A reformed alcoholic once said, “religion is for people who are afraid of hell; spirituality is for people who have been there.” I want to talk today about spirituality and make a few points in sequence. It is a question, like those we dealt with last week that takes a lifetime to answer. I don’t propose to exhaust the meaning of spirituality today. But on this day when we commission our new Parish Associate for Spiritual Life and reconnect after the summer months it seems fitting to reflect a bit about the life of the Spirit. What it is that makes us choose church over croissants in bed Sunday mornings then keeps us going Mondays through Fridays at work and home and school. Hell is a good place to begin because it has a way of cutting to the chase. What we are talking about is a matter of life and death. If spirituality is for people who have been to hell then I’d wager it is for most of us. Not because we are any worse than any other group of people but because no matter who you are, you don’t live life long before life humbles you,
catches you by surprise, teaches you a painful lesson.

The book of Hosea says the same thing as that reformed alcoholic when God speaks through the prophet, “in the wilderness I will whisper to your heart.” When we find ourselves in some wilderness, some hell of physical illness or family turmoil or career uncertainty God, says Hosea, whispers to our hearts. Spirituality starts in the wilderness of our lives, in hell, because it is not until we find ourselves vulnerable, humbled, frightened – in circumstances beyond our control that most of us are ready to take God seriously; listen for God’s whisper. One writer says her favorite two prayers are “help me, help me, help me,” and “thank you, thank you, thank you.”  Spirituality begins in hell,  in the wilderness when we pray, “help me.” That’s the first point.

God whispers to our hearts, not our heads says the prophet. That’s worth considering. Joanna Macy claims, “a heart that breaks open can contain the universe.”  The heart that does not break or has not broken has no room for anyone let alone God.  Even the great thinkers – Aquinas, Calvin, Tillich – working out their own systems are telling us, says one writer, the stories of their lives, some experience of flesh and blood, some breaking of the heart, some moment when God entered in.  God enters our hearts. The spiritual journey begins. We become different people. If spirituality begins in hell, point two is that it continues with the realization that God chooses you. Chooses to be with you. Chooses to love you. Chooses to stand by you. That awareness makes you a new person.

Friends of a colleague adopted their son through an organization called ASK – Adopt Special Kids. They filled out forms with questions like “could you adopt an addicted baby, one with terminal illness, mild retardation, tendencies toward violence?”
The mother of that child says, “God is an adoptive parent too. And she chose us all. God says, ‘sure, I’ll take the kids who are addicted and terminal…the ones who are retarded, the sadists, the selfish ones, the liars…all of them.’” What it means, of course, and an important of part of what spirituality is, is the realization that the mystery of God’s love embraces the man who is mean to his dog just as much as it embraces the newborn baby; God loves Susan Smith, who drowned her two sons, as much as he loves Desmond Tutu. Loves her just as much while she was releasing the handbrake of her car that sent her boys into the river as he did when she first nursed them. The implication is that love that big can embrace me too – even at my most scared and petty and mean and obsessive.  God chooses me.

The business of God choosing us illustrates the old religious principle that says God isn’t there to take away our suffering or pain but to fill it with his or her presence.  When you’ve been to hell and back, you know how important God’s presence is. Doug King sat with Thomas Swan for two hours in the hospital room Friday morning while Thomas was awaiting tests. God finds all kinds of ways to be present to us. You cannot underestimate the importance of that.

Freda Gardner, past moderator of the Presbyterian Church, professor of Christian education at Princeton Seminary was asked about her spiritual journey. Reflecting on her modest upbringing, her school-teacher father and nurse mother, the small, upstate town where she and her sister grew up, she said the cornerstone of her mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being was knowing that no matter how difficult she and her sister were – especially during those teenage years – the key to her well-being was knowing her parents would always be there for her. If our being there for each other – parents for children, friends, neighbors, church members for each other – if that makes a difference, then – and this is point three – imagine the difference God’s being there for you can make! Anything can happen. Miracles, healing, wholeness, renewal.

Spirituality begins when we find ourselves in circumstances beyond our control and pray the old prayer, help me, help me, help me. Spirituality continues when God enters our hearts in response to that prayer and we come to realize that God is there for us. For many folks, maybe not a few of us, that’s where it ends.  Our backs against the wall, we pray for help, God enters in, the crisis subsides, life gets back to normal, and rather than praying unceasingly as St. Paul advises, we cease to pray. Except for some of us. This is where some people put the clues together. Instead of being reactive, they become proactive. Instead of waiting for a crisis to hit, for the tests to come back positive, a loved one to die, another city neighborhood to collapse some people, having been held in the arms of God in the midst of their personal hell, turn to God and keep praying. Proverbs says it well: “my child, if you accept my words and treasure my commandments…making your ear attentive to wisdom, inclining your heart to understanding; if you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding;  if you seek it like silver, search for it as for hidden treasures
then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God….then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity and every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul…and I will save you from all evil.”

This is where spirituality makes a quantum leap – it is what happens when everything starts coming together – a great orchestral work with 100 musicians; a triple somersault from the high dive at the Olympics; the canvas of a painter who suddenly exclaims, “that’s it!” You enter a new realm of understanding and possibility.  It is what happens to Peter on that mountain when Jesus asks him who he is and Peter says, “You are the Messiah.” But the Messiah/Jesus, Peter painfully discovers and so do we, is not to guide or protect or possess but to follow. Thus, Peter is introduced to the upside down truth of spirituality. I learn who I am by finding out who Jesus is; the way to self-fulfillment is through self-denial. If you can strike those two notes in your daily living; if you can paint with the brush of self-denial your life, our life together will be in perfect harmony, our ministry a work of art.

And that’s point four. I learn who I am by finding out who Jesus is; the way to self-fulfillment is through self-denial. Here we come to the heart, the core of spirituality – denial of self. I am not talking about denying ourselves some “thing.” Asceticism, says one believer, can hand the victory to the self, for “self can ride as comfortably on a bicycle as in a limousine.” Nor is this a call to reject oneself. Self-hatred is not the way of Jesus. Rather Jesus wants us to deny our “grasping self” to liberate a greater self within.
The cross Jesus takes up denying himself, inviting us to do likewise does not refer to the burdens life imposes from without – but rather to the painful actions for healing and justice and equity we voluntarily undertake for others. Spirituality is following Jesus on his costly way. Imitating Christ. Brushing aside the pieties usually associated with that phrase. Living like Christ with the commitment and passion and wreckless abandon of a great artist or athlete.

That’s a tall assignment. We cannot do it alone. Nor does God expect us to. And so spirituality gets lived out with other disciples, other followers of Jesus, seekers after God, in community. One big family. Brothers and sisters in Christ. Notice I said one big family. Not one big happy family. Because families are sometimes happy, but they are also sometimes sad or cantankerous or complicated. That’s the way the people are who make them up. Therefore, and the final point is, families are one of the best training grounds for spirituality because spirituality is denying yourself. For any family to succeed there has to be a fair amount of denying of self. Biological families and church families too. There’s no difference.

At some point, says Annie Lamott, you pardon the people in your family for being stuck together in all their weirdness, and when you can do that, you can learn to forgive anyone. Even yourself, eventually. Lamott says families are like old sweaters – they keep unraveling, but then someone figures out how to sew them up one more time; they have lumps and then unravel again, but you can still wear them and keep the chill away. One of the great heresies of our time is the belief that we can be spiritual people in isolation – coming to God on our terms through some private retreat or ritual of self-indulgence without having to deal with the weirdness and neurotic behavior of everybody but me. Taking up your cross, following Jesus is not that convenient or easy or simplistic.

What is spirituality? For us, for Westminster, it is nothing less than the key to our future. If we are filled personally with the spiritus, the holy wind, the breath of life then so will our ministries of outreach and care-taking and education and justice. My greatest prayer for us – as a congregation, as elders and deacons, as a staff, for me personally because in the midst of a busy program year, in the midst of life I am as thirsty and hungry as anyone – my prayer for all of us is to learn better how to discern God’s presence in our lives; to discover who we are by finding out more clearly who Jesus is; and to find ourselves by giving ourselves away. If you and I can do those things, no matter what hardship we face or hell we experience, if we can do that we will know and feel God’s presence beside us, in us, surrounding us.

And deep within our hearts will well up that other ancient prayer: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Amen.