The Spirituality of the Church

 I was sit­ting in the class “Pres­by­ter­ian His­tory and The­ol­ogy” last spring when I first heard the term “the Spir­i­tu­al­ity of the Church.” I heard a cou­ple peo­ple chuckle, as if they had heard this term before and knew what was com­ing next. The pro­fes­sor explained that, before and dur­ing the Civil War, some South­ern Pres­by­te­ri­ans argued that the church was unfit to pro­claim slav­ery as moral or immoral because that dec­la­ra­tion would vio­late the bound­aries between church and state. I doo­dled in the mar­gins of my notes “seri­ously?” It seemed so obvi­ous to me and the rest of the stu­dents that those who used the term “spir­i­tu­al­ity of the church” were unable to see past their own assump­tions and prej­u­dices about slav­ery. The Spirit was mov­ing Chris­tians to work pub­licly for the abo­li­tion of slav­ery. Yet some got stuck in this idea of the “spir­i­tu­al­ity of the church” and fought on the wrong side of an impor­tant issue both actively and through silence. I sat back in my chair and asked myself, “How could any­one not see how hor­ri­fy­ingly wrong slav­ery is? Am I using reli­gious excuses to turn a blind eye to impor­tant issues that Jesus would care about?”

In an increas­ingly plu­ral­is­tic world, the main thing that dif­fer­en­ti­ates Chris­tians is Jesus. Jesus did not wait for the polit­i­cal sys­tems of his day to do the right thing; he went to the mar­gins and the cen­ters of power. In word and deed, Jesus healed peo­ple, restor­ing them to a healthy rela­tion­ship with their com­mu­nity and with God. The woman who had been bleed­ing for 12 years and was an out­cast was sud­denly rec­og­nized as a “Daugh­ter of God.” Lep­ers went back to their fam­i­lies. The Tem­ple was cleared to be a place of holi­ness, not profit. The reli­gious and polit­i­cal offi­cials were chal­lenged for their cor­rup­tion and exploitation.

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The spir­i­tu­al­ity of the resurrection—that which dis­tin­guishes it from the sta­tus quo and marks it as sacred—is at its high­est pre­cisely because it con­fronts, not ignores, the world and its pol­i­tics of vio­lence.
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Of course, the reli­gious and polit­i­cal sys­tems of the day reacted the way bro­ken sys­tems do—with fear; and they lashed out vio­lently. The res­ur­rec­tion is about God’s love over­com­ing those vio­lent sys­tems to trans­form them for some­thing holy and heal­ing. In other words, the spir­i­tu­al­ity of the resurrection—that which dis­tin­guishes it from the sta­tus quo and marks it as sacred—is at its high­est pre­cisely because it con­fronts, not ignores, the world and its pol­i­tics of violence.

When I think about the sys­tems of vio­lence that exist in our mod­ern world, I am reminded of the the­olo­gian and poet John O’Donohue’s expla­na­tion of the root of sin: “[Sin is] wound­ed­ness that keeps you stuck and par­a­lyzed in hun­gry and anx­ious places, and then poi­son comes from them that’s destruc­tive to oth­ers” (“Imag­i­na­tion as the Path of Spirit,” Green­belt Fes­ti­vals, Ltd 2009). Our cul­ture holds des­per­ately onto the myth of scarcity to keep the poor poor as the rich get richer and the sys­tems of vio­lence intact. The com­mu­nity of the faith­ful is lifted up in Scrip­ture and in his­tory as a dif­fer­ent kind of community.

For thou­sands of years, Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties have claimed that God feeds them and there is no need to horde food or be fear­ful. God pro­vided manna in the wilder­ness. One of the first acts of the early church was to lay hands on seven peo­ple and empower them to ensure that all the wid­ows would be fed (Acts 6:1–6). Jesus said not to worry about what we will eat or wear. Jesus was say­ing more than carpe diem. He was propos­ing a struc­ture for soci­ety, for if a com­mu­nity believes there will not be enough for every­one, then, indeed there will not be enough for every­one because some will keep more than they need out of fear.

If we use the his­toric rhetoric of the “spir­i­tu­al­ity of the church,” we allow our fears (of vul­ner­a­bil­ity to change and loss) to con­trol us. His­tory is full of faith­ful peo­ple who saw some­thing wrong in their soci­ety and tried to change it based on their beliefs about the com­mu­nity God is call­ing us to be. Just in the last 100 years we can look to indi­vid­u­als like Rev. Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., Diet­rich Bon­he­of­fer, and Mother Teresa, as well as specif­i­cally spir­i­tual move­ments like the New Monas­tics and non-specific like the sec­ond– and third-wave fem­i­nists, to see Chris­tians try­ing to shape the world dif­fer­ently. How­ever, you do not have to be a saint to see the bro­ken sys­tems of the world and to be guided by the Spirit as you help heal them. After all, our call as Chris­tians is to fol­low Jesus who declared that the Kin-dom[i] of God is both com­ing and already here.

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I take a pledge today: I will not horde God’s love and jus­tice, and I will not be silent when my church hordes God’s love and jus­tice. Will you take this pledge with me?
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The church can­not ignore this call to live out the Kin-dom of God on earth. If we are pray­ing for it, we must have the courage to become (through God) the answer to our own prayers and to “become the change we want to see in the world” (Mohan­das Gandhi). This means active involve­ment in jus­tice issues and the spir­i­tual nur­ture of our com­mu­ni­ties. The processes of seek­ing and advo­cat­ing for jus­tice have been dis­cussed in other places, and you can find all sorts of addi­tional infor­ma­tion in Unbound. How­ever, the deci­sion to involve your church and your­self in jus­tice issues must be made first.

As Chris­tians we can­not afford to work on issues with­out dis­cern­ment from the Spirit, but we must remem­ber that the Spirit works through com­mu­ni­ties. Our guid­ing the­olo­gies and prin­ci­ples are built upon dis­cern­ment of the Spirit, and our gut instincts can be mes­sages from the Spirit. How­ever, our the­olo­gies, prin­ci­ples, and gut instincts can also keep us in cycles of vio­lence and blind to the jus­tice issues of our day. This is the dif­fi­culty and the beauty of Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties’ involve­ment in the world.

Touched by God’s love we can­not hold it for our­selves. We can­not with­draw from the world under the guise of spir­i­tu­al­ity. We need to run into the hurt­ing world and trans­form it—or rather, wit­ness to God’s trans­for­ma­tion of it. I take a pledge today: I will not horde God’s love and jus­tice, and I will not be silent when my church hordes God’s love and justice.

Will you take this pledge with me?

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