Spiritual AND Religious May 27, 2018

Transcription

1 Spiritual AND Religious May 27, 2018 Every now and again I go looking for ideas for our church sign from other churches but mostly they are just terrible. Either they have bad theology or they are just too cheesy even for me. Some of my favorites lately have been (and by favorites, like the most absurd) Our church is prayer conditioned Sign broken, message inside Tweet others as you would like to be tweeted God answers kne These are the not completely offensive ones. But then I saw one that said, God wants spiritual fruits not religious nuts. And I started to wonder about that one. I actually think I saw a picture that this has been on our sign sometime and it is funny and we all have an image in our head of who we are talking about when people say religious nuts, but maybe for some people that image in their head is us. I mean we are in a church after all. On a Sunday morning. And actually on a holiday weekend, this Sunday is a notoriously low attendance Sunday in just about every church in America, and yet you all are here. But let s talk about why. Why do you come to church? In general yes but also why did you come to church today? I imagine those reasons vary from person to person but this is a question

2 we will be asking ourselves throughout the summer, as well as, is there a way to be religious without being a religious nut? When our summer seasonal group began meeting we began talking about spirituality and it quickly turned into a discussion of those folks that consider themselves SBNR (spiritual but not religious!) Apparently it really is a widely used acronym. SBNR is the fastest growing faith group people who would say they have no affiliation with any religion or religious institution but consider themselves to be spiritual. I am certain you all know someone who would fall into this category, if you wouldn t put yourself there. Awhile back the theme for a theology on tap was SBNR and I was surprised how many active Kirk members found themselves in this category, because again, what we do here together at the Kirk is religion. It is spiritual yes, and religious! Hence our theme for the summer: Spiritual and Religious (I thought about making up our own acronym: SAR sounded too much like the infection disease SARS so maybe we won t go there!) But what we will be doing this summer is examining the questions that arise when folks say they are spiritual but not religious. Like what do you mean by Spiritual? What do you mean by religious? Are they mutually exclusive? Can you be one without the other? Is this a new way of thinking? What is happening or has happened in the world that is feeding this growth? What are the assumptions about religion that lead one to be SBNR? What are the assumptions about spirituality as well? Do you need church to be a person of faith? How can we find spirituality in religion? Is spirituality in religion icing on the cake or is spirituality inherent in all religion?

3 These are some of my questions, one of our prayer stations today is asking you for your questions around this topic so we can all engage our questions and find depth in our thinking through and conversing with those who are Spiritual but not religious. The scripture I chose for today is one that I have found to be deeply spiritual. Which within this conversation might be a contradiction because there is this assumption that scripture is religious and therefore not spiritual. I do not believe that to be the case. I wonder what those who consider themselves exclusively spiritual would say is their motivation to be spiritual at all. I imagine it isn t all that different than any of us, it is a longing, a yearning for something more. I want you to think of a time that you craved God. Or as the scripture so poetically says, As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. Have you ever longed for God? Felt your soul was thirsty? Maybe it was a time when you were in crisis and felt like everything was falling apart and it seemed like God was nowhere to be seen? Or maybe it was a time when things were going along as usual but something was missing? Or, and I have experienced this and heard others share of this most frequently, when things are going well, when there has just been too much sunshine, and you are surprised that something feels lacking, that is when your soul s thirst was noticeable. But what are you thirsty for? I tried to find the definition of spirituality and there was no consensus while one writer for Psychology Today just said that we shouldn t even try to define it. Maybe it is something we know when we see it, or hear it or feel it? Researchers who are trying to understand this SBNR phenomenon had their own definitions of spirituality. Most had something to do

4 with connection being connected to the world or something beyond themselves and another spoke of spirituality as a belief in the oneness of all things. It might surprise you to find that folks on both-sides, or all-sides there are usually many more than 2, have sharp opinions about the spiritual religious divide. One author who was promoting spirituality over religion asserted again and again that religion is man-made and therefore flawed. But seemingly in response, though writing a few years earlies, UCC Pastor, Rev. Lillian Daniels who wrote the book Spiritual but not Religious is not enough, argues that spirituality alone fails in its individualism. Dripping with snark, she wrote an article entitled Spiritual but not religious? Please stop boring me where she writes: Thank you for sharing (about your love of sunsets) spiritual but not religious person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religion dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. In her book she argues that it is the tradition and community of religion that allows for spirituality not despite its imperfections and challenges but because of them. Now of course, I obviously have an agenda, standing here on a Sunday morning and while I don t do sarcasm as poetry the way Rev. Daniels does I do find the arguments of SBNR folks rather interesting. If they have chosen that path because of connection, if connection is at the heart of what it means to be spiritual how interesting that this comes alongside a rejection of actual connections, connection to the past, connection to shared stories, connection to others on the journey. Don t get me wrong, the church is not perfect and there have been times I thought maybe we should just throw the baby out with the

5 bath water, but then that baby grows up, even into a precocious two year old and teaches me about grace and imperfection and beauty and divinity and I am glad the baby stayed and I am glad I did as well. And dare I say, I think the psalmist would agree with me. Returning to our text, things are not all sunshine and roses for the psalmist. This text is both beautiful and painful. I even stumbled upon a sermon that referred to the psalmist as in spiritual depression when writing this psalm. But that is not what I hear. When I read these words, while written in struggle they are rich with hope. Real hope. Hope for rain when the sun has been shining for months. Hope in what seems unreasonable, like the peace that passes understanding. Again and again the psalmist repeats: Why are you cast down o my soul, why are you disquieted within me. We don t know the exact situation the psalmist is referring to but we know the feeling. The feeling of unease. And the feeling of attack as we read, people say to me continuously, where is your God. I am not sure this is all that different than the SBNR situation but beyond the individual level. People are turning to us, not Selena and Ann and Paul, but turning to the church asking, where is your God. As churches shrink across the spectrum of denomination and theology people are asking, where is your God. As the reputation of church is no longer that of love but of hate, not of welcome but of exclusion, people say to us continuously, where is your God. When the church turns out to be one of the greatest entities guilty of complicity in the abuse of children, people demand, where is your God? As the message

6 the church sends out has been so watered down or distorted that it feeds capitalism more than compassion people say, where is your God! And frankly there are times, we don t know. Because we look around and we can t understand how the name of Jesus can be used to promote hate or to allow abuse and we too cry out: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, Where is your God? It is a spiritual cry and yes at times it is a cry derived from the hands of religion. And we must name that, not hide from it in shame. We must name the ways in which religion has failed. But as we do that, we must join the psalmist in remembering. For the psalmist says: These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

7 It is remembering those moments when we were connected, when gratitude was why and how we came together. And the psalmist continues: By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Love by day and song by night. This is the connection SBNR folks celebrate and yet lack. It is the constancy of God which is not limited to religious observance but is fed by it. And that s where this text leads us to the line that might just be the most hope I have ever found in scripture: Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. These words acknowledge the doubt and the pain, and even the mess of it all. It is not ending with a placating praise, but deep hope. I may not be able to praise God now, but I will again. That is connection, connection to a God that is rooted in history and tradition, in commitment and hope. I think that is religion, coming from the most spiritual text I know of. Religion is not perfect. Neither is the lone pursuit of spirituality. Throughout this summer may we boldly weave them together, with honesty and with hope. Amen.