God knows the fullness that purpose, but we can abide in it, in practices of prayer.  We can celebrate it, as we practice communal festivals of joy.  And we can bear witness to it, in practices of resistance, solidarity, and reconciliation.