Tomorrow's sermon: REVISED

Here is the draft of tomorrow's sermon. While I was on sabbatical I asked the congregation to talk about potential new names for the congregation. They haven't been on Dolores Street for 15 years so it feels like time to not be called Dolores Street Baptist Church. They came up with three names: Beloved Community, Spiritual Journey, and Grace. I don't really like any of them. But I'm taking three weeks to preach on each one. I'll post tomorrow the one from last week. This is the second in the series. It is a draft. I'll finish it up tomorrow morning. I think I might alter the last bit. The phrase is so vague or broad that it feels like I could go in many different directions. And I'm not sure I am as focused as I would like to be. But enjoy (REVISED: I have now posted the final draft. I think I improved it and that it ties together better now.)


We continue our exploration of the phrases that you all arrived at when thinking about potential names for the congregation. Last week we talked about the beloved community and this week we turn our attention to the spiritual journey. This is a phrase that I use every week at the beginning of our service. I say “wherever you are on your spiritual journey I hope you will find here fellow pilgrims for your way.” I want everyone who is here to know that we don’t expect them to be any particular place on their spiritual journey in order to be a participant in this community.
And I’ll tell you what I think about the spiritual journey, but first I have to tell you how my understanding has changed. When I was young the phrase spiritual journey wasn’t really used very much. To be honest the “spiritual journey” would have probably sounded too new-agey. But that doesn’t mean that travel language wasn’t used. As a young person we were simply told stories from the Bible. Usually they were told with the use of the flannel graph. (A flannel graph was a board covered with flannel on an easel. Then paper figures of various biblical characters with flannel on the back was positioned on the board to illustrate the story.) And even though there may not have been an explicit evangelical emphasis there was an implicit one. The idea was that we were learning these Bible stories to get us ready. And then as I aged it became more explicit. What all those Bible stories and all that time spent in church was preparing me for was salvation. The people in my church were preparing me to accept Jesus as my personal savior. For me that happened at about age 12. I know for others it happened much later and for many it happened much earlier. My friend Mary Sue was 5.
So what happened after that? It meant that I would pray a prayer asking Jesus into my heart. Then I would be baptized. And then I would begin my daily walk with Jesus. Until I died and went to heaven. And that was my basic understanding of the spiritual journey. It was that daily walk with Jesus. That included a lot of things that I really should do. I should have a quiet time every day. Quiet time was time spent reading the Bible and praying. This was intercessory prayer—praying for others and praying for myself. I should also be evangelizing, telling others about Jesus and leading them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Of course going to church regularly was expected. And then there were the various rules about what not to do—drinking, having sex, cussing. For others it might have been not dancing or not chewing tobacco. My grandmother and my mother talk about not being allowed to wear pants to church or not being allowed to play cards or any board game that might have dice because that would be considered gambling. Or at least a gateway to gambling. That’s right there were the things you couldn’t do and then there were the things that might lead to doing something. It’s like the joke: Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Because people might think they are dancing.
And when you did any of these things, or even thought about doing any of these things then you had something to repent for. We’ll talk more about the failure aspect next week. But the idea was that regardless of being told that I had done all it would take to get me into heaven I still needed to not do all of these things in order to get in. It was always a well you don’t have to do anything but accept Jesus as your personal savior, buuuuuutttttt…. It felt a little like bait and switch. And what it meant as a teenager was that I was constantly worried that I was doing something that could prevent me from getting into heaven. This lead to a constant rededication of my life. Which was essentially a series of times when I was reaccepting Jesus as my savior. It was a constant attempt to keep myself from going to hell.
That really was the point of this whole thing, getting into heaven. I remember my mother calling (I’ve told this story before.) her cousin Helen once after a revival asking her to accept Jesus because my mother wanted Helen to be in heaven when she died. Even my brother as he was dying, said once “well he wanted to live but if he died at least he knew that he would be in heaven.” The point was never the walk with Jesus it was always the destination. In the end all that really mattered was that you got to heaven when you died and avoided the other place. It was never about a journey at all.
Nor is what I see as somewhat of the opposite extreme. And I’m not really sure I want to use the word extreme, because that seems to place value on both and that is not my intent. But the other end of the spectrum, if the one I just talked about is all focused on the afterlife, is the one that focuses almost completelyon the human life. This is what I found when I first moved to Atlanta. It was all about reaching out to those in need. The point of the Christian life was not to get to heaven, no instead it was to live here on earth and bring reconciliation and healing to a hurting world. Christianity was a faith based social service agency. It aimed to reach out to the homeless and the addict. It focused on restoring the environment as being good stewards of the earth. It focused on telling the truth about what God thought about racism and sexism and homophobia. It was all about changing our world. And to be sure those are all really important things that I believe are of God.
But I think that was really more about the destination too. If we can just get equality for all people. If we can just clean up the environment. If we can just bring about peace to the middle east or wherever there is conflict. Then our work will be done. That is what God desires. We just have to do what God desires. And again we’ll talk about this more next week when we talk about grace, but in the end it was doing whatever God wants us to do to get in good with the Divine. And probably if we are honest it is about stacking up so that we’ll get to heaven. It is a different way of doing things that are right and not doing things that are wrong.
Now that is not to say that the spiritual journey will not lead us to do any or all of those things. No that may be the result of our attending to our spiritual journey, but instead I think the spiritual journey is about something else. I believe that we begin on a spiritual journey from the day we are born. Our entire life is about looking for and moving towards God. Whether we know it or not. Now there are lots of different ways of naming the path. For me and I think for all of us we have chosen the Christian way. It is the story that makes the most sense for us. While we may value other paths and occasionally even glean some insight from other paths--for us the way of Christ is our way. Some of us chose to follow that path at 5 or 12 and some of us decide much later in life. Some of us are still choosing that path. But from our very birth God is calling us to Godself. That is what makes our entire life a spiritual journey.
So if we are on a spiritual journey from birth until death then to what do we have to attend? Here is the way I would describe it. Have you ever been driving down the road or walking down the road and realize you have no idea how you got to where you are? You aren’t lost. You just have no idea how you got from the last place you remember to the place you currently are. Attending to one’s spiritual journey is at its best simply noticing. It is a waking up. It is about seeing where God is present. As we said in one of the prayers early on today, God is always present. And yet we spend most of our lives failing to notice. We go from one place to the other and have no idea how we got there or where God was along the way. The spiritual journey is at its heart a way of life.
A writer and speaker, Brian McLaren tells this story. He was speaking at a gathering of Christian pastors. He thought he was supposed to introduce a famous speaker, Dr Stenge, but when he arrived he realized he was supposed to interview Dr. Stenge—two very different tasks. Without a lot of notice he wasn’t able to come up with the greatest list of questions. So the first thing he asked was “…I imagine this is a different kind of crowd than you normally address. What would you like to say to a group of five hundred Christian ministers?” So Dr. Stenge was very gracious and answered that he had been thinking about that very question because it was a different crowd than he was used to speaking to. So earlier in the week Stenge went into a bookstore and asked what were the most popular books being bought. The most popular books were books about how to get rich which didn’t surprise him very much. The second were books about spirituality specifically about Buddhism. And so he asked them why they thought books on Buddhism were more popular than books on Christianity. Now of course as I mentioned McLaren was not at all prepared. So he did what all people do when they are trying to avoid the question they turn it around on the other person. Brian said “what do you you make of that?” To which Dr. Stenge said “I think it’s because Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, and Christianity presents itself as a system of beliefs.”
The spiritual journey is a way of life. Specifically Christianity is a way of life—it is not a dogma. Jesus did not invite disciples to follow a system of beliefs but instead to follow him. Jesus invited them to take notice—to wake up. As we read in Galatians to live by the spirit and as Mary Oliver said to pay attention. Let us embark on that same journey. Let us wake up and take notice of God’s presence in our lives and our world. Let us be followers of the way, the path, the Christ. Amen.