ThisWeeksSermon on the 6th Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008

“Keep moving toward the Light”
The 6th Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

Elizabeth Gilbert is author of a book that was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year.
The book is called Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia.
In it, she described a year-long journey around the world, a journey she took alone.
Her objective was to visit three places where she could examine three aspects of her own nature, each set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done one of the three things very well.
In Italy, she studied the art of pleasure.
She learned to speak Italian and gained what she calls “the 23 happiest pounds of her life.”
In India, it was for the art of devotion.
That’s where, with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise Texan, she embarked on four months of austere spiritual exploration.
Finally, in Indonesia, she sought her ultimate goal, what she calls “balance”, exploring how to somehow build a life of equilibrium between worldly enjoyment
on one hand, and Divine Transcendence, on the other.
In Indonesia, she became a pupil of an elderly, ninth-generation medicine man.
Elizabeth Gilbert has this to say about religious belief:
"I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God.
I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted….
You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light."
Traditional Christianity is the antithesis of Elizabeth Gilbert’s approach.
Traditional Christianity is about doctrine and dogma and believing certain things.
RELIGION IN AMERICA
The least religious state in America is Oregon.
The most religious is Mississippi.
It’s Oregon, not Mississippi, that reflects the emerging trend in America.
There’s cynicism about institutional religion.
For many, there’s little desire to affiliate with any particular religion or denomination.
And moving from one denomination to another is no longer uncommon.
Nationally, 16% claim no religious affiliation at all.
“Unaffiliated” is the fastest growing religious segment of American society.
However, of that group, fewer than 2 percent define themselves as atheists.
About half of the unaffiliated say that “faith is at least somewhat important” to them.
“Spiritual-but-not-religious” is he catch phrase of a generation or more in the western world.
People say it to me all the time when they find out for the first time that I’m a parish priest.
“Oh, I don’t go to church, but I’m very spiritual.”
Americans seems to be exploring their own spirituality, incorporating religion only when it makes sense to them.
Jesus does remain an inspiration for many.
But it’s definitely the independent and self-reliant Jesus.
That’s the Jesus who resonates for the unaffiliated, the Jesus we saw when religious people tried to pin him down.
“Which commandment is most important?,” the religion experts asked.
Jesus’ response of course was to love God and neighbor with everything you’ve got.
His answers were brilliant on such occasions.
He sidestepped the religion experts every time.
He positioned himself as spiritual, but not religious.
And this vision of Jesus obviously resonates strongly for a lot of people out there.
SPEAKING TO THE UNAFFILIATED
That growing group of “spiritual-but-not-religious”…
those are the ones that we want to reach…
the ones I particularly want to reach…
the ones who challenge us to offer an experience of a real, sacred presence of God that’s not necessarily dependent on doctrine or dogma or tradition or even scripture, that doesn’t contradict what we know about biology and geology and human sexuality and astronomy, those are the ones who challenge us to offer an experience of a real, sacred presence that comes from deep inside.
The people in that growing group of unaffiliated “spiritual-but-not-religious” were my parents.
Now they’re my brothers.
They are my children, and maybe your children.
They are my friends outside the church, and probably yours as well.
They are the members of our parish whom we only see here now and then.
They’re the folks I’m especially interested in…
most of whom sincerely describe themselves as being spiritual…
but for whom our traditional words and our traditional songs do not necessarily resonate, those for whom our ancient holy writings, and the traditional theology and doctrines, do not necessarily resonate.
With busy lives…
they feel no pressing need of church.
It’s hard for them to see what church has to offer them that makes any sense.
They’re genuinely confused about what to teach their children in this modern age about the Bible…
about Jesus.
They’re not attracted to our Sunday school…
they think it may offer little beyond a fast track to fundamentalism.
(They’re wrong about that. At least here.)
A LEAKY TITANIC
In some ways…
the traditional church is a little bit like the leaky Titanic.
Clergy and loyal laity are busy rearranging the deck chairs on the ship…
developing new liturgies…
incorporating new technologies into their presentations…
embracing modern marketing techniques.
Loyal clergy and loyal laity are the string quartet on the deck of that great ship…
heroically playing our hearts out as the ship begins to list to starboard.
IS IT A BAD THING?
There just may be some good news to all this, however.
In some ways I think it may be a wakeup call…
a healthy sign of a general rejection of outdated ways of thinking about God…
outdated ways of experiencing God.
I think it may well be a precursor to educating church people about the new insights born of modern science and biblical scholarship.
I think it may actually be a precursor to a Renaissance of sorts, a religious renewal.
THE GOSPEL THIS MORNING
The words in this morning’s gospel are supposed to represent a farewell speech by Jesus to his disciples.
But the tale actually came together long after Jesus’ death.
The words were not directed at Jesus’ disciples at all.
They couldn’t have been.
They were directed at the next generation of followers…
the Christian community some time after Jesus’ death.
It was the era of a Christian community without the physical presence of Jesus.
For this new generation…
the writer provided some really cool, and very sophisticated theology.
The writer suggested that the spirit of God lives within us!
All we have to do is recognize it!
It’s so simple!
THE CHURCH HAS MADE SUCH SIMPLICITY ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE
Two thousand years of theology and dogma and tradition have made this kind of simplicity of a spiritual life almost impossible.
Modern civilization has made life so complicated…
that probably such a simple way of life is only possible in a convent or monastery.
But somehow we need to get past the theological clutter…
get past the trivialities…
get past the pre-Darwinian ideas.
I SEE A YEARNING
Everywhere I look…
I see a spiritual yearning.
I see a leftover belief in God…
or at least an open-mindedness toward the idea of a Divinity.
I see a perception that Christianity’s record is pretty poor…
and its resistance to modern ideas and science deplorable.
I see a certainty that Christianity is not the only answer…
and that all faiths are expressions of our human search for God and meaning.
I see a general skepticism about the literal truth of Christianity’s foundation stories…
and I see a general skepticism of the claim that the bible is the inerrant word of God.
I see a distrust of religious language.
I see a broad indifference to the church’s obsession with sin and sex.
These things I see are all good news, I think.
The future of the Christian faith does not require that we hold tightly to yesterday's formulas.
It does, however, require that we be willing to step beyond the patterns of the past in order to embrace new insights.
This, I think, has something to do with what Elizabeth Gilbert calls her “balance”, exploring how to somehow build a life of equilibrium between the realities of the world in which we live, on one hand, and the Divine Transcendence, on the other.
The writer of John’s gospel put it this way this morning:
He said that the spirit of God lives within us!
I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
All we have to do is recognize it!
Take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and keep moving toward the light."
That’s the bottom line for Elizabeth Gilbert, and for me.
Jerry Brooks