"Spiritual or Religious?"
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
July 18, 2010
Mark 13: 1-11; 1 Corinthians 2: 6-13
As I have mentioned, I have really enjoyed watching World Cup soccer this summer. Many people tried to pick the winners of the World Cup games. I was one of them, but was not successful. In fact, none of my final four teams made it very far.
You may have heard that one success story when it came to picking winning games was Paul the octopus. Paul the octopus lives in a sea animal park in Oberhausen, Germany and the owners of the sea animal park asked him to “pick” winners in the tournament by putting two different mussels in two tanks with different national flags on them representing the two soccer teams playing that day and then seeing which mussel Paul the octopus chose to go after and devoir. The tank with the flag and the mussel that Paul went after was the one the park picked to win.
Well, Paul was 8 for 8. He correctly picked each game of the soccer tournament, including the two games home team Germany lost (leading some German citizens to mail recipes to the sea animal park), and last Sunday’s final, and gained international fame in the process. Stockbrokers in London and New York called asking him to pick stocks. Romantics in Italy called asking Paul to pick spouses. Business people offered thousands of dollars to buy him. The Prime Minister of Spain even offered to adopt Paul the Octopus. Before the World Cup final last Sunday, the director of the German sea park had people lining up to watch which team Paul would pick because, as the director put it, “We have to take what Paul says seriously.”
The Christian church has been giving that advice to people for centuries. To “take what Paul has to say seriously.” In our second lesson from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, let’s hear from our chancel players about what Paul has to say about life in the spirit, for it can help us when we are faced with what I think is a false choice, our choosing between being spiritual or religious.
Do you consider yourself a religious person or a spiritual person? Can we be both? A recent Christianity Today article suggested that increasingly people consider themselves either religious or spiritual.
Sometimes Presbyterians, and other heirs to the so-called “frozen chosen” traditions, think of ourselves as being religious, people of the “book,” but we might be uncomfortable calling ourselves spiritual. We might view the word “spirituality” as light weight or too touchy feely for us for some reason.
Many associate spirituality with spiritual expression in worship and wonder if that is for us. Yet it’s clearly for some people, and we have a lot to learn in North America, in the Presbyterian church, about spiritual expression. I attended a Council on Foreign Relations religion conference earlier this week in which representatives from the Pew Center on Religion in Public Life discussed their recent study on the incredible world-wide growth of Christian denominations that emphasize spiritual worship, such as Pentecostals. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, Christians made up 9% of the population in 1900, 22% in 1950 and now make up 57% of the overall population. And the great majority of those are in Pentecostal or so called spiritual denominations. In Brazil, over half of the Catholics describe themselves as charismatic in their worship. Those people who celebrate the fruits of the spirit now number one quarter of the world’s Christians. The spiritual gifts displayed in many “spiritual” churches often include speaking in tongues and faith healing, practices Reformed Christians don’t relate to easily. Many of us want to be private in our expression of faith. Yet there is so much we in American can learn from Christians and all religious people around the world about spiritual expression.
On the other end of the spectrum are many post-modern members of our churches and culture who trust the spirit more than the structures of any religion. I helped lead worship at the National Campus Ministry Association annual conference in June, along with Coral Contigas, and discovered that there is a lot of talk in campus ministry circles about how some young people distrust formal religion. In his book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, Marcus Borg writes that he asks his Oregon State University students each year about their impressions of religion and increasingly students answer that formal religion is “literalistic, self-righteous, and judgmental.” So they don’t want to be included in such groups. They prefer private, spiritual faith. When I was a campus minister at Georgetown and American Universities, I heard that view echoed by many students who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.” Some reported that “religion divides, but everyone has a private spiritual side,” and they feel spirituality unites.
Some young people describe their spirituality as “faith without the requirements that they see coming from religion.” This view is echoed by some modern theologians. Dr. Sarah Drummond of Andover Newton Seminary describes the difference between religion and spirituality by saying that “Religion consists of the rules, the habits by which we organize ourselves and to which we adhere. It’s the mind. Spirituality is about soul and heart, a connection to God without the rules and habits.” Again, about a private expression, and that sounds appealing doesn’t it?
Is American culture trending towards spirituality as distinct from religion? Newsweek magazine published a special issue on faith a few years ago and entitled it “Spirituality in America” instead of “Religion in America.” I see that some popular bookstores in D.C. have replaced their religion section with spirituality sections. One of the books people are reading recently is Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Among other things, Dawkins posits that the rise of fundamentalism in many religious traditions has caused some Americans to reject traditional church membership. Yet many say they remain personally “spiritual.”
There are times for each of us when these doctrines and structures of our religion are not to our liking. No set of policies will please everyone.
But one downside of being so private in our spirituality or religious faith and not being willing to express our faith is that we miss the benefits of community. We express our spirituality as religion when we join a group of faithful people united around a common set of beliefs, and this helps us develop our spiritual expression and our convictions and beliefs. The collective sense of faith matters because there is support in the group. I talked with several folks recently who haven’t been to church for awhile because they have gone in order to “deal with their own stuff,” and said they would return to the church when their lives turned around. I told them this is precisely the moment when church could help the most. Everyone in this religious community is full of our own issues. We all have our own combination of challenges and joys. We are not a country club. We are a community of faith that cares for each other. That is the value of our being together. Spirituality as some define it may have some benefits without the rules. But one of the rules is you care for one another in times of need. And that can be awful nice when you need care. So one might not like all the rules that go along with being religious. But along with the rules comes the community that will support you.
Paul wrote to the church at Corinth about one purpose of the work of the spirit - to search everything, even the depths of God, and then to connect God with the thoughts and expressions of humanity.
Paul believed is that religion and spirituality must be linked. He wanted to strengthen local communities of faith because he knew that Jesus had called the church into being as a community. The Sabbath was given, in part, for collective worship. On this new member Sunday we reaffirm Christ’s call for us to draw together as members of the community. When we try to be doctrinal and legalistic in our own religion without growing with a community or without expressing our spirituality in worship, we miss out on the grace and passion that comes from spirituality. When we try and be spiritual on our own without being in dialogue with the wisdom of a broader community we find ourselves separate from the roots of our tradition. Those who seek to develop morals without spirit and those who seek their own spirituality without collective connection do so at their peril. Religion and spirituality can be personal, but should not stay private.
We have many spiritual groups at our church, from centering prayer and Daybreak Devotions to Bible study and yoga that help us individually and collectively draw closer to God. Spirituality works, not because it gets us out of the rules of our religion, but because it connects us to the heart of our religion.
In spiritual practice we follow the habits of our tradition rather than each making up our own new traditions because they connect us to each other and help us learn from those who came before us in faith. Scott preached last week on God’s revelation of the Ten Commandments, values we are to honor, not redraft each year. Christ came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, for Christ Himself provides a model for us. Our religion offers that the structures and morals of our faith exist not so that we can say we are decent, in order, and following an order, but so we are clear on who it is we are following. Jesus’ followers were called disciples because they practiced disciplines and repeated practices to become more like Christ. Being spiritual without a purpose or core behind it can leave us empty.
And yet our spiritual side is so important. Have you ever asked what might be considered a religious question, such as “how does God call me to plan for a situation,” and received a spiritual answer through your prayers? Such as, “just trust God.”
When we read the 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, we get the sense that some of Jesus’ disciples might have been more religious than spiritual. They came from a tradition of the law and were working hard to fulfill the religious requirements as they understood them. In our first lesson, Jesus discusses what appears to be the beginning of the last days of the world. There were famines and earthquakes. We had some of those signs here these past few days. On Thursday night, Bridget and I were awakened by an earthquake. Of all places right here in Bethesda. Then on Friday night we were awakened by powerful wind, thunder and lightening. Did you hear that? We went to bed last night and joked that we’d wake up this morning and there would be locusts everywhere.
In Jesus’ time, the disciples saw such signs and were anxious about what they should do, but Jesus gave them an antidote for their anxiety – trust the spirit of God.
The value to the disciples of developing spiritual practices was so that their spirituality could help them when they were anxious. This past week, when we as a congregation have had several pastoral care challenges, our spiritual practices have been important to center us in our anxieties.
Our spiritual and religious sides are two integral sides of the same coin. We should not be afraid of either.
When our religious faith and our spirituality come together, when we cultivate the humility and patience of a spiritual faith grounded in conviction, the result can be extraordinary expression.
Regardless of how we define ourselves, there is commonality between those who feel more comfortable describing their faith as spirituality and those who describe themselves as religious. We all want the passion that comes from doing things not because we are required to but because we are inspired to and that connect with us God and each other.
Think about the role of the Holy Spirit in inspiration, how the Holy Spirit came to humanity. When God created humanity, the Book of Genesis tells us that God breathed God’s spirit into each individual. The spirit of God is deeply personal. It is at your core. Your private spirituality is important. We affirm that that Spirit is present for the individual at the moment of their baptism.
But the Holy Spirit is distinctly corporate as well. If you recall, the whole point of Pentecost is that God’s spirit was poured out upon the church as a corporate community, upon all the people, the collective group that would set the norms and traditions of what would become the church.
I hope at your core you are both spiritual and religious. Personally filled and moved by the spirit and willing to share your religious convictions in shaping your community of faith here at Bradley Hills.
You might be here today because you recognize some spiritual gift of faith in your life. You might also become a member of this church someday because you feel its religious structure can help you grow closer to God.
Like the octopus, our Paul is to be taken seriously when he writes about the value and role of the spirit. The spirit gives us gifts. Recognize that you have been given a gift of the spirit by God. What are you going to do with your gift? If we rest in our knowledge of the book, we may never find that we have been inspired with God’s spirit. If we rest in relying on ourselves we might find that our spirituality never leads us any closer to finding the God we are looking for.
Dorothy Bass wrote in her book Practicing Our Faith, that the Christian life is both a set of beliefs and a series of breathes; our inhaling the spirit. It’s both religious and spiritual.
It is my wish for our newest members this morning and for all of us that we might feel the presence of God’s spirit with us today and always. It is my thought that we work to be both spiritual and religious. It is my hope that we might grow comfortable expressing our spiritual life and comfortable with the values of our collective faith. It is my prayer that we recognize the spirit God has breathed into us, and that we might aspire to use that gift to strengthen our community and God’s world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
