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I consider myself to be a spiritual person, not a religious person...

SOUL: God and My Spiritual Self - Deuteronomy 6: 1-9; Matthew 5: 1-12 - April 13, 2008 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett 1. Bassett

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            I consider myself to be a spiritual person, not a religious person.

            If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say that lately, we'd be halfway to financing our welcome center. I've heard it said more and more, and especially among younger people. And it's a curious statement, because traditionally, 'spiritual' and 'religious' mean pretty much the same thing. Not so long ago, to say you were spiritual and not religious wouldn't have made a lot of sense.

            But the connotations of the words have changed over time. So now, to say that you are 'spiritual' means that there is more to you than just a body and a brain. There is a part of you that connects, even in a vague way, with Something invisible and lasting. It may be through a beautiful sunset; it may be through a powerful movie; it may be through a love-connection. Notice I am not saying that it may be through a church service. Because I think the point of saying that you are spiritual rather than religious is that it doesn't involve church. A spiritual person must be free to follow wherever this spiritual dimension leads, even if it leads nowhere; and the spiritual experience will be very individual. Your spiritual journey can't be mine. And the church, it is imagined, stands in the way of that freedom and individuality. Because it's likely that a church will tell you where your journey is going, and who you should travel with.

            Religion, on the other hand, is thought to be closely connected with church. Being religious means that you are connected with tradition, rules, discipline, doctrines, order, sacraments, clergy- those things that build structures around people. If we go by those definitions, then we can see that the people making the statement I mentioned are drawing a pretty clear line: spiritual good; religious bad.

            I look at it differently. If spirituality is about freedom and individuality and finding your own path to a deeper, more transcendent life - and religion is about structure, tradition, accountability, ritual, and community - then I say we need both. If you consider yourself spiritual, then I'm going to try to invite you to be more religious, and if you consider yourself religious, then I am going to invite you to be more spiritual.

All of this, I think, goes to the sermon series I'm preaching about the various aspects of ourselves, using Jesus' teaching about the Great Commandment: "You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." Last Sunday, I talked about loving God with all your heart - or . loving God with your emotions. Today, I want to talk about loving God with all your soul. And this idea of spiritual vs. religious fits right in with that idea.

            Let's talk about the pitfalls of trying to be spiritual without being religious. To do that, I'll start with a story. A man went to the doctor; the doctor checked him over, and said, "The first thing we got to do is get you into shape. I want you to walk six miles every day for thirty days, and then I want you to call me." Thirty days later, the man

called the doctor. The doctor said, "Did you walk six miles every day for the last thirty days?" "I did," said the man. "How do you feel?" asked the doctor. "Well," said the man, "I feel a little lost. I'm 180 miles from home!"

            Being 'spiritual' without being 'religious' is something like venturing out without a home base, never coming back to your roots, and eventually getting lost because you are so far from anything familiar. The traditional religious teachings of the faith are what give us something to come home to - something to anchor us in this life.

            I understand totally the impulse to want to get away from the inconvenience and the imperfection of the Christian faith as it has been represented - and so often misrepresented - by the church (or 'organized religion.' That's the other thing 'spiritual' people will say: "I have problems with organized religion." I'm always tempted to say, "Then you're in the perfect place! There's nothing 'organized' around here. Come look at the top of my desk!") But let's be honest - much about the history of organized religion has been downright shameful. There's been racism, sexism, imperialism - every kind of -ism and abuse and violence has taken place in the church. If that's what 'religion' is, no wonder there are people who don't want to associate with it.

            But there's more. Something else has been there in that history - a vision for something different in this world. At its best, when the church has really represented the words it says, something else has been there - something the world desperately needs. Something so crucial that it may be the only thing that can save this world from itself. In fact, of course, it's not a ‘something'; it's a 'Someone.' It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As misguided as the church has often been, it has this to claim for itself - it has preserved the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thereby offered the highest ideal the world has ever known: that salvation, justice and spiritual peace are possible through Jesus. Without that message, Christian spiritual life has no home base.

            A spiritual search without a religious grounding loses out on one of the greatest assets any spiritual search could have - the wisdom of the past. It would be like saying, 'Tm not going to read or learn anything about food. I'm going to go on my own quest, and discover what is food and what is not myself." So you go out and eat dirt, or you pull leaves off the trees and eat them, or grubs and worms - trying to figure out what is healthy food - when somebody has already figured that out! Why would you start from scratch and not use what has already been learned?

            And when you've got the benefit of 2000 years of wisdom about how to pray, and how to discern God's Word, and how to find inner peace and joy - why would you not want to connect with that great body of religious experience and learn from it? And have people beside you who can say, "I tried that before - here's what I found." If you are a spiritual person, and not a religious person, you're missing out on your greatest resource.

            Jesus was a religious person. He went to the synagogue; he went to the temple; he knew scripture backwards and forwards. He was an observant Jew. The heart of his religion is what we read in the scripture from Deuteronomy: " ... this is the commandment - the statutes and ordinances - that the Lord your God charged ... you to observe ... so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments ... " That's the religious program Jesus was born into, and he took it seriously. It wasn't about individual freedom as we know it. It was about being part of a community that held you accountable, that had standards and practices that worked.

            But let's talk about the opposite danger - the danger of being a religious person and not a spiritual person. To get into that, I will tell another story -- about a new minister in town, who stood up to begin her first church service, and was delighted to see that everybody sat on her side of the church. And she thought, "What a thoughtful thing. They all want to make me feel welcome." But then, as she stood up to deliver the sermon, everyone moved to the other side of the church; and she awkwardly gave her message with all empty pews in front of her. This happened every Sunday, and as she got to know people better, she asked why they moved form one side to the other in the middle of the service. And no one knew. We've always done it this way, they said.

            Finally, she asked the oldest person in the village, who said that he remembered well how the tradition came to be. It seems that back in the old days, there used to be a woodstove in front of the pulpit. And when the service started, everybody wanted to be close to it. But about midway through the service, that baby got good and hot. So everyone moved to the other side. And when they put the furnace in and took the wood stove out - well, by then, everyone was just in the habit.

            The danger of being religious and not being spiritual is that after a while you just might be going through the motions. You might roll out of bed on Sunday morning, put on your church outfit, sit in the same pew, sing the old familiar hymns - and lose touch totally with why you are doing these things. Everyone connected with a church should have at least a glimmer of uneasiness about the fact that the people that gave Jesus the most trouble when he was here on earth were the religious people - people who were carrying out the religious practices, but had long forgotten why. And it's so ironic that religious people - who celebrate the traditions of a God who is outreaching, accepting, full of grace, and full of surprises --can turn into some of the most close-minded people in the world: if they're not spiritually alive; if they're not growing in prayer; if they're not learning more about the scriptures together; if they're not open to new visions and the growing possibilities of God's love. If you're a religious person, but not a spiritual person, you are missing out on the heart of faith - you may even be dangerous.

            Jesus was a spiritual person. That reading from Deuteronomy goes on to say, "Keep these words that I am commanding you this day in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise." That describes a spiritual way of life - a spiritual awareness wherever you are - whatever you're doing. It is the kind of soul-sensitivity that makes life beautiful - but it needs religion to keep it grounded. The two things go together.

            Many people have remarked how the world is getting more and more secular. Great waves of materialism and selfishness and agnosticism are taking over, pushing faith into the background. But I don't believe it for a second. Those material things give temporary excitement, but no lasting satisfaction. Human beings are souls having a temporary earthly experience. And we need the grounding of religion, and we need the sensitivity of spirituality to the beautiful mysteries of life. Following Jesus leads us to both, and it's in drawing close to him that we can find inner peace and joy this morning.

            Maybe there are some here who are searching for that. You feel confused by the fast pace of the world, and you have been seduced into thinking that the answer of your spiritual search is in some material thing, or in turning inward away from the teachings of faith, or in embracing no faith at all. If so, I invite you - I invite all of us - to hear this message as if for the first time: God loves you, Jesus gave his life for you, your sins are forgiven, you are surrounded right now by a grace that encompasses the religious lives of millions who have walked this way before you, and also invites you to your own spiritual walk. This may be the moment you've been waiting for - your time to say Yes to God, and love Him with your whole soul - the spiritual part and the religious part.