1 SPIRITUALITY

               “THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN-SPIRITUALITY”               Jan. 9,1994
                                Is. 42:1-7; Acts 10:34-38
                       Mk. 1:4-11

The Magnificent Seven is one of those classic Westerns which picks up on the oft repeated theme of good vs. evil and repeats the hope in the heart of most people that good will prevail over evil and the righteous will live in peace and happiness.  It is the story of a small Mexican village which is being besieged by a band of ruthless bandits who, every time they come through the area take what ever they want and do what ever they want to do, without thought for the poor peasants who live in the village.

In desperation, three men of the village go to find help and that’s when they meet Yul Brynner, a gunslinger of some experience and reputation and ask him to help them get rid of the bandits.  The story is about the 7 men Yul Brynner brings together to accomplish this task, 6 of whom are known hired guns and one of whom is a young man who wishes he was but isn’t, and never will be.  In the scene where the three men from the village are trying to convince Yul Brynner to come and help them they say to him,
“It will be a blessing if you come to help us.”
To which Yul Brynner replies,
“Sorry, I’m not in the blessing business.”

“Not in the blessing business...”.  The words we are going to be looking at in this series called The Magnificent Seven are words which were not in the blessing business 35 years ago when I began my ministry, but are today.  Or at least they were not as focused 35 years ago and I was not as aware of the depth of meaning they held for the life of faith.  In this way I hope to draw together something of the journey of faith which as been mine as I have been privileged to walk these 35 years, 30 of them here at Calvary, as Pastor, Preacher, Teacher, Counselor, Prophet, Priest and most important of all as one Baptized and Called to be a servant and a friend of the one God sent to be our Servant and friend.

We begin with the word SPIRITUALITY...a word greatly in vogue today which 35 years ago was hardly used at all, unless you were speaking about some weird group which believed in spiritualism and practiced visiting with the spirits of the dead through a medium in some sort of spooky and weird ceremony.
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It is a word which pops up all over the place today and is used to try get ahold of that part of life which is intangible, unobservable, indiscernible, indistinguishable, invisible, non-definable and yet deeply a part of our lives.

Last Monday night on Cheers Dr. Frazer was trying to find out why Woody had a head ache, and he suggests to Woody that it might have some deep emotional or psychological or spiritual roots.  (It really was because he hit his head on the underside of the bar after bending over to pick up something.)  It is not unusual to find an article in the popular magazines of our day which have an article on Spirituality.  The word is heard much more frequent in the medical community and is common among the New Age movement and all it’s spin offs. It is found central in the best of present day psychology as Thomas Moore so clearly articulates in his book Care of the Soul which calls for a return to a spirituality which cultivates the sacredness of everyday life and recognizes that a spiritual life of some kind is absolutely necessary for psychological health - for wellness and happiness and a sense of fulfillment in our lives.   An insight which springs from the work of Karl Gustave Jung who said, “Every psychological problem is ultimately a matter of religion...A spiritual life of some kind is absolutely necessary for psychological health.”
And in all of this it is trying to get to that part of us which is deeper then the physical, more inclusive then the emotional...the very source of life itself...the soul.  (A word which was used a lot when I started 35 years ago and then dropped out because it wasn’t human enough.)

What ever it is we mean by spiritual it has to to with the very essence of life itself...the energy of life...the deepest, most profound part of life without which we can never be happy or good...without which we can never be human and in fact that which makes us uniquely human.  For to be spiritual is to be human and to be human is to be spiritual.  The two go together and can never be separated.  That was the problem with the use of soul in the past; it meant being something other then human and it led to all sorts of de-humanizing in the name of religion and left anyone who enjoyed being human and having passion and excitement for living either feeling  very guilty or abandoning religion as a downer which took the joy out of living.  And it is meant to be just the opposite...it is meant to put joy into our living, as well as give deep meaning to our living.


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So we begin this morning by saying that all of us and all humans are spiritual beings and the popularizing of this word in our day is a healthy sign that people are looking for more out of life then just existence.  As stated in an article on Bill Moyers, one of the few secular journalists who pays close attention to religion and spirituality -
“Its a manifestation of a deep, deep desire to experience life and connect as one to another, connect to the ground of our being and connect to truths about ourselves that take us beyond simply being economic creatures. ...People are beginning to say: “Wait a minute, I’m not just a consumer, an economic animal. I’m more than that.’”

This is good.  It is also dangerous... dangerous not because it is bad to pursue spirituality in all it’s dimensions, but dangerous because if it isn’t grounded...if it doesn’t have any roots...if there is no connection to history it can end up leading people into blind alleys with creeds which sound like this:     “I do my thing.  You do your thing.
I am not in this world to meet your expectations.
You are not in this world to meet mine.
If we happen to meet it is beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.” Fritz Perl’s Gestalt Prayer

which is a far cry from “doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regarding others as better than ourselves...looking not to our own interests, but to the interests of others...(and having) the same mind that was in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant...to bring forth justice to the nations and compassion to the world.”   (Phil 2:3-7 & Is. 42:1)   which is what the spirit of God caused Jesus to do and calls us to be about.  It is not enough to just be spiritual so I can have more of life...that kind of spirituality leads to the myth of individualism which “”isolates the individual, overlooks the reality of mingling (community) and ignores the link between passion and compassion...”( Sam Keen, The Passionate Life, p.179) and which leaves us in a terrible isolation which is worse then all the suffering which comes when our spirituality connects us with other humans in significant and compassionate and even intimate ways.
4                 Such spirituality is like a warm shower.  It’s very individual and even pleasant but short-lived.  Eventually, you have to get out of the shower and back into the real world...and if one’s spirituality doesn’t have something to do with the real world they it probably isn’t spiritual either.

Jesus baptism was a very spiritual experience for him, as ours is for us.  It identified him as the Beloved of the Lord, even as ours does and it reminded him that God was well pleased with him, even as ours reminds us that God
will never give up on us.  This is the foundation on which we build our spiritual lives!  This is the anchor which holds us fast in  all the storms of life.  As we heard in our Old Testament lesson God has “taken us by the hand and kept us”;  God has promised to never stop loving us...to never stop calling us “my beloved son or daughter”...and our baptism gives us the assurance that this is true...It is a sign that we have been marked with the cross of Christ forever and the love of God will always be ours, known it or not...believe it or not...feel it or not.  You cannot be un-baptized...we cannot stop God from keeping God’s covenant of love with us.

And from this beginning we nurture our spirits on God’s Word, which is vital to our spiritual growth.  Without God’s Word we will go astray on our spiritual journey.  Indeed, we go astray enough with God’s Word...for we do not always hear it clearly , and love what it says dearly, and follow it nearly day by day.  In fact, we often have great difficulty with it and try to bring it under our control and keep it from being too radical in our lives.  We like to think we know it, believe it, even understand it and control it so we don’t have to let it change us too much.  We would rather study it then meditate on it and we would rather have it answer our questions then question our answers.  We use it mechanically, cautiously, rigidly to establish the rules by which God is to act and then we try hold God to our rules rather then discover that God acts in mysterious ways his wonders to perform and sometimes what we think the Bible is saying is not what it is saying at all.  There is no book on this earth more abused, and mis-used then this book we call God’s Word.  And we wonder why our spiritual lives are so anemic!


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We need to spend more time in God’s Word not looking for answers or trying to find clues to when God is going to pull off the big bang or what God is going to do with those who are different from us but to be filled with the spirit of God which is the spirit of love and to be nurtured in our believing so that, as Paul says in Ephesians (3:16-18) we “may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith...being rooted and grounded in love...(and we) may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breath and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that (we) may be filled with all the fulness of God.”

That’s what God’s Word wants to do with us and in us...and that’s a heck of a lot more then we want from it.  That’s a spiritual energy and passion which frankly scares us and causes us to run for cover into our comfortable religious practices.  Yet God does not give up on us...for God has made a promise and God’s promise is that what God does best on this earth God will do through those who are energized by God’s love.

And that’s the last part of our spirituality...rooted in baptism...nurtured in the word of love... and expressed in doing good...even as Jesus “went about doing good for God was with him.”  (Acts 10:38)

Spirituality really is of little good to anyone, unless it includes others in a significant way.  Now significant does not have to mean big, or important, or public or touching many...it means significant to one in some small way, which is really all God asks of us...often.  And is the only way something can be truly significant.


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Last sunday Francis Fischer shared an angel story which captures something of what I mean.  After all the mittens, scarves, caps, gloves, socks, and what ever else was given for the Mission were taken down, one package was found lying on the table in the Synago Library. I saw it there and noticed the tag which read - To a Tall Extra Large Man, From Someone Who Cares- and gave it little thought.  If this one present doesn’t get to the Mission, big deal.  But Francis and Lyle saw it too, and they couldn’t just leave it lie there.  They made an additional trip to the mission to deliver this special gift to some special, unsuspecting and unknown person.  As they were driving to the Mission Francis said to Lyle, “I hope there is someone there who fits this description so we will know who to give this gift to.”  As they approached the mission, a group of men were standing by the door and there was one man who stood out because of his size -tall extra large.  As they stopped all the men when into the building but this one man.  Francis said, “There’s our man; this gift if for him.” And Lyle took the package to the man who received it with joy and clutching it to his breast also went in out of the cold, with a gift to not only warm his body but also his soul.

This is spirituality at work without which our believing becomes stale and meaningless and our faith becomes something isolating and even destructive.  And to this we are called...not to be religious but to be spiritual...and that means to let the fruit of the Spirit which is
“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22,23) be at work in our lives doing that which is well pleasing in God’s sight, trusting that God can do extraordinary things with our ordinary lives.

Indeed, to be spiritual is to be loved by God and to be alive with love - “able to live in the ordinary world with extraordinary grace.” (p.206-The Passionate Life, Keen)

Amen