Scripture: Acts 2:1-13
My subject today is unmanageable. It’s unmanageable in the sense that most sermon topics are unmanageable, that is, it’s too large a topic to deal with in a few minutes on a Sunday morning. It’s unmanageable also not just in the sense that the topic is unmanageable but the reality is unmanageable, as in beyond our control, as in…”The wind blows where it chooses and…you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with those born of the spirit.” (Jesus said that.) Or…”I will pour out my spirt upon all flesh”. (God said that.) But however beyond the control of our will or our words the spirit may be, I thought I would try to say at least a few words about it, maybe fewer than usual, but at least a few words, since it is Pentecost and Pentecost is the occasion celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples and transforming them from a bunch of grieving, more-or-less lost individuals into an inspired community that was to become the Christian church.
It’s a little ironic that Pentecost, which is supposed to direct our attention to the gift of the spirit then and now, is also often referred to in shorthand as the “birthday of the church”, ironic at least in the times we’re living in. These days, when someone describes herself or someone else as “spiritual”, I take it to mean something quite different from being religious. Religious, the way I’m usually hearing it these days, is connected with being pious or churchy. Religion is what churches promote and practice.
Spirituality, on the other hand, well…it can mean lots of things. I think it sometimes means a certain sensitivity to unseen realities, an implicit belief that what is most real is not material. It can mean, I think, a desire to penetrate beyond the surface of things. It can mean a kind of introspective quality, a thoughtfulness or reflectiveness. It can mean maybe a kind of centeredness, or peacefulness, not being anxious, or fretful, or defensive but grounded in something other than what happens to be happening on at the moment. Or, maybe it means something else to you. It is a kind of a large term and can mean a whole lot of things, but whatever it means to you or me or people in general, mostly I think we mean it in a positive way. It’s a good thing to be spiritual. It’s not necessarily such a good thing to be religious.
Of course, it is theoretically possible to be both religious and spiritual but the two don’t necessarily go together. It is possible to be quite religious, in the sense of being observant in a churchly sort of way, without being spiritual, and it’s possible to be spiritual without ever going to church or being religious in any conventional way. And when people do discover that you can be religious and spiritual, that you can go to church, for instance, and feel that you are being spiritual doing it, they may treat that as a pleasant surprise.
On the other hand, there are a few voices who suggest that maybe this idea of being spiritual is overrated. They point out that it is pretty vague as to what spirituality or spiritual means exactly. We use the word carelessly, and maybe it is so undefined and overused that it doesn’t mean much of anything. And if it’s nothing more than having an occasional thought about big questions or a sense that there may be more to life than meets the eye, then maybe this doesn’t get us very far. Not that it’s bad to be spiritual, but to what purpose. Where does it lead us? What does it commit us to? What are we spiritual about? Does being spiritual just describe a certain aura about a person, or does it describe someone who actually believes in something enough to risk something important in its behalf? The vagueness in the current emphasis on “spirituality” is a danger, and so because of that too, and not just that it’s Pentecost, it may be a good thing to spend a few minutes with an unmanageable topic.
Just a few thoughts. Literally speaking, to be inspired or inspirited means to be brought to life, brought back to life. The gift of life is a gift of the spirit. There is a word in Hebrew, ruach, that means both breath and spirit. So, in the Genesis story, when God breathes on a lump of clay and brings it to life, it is not just bringing it into physical existence. God breathes on the clay, breathes into the clay, literally at the same time gives it breath and spirit and makes humans who they are.
Likewise, in the story in Acts about the gift of the spirit, the disciples are brought back to life, in a way given a resurrection of their own, being brought by the spirit of God out of a state of grief, of mere existence, into a state of being alive to each other and to God. All of which says to me that the gift of the spirit of God is not just, only, or necessarily a gift that puts the peace of God within us, but is also a gift that puts a certain sacred restlessness within us. It is not just, only, or necessarily a gift that calms us down, but instead or in addition stirs us up. It’s not so much a matter that it creates outward excitement but an inner spirit of discontent—discontent with the way we are, the way I am, the way the world is. The Holy Spirit fills us with a restlessness for God and will not let us rest content.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong to think of spirituality as a quality of peaceableness, as possessing that core of calm at the center. But this is one of those paradoxes where two apparently contradictory things are both true at the same time. To be spiritual may mean for us to be both at peace and not at peace, to be seeking peace and to be refusing to be at peace, all at the same time. For the peace that is of God is not a peace of satisfaction and contentment, nor is the restlessness that is of God one that is anxious and aimless. The peace of God is not something that is separate from the restlessness of our spirits. The peace of God does not exist to reassure us. The peace of God does not exist to soothe our troubled minds. The peace of God does not put us at ease, does not allow us to be at ease in a world such as ours. The peace of God is not something that balances the restlessness of our spirits, but is present within that restlessness because that stirring of our spirits is also holy. The peace of God is that center of faith and trust that allows us to persevere, to persist, to be steadfast in the restlessness which is also ours and which is also a gift from God. I remember reading once a piece reflecting on the crucifixion. It was entitled, “May he not rest in peace.” May Christ, in other words, be at large in our world. And the gift of the Holy Spirit may be God’s way of saying to us: may you not rest in peace. May your spirit be, wherever your body is, may your spirit be at large in the world. May we not rest in peace.
Another thought about what the spirit gives us is that it blesses us with a sense of mystery. Sometimes people speak about the mysteries of faith in the sense of those religious beliefs that we’re just supposed to accept without understanding or indeed without asking any questions. But of course I don’t mean that kind of mystery. The spirit of God gifts us with a sense of wonder—that kind of mystery. This may be one reason why many people want to distinguish being spiritual from being religious. Because not only does the church often present the so-called mysteries of faith as something we’re just supposed to not think too hard about, we also in the church tend toward taking the wonder out of wonder. We tend to talk about God as though God could be talked about. Christians tend to talk about Jesus as though we actually knew him and understood him as well or better than the people we know best, when it’s hard enough to know the people we love best, sometimes hard enough to know ourselves, yet we talk as though we know all about Jesus. Churches are quite capable of speaking and conducting themselves in such a way as to pretend that there is no wonder to our living, just answers and truths. That, I believe, is when religion turns unspiritual.
Then one final thought, which I will just say briefly. The spirit of God is what gives us the ability to do something just for the love of it, or—and this is really just another way of saying the same thing—to do something for no other reason but for the love of God. I’m not talking church language here. I’m not talking about things we’re supposed to do, things that maybe the church has taught us or strongly suggested somehow would be pleasing to do, such as going to church. I’m not talking about doing something for the love of God in the sense of trying to make God happy. I’m talking more of doing something for the love of God more in the sense of doing something for the sheer delight of it. Or we do something because when all is said and done it’s not the list of reasons why it would be a good thing to do that compel us to an action but something that comes from somewhere else. Something we cannot quite explain, something in our bones or in our heart or in God’s heart leads us in a certain direction. That is to be led by the spirit of God.
It occurs to me that the thought running through all these thoughts, that provides some link to these random thoughts about the spirit of God, is a kind of anti-usefulness approach to things, that says there is a value to things, to life, to you and me, that does not depend on how useful we are. Of course, it is still a good thing to be useful when we can be, but when a person is filled with a divine discontent with the way things are, when we are filled with a sense of wonder, when we are led to do things not in some calculated fashion but out of sheer delight or because we can do no other, then we are not judging actions by how likely they are to do how much good and we are not judging people by how useful they are. The spirit of God gives us a different frame of reference.
A theological, but not too theological, description of someone who is spiritual might be that it is someone who is looking for God…in everything…not that they haven’t found God elsewhere but that they keep on looking. Of course that’s not just theological language, that’s my theological language and others might have other ways of putting it. But for today those are the words I have. We are a restless people, restless for a more just, a more loving, more holy world to live in, restless for more just, more loving, holier selves. We are a people blessed with a sense of wonder who look for the presence of god everywhere. We are people who find delight in who we are and in what we are called to do. That is who I am and even more who I hope to become, by the grace and spirit of God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
June 8,2003
Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on
The world and raised it shapely out of nothing,
Touch my lips with fire and burn away
All dross of speech, so that I keep in mind
The truth and end to which my words now move
In hope. Keep my mind within that Mind
Of which it is a part, whose wholeness is
The hope of sense in what I tell. And though
I go among the scatterings of that sense,
The members of its worldly body broken,
Rule my sight by vision of the parts