Ep 4:25-5:2
9 August 2009
“Spiritual Formation in a Distant Land”
In
recent years, more and more attention has been paid to spiritual
formation. An abundance of books,
speakers, seminars, retreats—even your pastors—have been directed toward
it. Though it may be dismissed by some
as trendy, spiritual formation has been practiced for centuries.
And
just what, you may ask, is spiritual formation?
Good question! The term
“spiritual formation” may sound like some obscure, mysterious rite of passage. Maybe it conjures up images of people sitting
and chanting for hours at a time.
At some
level, spiritual formation is simply a fact of life. Just as our bodies are formed as we grow up,
so our spirits are given form. The
Christian philosopher Dallas Willard says of spiritual formation that it’s “the
process by which the human spirit or will is given a definite ‘form’ or
character. It is a process that happens
to everyone. The most despicable as well
as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation. Terrorists as well as saints are the outcome
of spiritual formation. Their spirits or
hearts have been formed. Period.”[1]
That’s
the kind of formation that simply happens. But just as there’s a difference between the
formation of a body that’s merely allowed to exist and a body shaped by
exercise, there’s also a difference in the arena of the spirit. Willard describes a distinctively Christian spiritual formation as “the [Holy]
Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a
way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”[2] That’s as good a definition as I’ve
encountered.
But
giving definitions of words isn’t the most effective or interesting way to make
a point. Stories grab our attention more
easily than do lists of definitions.
Jesus certainly thought so. I
know lots of stories, but I suppose the story I know best is my own. I think it’s safe to say that the story known
best by all of us is our own.
Banu
and I were ordained in February ‘97 at Overbrook Presbyterian in
Philadelphia. My pastor, Rev. David
McMillan, gave me this charge at the end of the service: tell your story of being in a distant
land. He was talking about several
things.
At the time, I wore a
bandana on my head. It was a mute
witness to my experience of brain cancer.
I had been on a journey, almost a year and a half long at that point,
which included seizure, diagnosis, surgery, radiation therapy, another seizure,
another surgery, then seven cycles of chemotherapy.
Along the way, plenty of CAT
and MRI scans, a port temporarily implanted in my chest for antibiotics,
needles and more needles, and did I happen to mention…needles? To him, that constituted “being in a distant
land.”
He was
also referring to the spiritual journey I had taken, at least, the parts of it
that he knew. Coming from an Assemblies
of God church in Tennessee to an American Baptist seminary in Philadelphia to
the PC(USA) church across the street—and knowing that I had worshipped and
worked with Christians of many different stripes besides that—that also
constituted “being in a distant land.”
And about that journey: I remember one time when he asked me if the
Pentecostal folks back home feared that I was losing my soul by becoming a
Presbyterian! At first I thought he was
just joking around, but then I realized that he was sincere in his concern.
I must
confess, though, I’ve tended to discount my pastor’s charge to me. I’ve included parts of my story from time to
time, but probably not in the deliberate way he intended. To be honest, I fear boring people by talking
about myself. For that matter, I fear
boring myself! What’s more, I believe
that what’s really important isn’t my story, but the story of Jesus Christ.
Still, as I’ve sometimes
told people who are hesitant to speak about God and faith: it’s not a bad idea to start with what the
Lord has done in your life.
It’s
also true that many of the greatest works of all time have been life
stories—biographies and autobiographies.
A good example of the latter is The
Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, one of the spiritual giants of the
twentieth century. His journal, The Sign of Jonas, covers his first few
years in the monastery; it picks up where The
Seven Storey Mountain leaves off. In
it, Merton reflects on this business of telling one’s own story.
“The
man who began this journal is dead,” he says, “just as the man who finished The Seven Storey Mountain when this
journal began was also dead, and what is more the man who was the central
figure in The Seven Storey Mountain
was dead over and over. And now that all
these men are dead, it is sufficient for me to say so on paper and I think I
will have ended up by forgetting them…Consequently, The Seven Storey Mountain is the work of a man I never even heard
of. And this journal is getting to be
the production of somebody to whom I have never had the dishonor of an
introduction.”[3]
I
especially like that last line, when he refers to himself in his current work as someone to whom he’s “never had the dishonor
of an introduction.” I think I know what
he’s talking about. I look back at stuff
I wrote in the past—more than that, I look back at the kind of person I was—and
I wonder, “Who was that guy? What an
idiot!” Talk about “being in a distant
land.” That’s one place I never want to
see again!
Thomas
Merton says such things, because he knows that he must die, so that Christ can
live in him. But there’s absolutely no
hint of self-hatred here; that would mean hating God’s good creation. Rather, it’s humility that teaches him his
own unworthiness to the same extent
that he promotes himself. But to the extent that Christ shines through
him, he has a message that will endure for generations to come. And that’s true for all of us.
Merton
speaks of this pretty clearly in a prayer he includes. “You have made my soul for Your peace and
Your silence, but it is lacerated by the noise of my activity and my
desires. My mind is crucified all day by
its own hunger for experience, for ideas, for satisfaction.” And speaking of his own body and spirit, he
says, “I do not possess my house in silence…
“I am
content that these pages show me to be what I am—noisy, full of the racket of
my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my house is, You live there!”[4] There aren’t many places in which my story
parallels Merton’s, but this is one of them!
For
Christian spiritual formation to proceed, there does need to be the kind of
honest self-evaluation that we see in Thomas Merton. According to our friend Dallas Willard, the
appeal of such a course in life “is totally obvious to any thoughtful
person. But,” he says, “we are rarely
thoughtful.”
He quotes the poet A. E.
Houseman in saying, “’We think by fits and starts.’ Thus a part of the call of God to us has
always been to think. Indeed the call of Jesus to ‘repent’ is nothing
but a call to think about how we have been thinking.”[5] The Greek word for repentance is metavnoia (metanoia)—a change of mind.
The
point is, spiritual formation involves both mind and body. Where the mind leads, the body will
follow. Whether it’s a surprise birthday
party, a touchdown pass, or a war—it first began as an idea in somebody’s
head. What is it that fills our
minds? Do our thoughts lead us to
abundant life in Christ or to what our society deems as the good life?
Being
Christian should make a difference in how we think. It should make a difference in how we live
our lives. We can outwardly have the
same political or philosophical ideas as those who aren’t in Christ, but our orientation—where we’re coming from—is
quite different. It isn’t about
political party or national identity or anything besides Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul, in today’s
epistle reading, shows this mind-body connection with his instructions to the
Ephesians. The passage begins, as any
genuine search for truth must, with no more lying. In the NRSV, Paul’s call is to put away
“falsehood” (v. 25). In Greek, the term
is yeudo" (pseudos); Paul says to put
away “the lie.” That’s a fairly
all-inclusive word.
Something
that could qualify as “the lie” in America is what Willard calls “consumer
Christianity,” which he says “is now normative.” That is, it’s more the rule than the
exception. “The consumer Christian is
one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the
church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost
thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed
and not committed to it.”[6]
In
another place, Willard refers to something similar: “vampire Christianity.”[7] This is the approach that basically says to
Jesus: “I’d like a little of your blood,
please. But I don’t care to be your
student or have your character. In fact,
won’t you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I’ll see you in
heaven.”
But
before I get too far away from my underlying theme of story, let me bring our
collective story into view. We who are
here have been in distant lands—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively.
How do
we cooperate with the Spirit in the process of Christian spiritual
formation? How can we use our minds
differently? Certainly daily prayer and
reflective reading of the scriptures can transform our thinking. How can we use our bodies differently? Other spiritual disciplines, like fasting,
silence, and pursuing justice, can liberate us from our desires. We can be free to be the people we’ve always
wanted to be.
I want to wrap up by
revisiting my former pastor who got me started on this story of being in a
distant land. In one of the church
newsletters, he shared some thoughts from his own story—his visit, so to speak,
to a distant land. I think it speaks
well to our own story here.
“Have I
grown so accustomed to retreat that I fear victory,” he begins, “so familiar
with the role of victim that I know not how to play any other?…Does my sense of
inadequacy [so excuse] me from responsibility that I now can enjoy criticizing
others without even having to try? How
Lord, shall I dare to think of myself as powerful, and responsible?
“For anyone
who has heard, however dimly, the claims of Easter, these are questions which
must be answered. Jesus Christ becomes a
crisis to all who are witnesses. He
stands in the path of our retreat, requiring we say who he is.
“Take,
then, the victory of Christ as your victory over all that makes you
afraid. Have you feared the test result;
dare now to take the test you so much feared.
Have you feared the answer; dare now to ask the question whose answer
you have so long feared.
“Take
then, the power of Christ as your power over all that makes you feel
inadequate. Have you hesitated to enter
the gym because they might laugh at your body; dare now to go where you have
not gone. Have you never written a poem
because someone might read what you write; dare now to say what is in your
soul.
“Take
then the light of Christ as your light to show you the way. Have you hesitated to rise and to walk on to
the next job, the new home, the new school, the new relationship because you
could not see the way; dare now to walk on.
Because you now dare to see death, you can begin to look forward to
life. Thanks be to God.”
[1]
[2] Willard, 22.
[3] Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1953), 328.
[4] Merton, 47.
[5]
[6] Willard, 342.
[7] http://www.baskettcase.com/blog/2006/11/06/vampire-christianity