7/26/09 Listen: Not By Bread Alone

Every so often I will speak with someone who, as they say, is “seeking a more spiritual life.” They find that their life is somehow out of balance and that it’s time to feed their inner life – to become more spiritual.  They tell me that they have never (or rarely) been to church and do not think that church is necessarily what they are looking for (this is often code for: “I like to (fill in the blank) on Sunday mornings”).  They like incense and mystery but have an aversion to religion and doctrine and creeds.  They like the teacher/mystic Jesus but find the suffering/crucified/ resurrected version a bit over-the-top and gratuitous.  They like to feel close to God but would prefer to do it alone, at the beach, with their iPod.  “I don’t need anyone telling me that I have to be ’saved,’” they will say to me. “I just need to be more spiritual.”
 
As much as I would like to help them to become more spiritual, I really do not know what that means.  There are many wonderful religions that promote and embrace the “spiritual” experience as the pinnacle of the journey; Christianity, however, is not one of them.  We believe in a particular God, who comes to Earth in a particularly human form and whose purpose in coming to us is not to make us more spiritual, or even to satisfy our own personal needs, but to save us from ourselves and the things we do to others.  This is not a God who prefers the spiritual to the real.  This is a God who dares to enter the physical world – the everyday, broken, and sometimes terrifying world we inhabit – in order to redeem it completely.  This is a God who comes not simply to help us out, but to save us.
 
If that sounds over-the-top and gratuitous to you, you’re not alone.  Not even the disciples of Jesus were ready to accept the truth that they needed not simply to be helped, but to be saved.  Caught in a storm in their little boat (John 6:1-21), they searched desperately for a way through it on their own, but to no avail.  When they saw Jesus coming to them, walking across the raging seas, John says they were “scared senseless.”  Could it be that for them, and for us, the notion of a God who saves is as terrifying to us as the storm itself?  It is one thing to walk hand in hand with Jesus, our personal helper and spiritual guide.  But as the writer of Hebrews says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (10:31). 
 
See you Sunday,
 
Rev. Mark