January 20, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

“If the Spirit Is Willing”

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 36:5–10
1 Corinthians 12:1–11

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, I do not want you to be uninformed.”

1 Corinthians 12:1 (NRSV)

Spirit of God,
    flame
        wind
            speech,
burn, breathe, speak in us.

Jan Berry

Some of you may have heard the Reverend Lillian Daniel preach here a few months ago. She has been our guest preacher a number of times and our guest Lenten retreat leader as well. Lillian is a gifted storyteller, and her newest book, hot off the press, is chock full of stories. Her book is entitled When “Spiritual but Not Religious” Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church. In her book she gives her point of view on the phenomenon of people identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” She recounts her impression of a man who recently explained his own such identity.

A man recently told me something about his faith life, as people are wont to do with ministers. He said, “I’m spiritual but not religious, and I want to give you my testimony, if you will, about why I do not attend church.” Now, can I just vent for a minute? When I meet a teacher, I don’t feel the need to tell him that I always hated math. When I meet a chef, I don’t need to tell her that I can’t cook. When I meet a clown, I don’t need to tell him that I think clowns are all scary.

No, I keep that stuff to myself. But everybody loves to tell a minister what’s wrong with the church, and it’s usually some church that bears no relation to the one I am proud to serve. So I braced myself.

Like so many Americans, he had made many stops in the new American religious marketplace, where we no longer have to stay in the tradition we were born in. . . . So he was raised in the Catholic faith. He came to feel injured by that tradition, let down by it. His questions weren’t answered or welcomed. . . . So later, after college, he was drawn as a young adult into a conservative Baptist church. He had joined that church because of the great people and even accepted Christ as his personal savior during a service. But later, after joining, he realized the church held all sorts of strict beliefs he could not contend with. . . . He drifted from that church.

Later, after marrying, he joined the church of his wife’s upbringing, an open-minded liberal Protestant church. . . . There, dancing and drinking were not frowned upon, and neither were his theological questions. In that intellectual environment, he was encouraged to use his mind to study the biblical narrative, to consider the history of the day and think critically about scripture. His questions, even his doubts, did not shock anybody, and in fact he was told all those questions actually made him a very good mainline Protestant.

But the marriage ended, and now that church really felt like his wife’s, so he found himself spending his Sunday mornings sleeping in, reading the New York Times, or putting on his running shoes and taking off through the woods. This was his religion today, he explained. “I worship nature. I see myself in the trees and in the butterflies. I am one with the great outdoors. I find God there. And I realized that I am deeply spiritual but no longer religious.”

. . . I was not shocked or upset by the man’s story. Naturally, I have heard it a million times before, so often that I almost thought I could improvise the plotline along with him. Let me guess, you read the New York Times every Sunday, cover to cover, and you get more out of it than the sermon. Let me guess, you exercise and where do you find God? Nature. And the trees, it’s always the trees during a long hike, a long run, a walk on the beach. And don’t forget the sunset. God is always in the sunset.

Like people who attend church wouldn’t know that. Like we are these monkish people who never heard all those Old Testament psalms that praise God in the beauty of the natural creation, like we never leave the church building. God in nature? Really? (Lillian Daniel, When “Spiritual but Not Religious” Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church, pp. 3–6)

Lillian goes on, and though she is a bit caustic and a lot funny, she is also honest and self-critical. The church, she knows, has made mistakes that have turned people off from church. Some of its mistakes have not only been embarrassing but also shameful and unconscionable. All of us can name an all-too-long list of wrongs, historical and current, committed by churches and their leaders: clergy sex scandals, the burning of the Koran, the condoning of slavery, the slow response of most white churches to the civil rights movement. These are serious wrongs, and it is understandable that people would reject the church, given this record. To be sure, we do need to be discriminating about the groups with which we affiliate, especially when they call forth from us our trust and loyalty. “But,” Lillian says, “news flash, human beings do a lot of embarrassing, inhumane, cruel, and ignorant things” (p. 12). The church is a human institution, and perhaps herein lies the crux of the problem. In the church we are stuck with one another, just as in any family of which we are a part. And just as our family members know all too well our strengths and our shortcomings, church members also get an up-close view of each other’s fallibility.

It may be the case that when people decide to be spiritual but not religious they need a break from all the people in the church. What I worry about is that after taking a break from whatever disillusionments they experienced in the church, they won’t return to a faith community of any sort. I worry about this not because I am concerned about the fate of the church or want to defend the church but because I suspect that this “spiritual but not religious” identity is just a step on the way toward a “neither spiritual nor religious” identity.

What does it mean to be spiritual? We use the term spiritual in different ways. Sometimes we describe a person as seeming to be deeply spiritual in that he or she seems to be in touch with a higher power or a transcendent dimension of reality. Sometimes we use the term to refer to extroverted, charismatic, ecstatic behavior in worship. Sometimes we attribute the term to introverted, prayerful, or meditative people.

It seems that for early Christians too the term held different meanings. In the scripture lesson we read today, Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth to clear things up about what it means to be spiritual. “Now concerning spiritual things,” he writes, “brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.” Prior to their conversion, many of the Corinthian Christians had been Gentiles involved in pagan religions. They would remember then that as pagans, as Paul writes, they were “carried away and led astray” in ecstatic worship of idols. The phenomenon of being so spirit-filled that your behavior became ecstatic was not uncommon in Gentile religions, and thus it is important for us to know it was not distinctive to the church.

What was distinctive for the church, however, was a particular understanding of spiritual things. In chapter 12, Paul addresses a situation in the Corinthian church that he has learned about: it seems that the assembly of the church had become an excellent opportunity for some members of the church to display the spiritual gifts of which they were evidently proud, in particular the gift of speaking in tongues. From his response, we can discern what Paul wants the Corinthians clearly to understand about being spiritual.

First of all, the Spirit is a gift of God to the church. It is what God gave to the church at Pentecost when the church came into existence. It is a gift for the people of God, not as individuals, but as a community. Therefore, when Paul addresses the Corinthians, he instructs them that the gift of the Spirit, however it manifests itself in the various abilities of church members, works for the good of the community. He writes, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

In his instruction to the early Christians, Paul wants them to understand clearly that the Spirit of which he speaks, the Spirit by which the church was formed, has as its goal wholeness of community. On this definition of being spiritual, it would be misguided for people to show off their individual spiritual endowments, thereby causing a spirit of rivalry rather than building unity. On this definition of being spiritual, it would also be misguided for people to think that they can be spiritual when they are absent from a community of faith. On this definition of being spiritual, the “spiritual but not religious” identity is just one small step away from a “neither spiritual nor religious” identity.

Darn. Double darn. Haven’t we all, at one time or another, considered being spiritual but not religious? Haven’t we ever wished that it were truly an option? Maybe because we have given so much time and effort to the work of the church, we need a break; or maybe because in our efforts to improve the church, we have run up against what feels frustratingly like church bureaucracy; or perhaps we have witnessed church politics that have left a bad taste in our mouths; or perhaps the church made a decision or has taken a stance with which we disagree and that has disappointed us; or perhaps divorce from a spouse has led to estrangement from one’s home church. There are different reasons, and each one deserves its own attention.

No matter what has motivated a person to be spiritual but not religious, some basic information about the Spirit and about spiritual things nevertheless applies. As Paul says, it is important not to be uninformed about spiritual things. Though the Spirit may blow where it will, its work consists of binding people together heart to heart and hand to hand. Its work takes place where people are together, and where people are committed to sticking it out and sticking around, imagine what the Spirit might accomplish.

Yesterday I took part in an ecumenical tour organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago. A group, mostly of Roman Catholics, some Greek Orthodox, and a few Presbyterians, participated in an opportunity to learn about the different ways that different denominations and churches celebrate Communion. Some of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox participants expressed their sorrow and frustration that their churches do not permit an open communion with Christians outside their faith tradition. They have evidently made the decision, despite their frustration and disagreement with their churches, to stick it out. That they were taking part in this program was itself an effort to reimagine what the Spirit might make possible through them.

Churches are full of such people—people who remain within the church despite their disagreement with other church members on issues that cause them great pain while not being as troubling to others. I suspect that they remain in the church because, though the sorrow and pain they feel may be great, the trust they have in the Spirit is greater.

By the Spirit’s power, great things can happen. Consciences can be pricked and then driven. Hearts can be moved and then motivated. Someone else’s problem can become everyone’s prayer, and the message of a lone prophet can become a movement for all people. That is when we know the Spirit is at work.

Paul wants us to understand clearly that while it is possible to be religious but not spiritual, it is not possible to be spiritual but not religious. That’s not how the gift of the Spirit operates. Once the Spirit is given, it demands giving and receiving, listening and talking, praying and caring, trusting, showing up, and sticking around.