A Good Spiritual Life

Posted on Mon, Mar 1, 2010

Dick Bowser

A Good Spiritual Life

Matthew 5:1-16

Watts Street Baptist Church

a sermon by Dick Bowser

February 28, 2010

In her sermon last week, Diane helped us begin our journey into Lent by reminding us who we are:  “Precious children of God.”  She then invited us to “enter the desert journey into Lent as people who walk by faith in hope.”

I want to follow her reminder and invitation with a question: “How is your spiritual life?”  My guess is:  most of us would answer by saying, “My spiritual life is not all that I would like it to be!”  My guess is:  If our spiritual life were ten times better than it is now, we would still wish it were better.

When we say “spiritual life” usually we are thinking about those things that have to do with piety.  Like our prayer life.  Our devotional life.  Our experiences with God’s Spirit.  When we say “spiritual life” we are thinking of piety mixed with certain feelings:  good, warm,  uplifting feelings of the sort normally associated with the phrase  “being inspired.”

The dictionary says that spiritual life “has to do with the state of the soul.”  “It is incorporeal in nature.”  Intangible.  “It is connected to the quality of holiness or sacredness.”

Spiritual life is life characterized by spirit.  The Old Testament Hebrew word for Spirit is the same word which the Hebrew language uses for wind and for breath.  Ruach.  The same is true of the New Testament Greek word Pneuma.  It also means spirit, wind and breath.  Hence, in the Bible, Spirit has to do with “the breath of life.” 

We see the interchange in the meanings of this word, for example, when  Jesus said:  “The spirit is like the wind.  It blows where it wills.”  Which is to say:  “There is no way to control the Spirit.”  We can be open to experience the presence of the Spirit, but we cannot program its coming.  We cannot determine its activity.  We cannot turn it “off and on” the way we do a faucet when we want a drink of water.  (Which is my excuse for not always having sermons that are inspiring.  I try!  And if it doesn’t happen today, don’t blame it on me!  The spirit blows where it wills.)

There are ways to measure the presence of the Spirit.  One can note evidence of its presence,  or,  as the Apostle Paul called it “the fruit of the Spirit”  -- love,  joy,  peace, long-suffering,   gentleness,  goodness,  faith,  meekness,  temperance.”  To borrow a phrase from the old communion prayer:  Evidences of the  Spirit are “outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grace.”

Jesus offered a commentary on Spiritual life.  It was the first in that series of Beatitudes I read to you a few minutes ago.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.”  Not,  blessed are the poor spirited.  But rather, “Blessed are those who feel and know their spiritual need.”  “Blessed are those who recognize a spiritual impoverishment.  Who do not pretend to be all-sufficient within themselves.”  “Blessed are those who know something of their deep need of God.”

The poor in spirit are those who leave themselves open to be visited by the Ruach, the Pneuma,  the breath and wind and spirit of life.

If we feel the quality of our spiritual life is not all we would like it to be, it might be because our expectations are too high.  Because we think that a really good spiritual life would be one that maintains a constant state of inspiration.  Like an unending mountain-top experience such as the disciples had on the Mount of Transfiguration.  You will remember Jim Travis talking about that experience in his sermon two weeks ago.  A kind of experience where the senses are set on edge with gladness.  Where one feels what the Apostle calls “unspeakable joy.”  Where there is realization, not only of being in the presence of the “Holy,” but of having become one with the “Holy” and with all that is sacred.

It may be that any disappointment we have with our spiritual life grows out of a desire to have our spirits reach a high level like that and then just stay up there.  Which is another way of saying:  Our disappointment comes because we just do not feel our selves to be lifted up enough.  We simply do not feel enough joy, or enough excitement issuing forth from our faith.  We feel more often something like “faith burn-out.”

But even if we are satisfied with an every now and then mountain-top religious experience,  we could miss the really important thing about a good spiritual life.

I say that because I believe a really good spiritual life comes, many more times than not,  not out of those mountain-top experiences,  but out of the experiences we have with the everyday routine of ordinary life. 

And I say that because I assume Jesus had a good spiritual life.  He probably had as good a spiritual life as we could hope to find anywhere.

But no where in the Gospel story do we find Jesus being preoccupied with the warm, wonderful feelings of mountain-top experiences.  To be sure, he did lead his disciples into such wonder-filled times.  (The Mount of Transfiguration, which we have already mentioned, is a case in point.)  And, surely,  the people who listened to his sermon on the Mount and other teachings, were led to similar heights.  And, again surely, he himself had such experiences with his Abba God.

But no where in the Gospel do such experiences or feelings seem to be the purpose of his teaching.  No where! No where do we see him sitting down with his disciples and sharing secrets with them about how to have never-fail, meaningful devotions.  No where does he describe discipleship as the feelings of bliss we normally associate with inspiration.  At best,  the pursuit of those feelings of being lifted-up-to-the-heights of unspeakable joy -- at best,  I believe,  those feelings were a side issue with Jesus.

If we are going to evaluate the characteristics of   “a good spiritual life,” by what Jesus said and how he himself lived,  then we have to say that far more important to him  (indeed,  about the only  concern you can find anywhere in his teaching)  was how people lived day by day, everyday.

That is why he was so earnest in reminding us, not just who we are, but of what we are because of who we are.  “You are salt,” he said.  “Go and add some flavor to the world.”  “You are light;  go and add brightness to the world.”  “You are leaven; go and be what you are so that people can taste and see that life is good and that God is good.”  “You can do it!”  he said,  “Have faith!  Even a little bit of faith!   That’s all it takes to love one another!  To be makers of peace!”  “It is all right to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake!”  “Do you not know that the kingdom of God is in you?”  “Do you really want to be made whole?”  “Do you want to see the truth?”  Do you want to see God?  Look at me!  God and I are one!”  Learn from me!  Forgive one another!  Proclaim release to the captive!  Feed the hungry!  Go, and as did the Good Samaritan in the parable I taught you, be a neighbor like that!”

Not that it is wrong to want to feel inspired.  Feeling inspired is something we all need to have happen sometimes.  Our need to feel inspired is something like our need for money.  We always seem to need more than we have.  We never have enough.  There always is that desire for more.

The problem with wanting to feel inspired is:  that could become our goal -- that could become what we seek as Christian people.  Just to have more of those marvelous feelings of inspiration.

The problem is:  the desire for those high feelings,  (for being turned-on the way drug-abusers look for a shot-in-the-arm to get turned on), our search for inspiration could become an escape from the real issues of life -- the ordinary and the routine of everyday.

The problem is:  when seeking inspiration becomes the all important goal of faith,  it tends to amount to a puffing up of the senses -- like a balloon with nothing of substance within and which will explode into shreds with no more than the prick of a pin.

A good spiritual life has to have substance to it.  A good spiritual life has to be built on a solid base with materials that are solid.  I believe that comes only out of response to God.  Out of an impoverishment of spirit that recognizes emptiness in our lives and dark corners and brokenness.  And out of that recognition cries:  “God!  I need you!” 

I believe that is what it takes for a good spiritual life to happen.  Not just that it happens.

It takes,  first of all and most of all,  a belief in miracles.  It takes belief in what is probably the hardest miracle of all to believe.  That God loves you.  As Diane said it last week: “That God fiercely loves you.”  We know that!  We all know that God loves us, but believing it:  that is hard.  Especially believing what that miracle means:  that we have been forgiven and accepted.  That is hard!

You know how, every week, after we read the corporate confession and the Liturgist says:  “Your sin is forgiven.”  and we respond, “Thanks be to God.”  We know that’s Biblical.  It is good Christian theology.  But to believe “Your sin is forgiven” in a way that you feel it deep inside,  the response is not so much a polite “Thanks be to God,” as it is an unspeakable sense from that deep inside place that says:  “Wow!” “I am OK!  In God’s love, I am OK!”  “Wow!”  You know what I am talking about.  You have been there and done that sometimes.

Can you think of anything that promises more profound joy than believing in the miracle of God’s love?

It takes that belief for the basis of any good spiritual life.  Then there is building the good spiritual life!  That takes the solid stuff of faith.  That takes a kind of response to God which in no uncertain terms says:  “Yes.”  It takes the doing of what that response requires:  Being the salt of the earth.  Light to the nations.  Leaven which, when people taste,  allows them to know that life is good and God is good.  It takes keeping open, in all we do and are, the window to God’s grace and God’s Spirit.

A spiritual life that is good and solid and strong.  That has joy spinning off it.  That bring us together again and again to praise God.  As people who are one in the spirit and, therefore, one in love.

I believe God desires for us to have an increasingly good spiritual life.  We thank God for as much as we have had.  We rejoice in that which will yet be given to us.  And we pray that it will be as God has promised:  “Far more than we could hope or desire or ask.”  Amen.

Benediction:

Go in peace.  Go back to the everyday routine of everyday.  Have a good spiritual life.  Remember to be a light.  Be leaven.  Be salt.  Be a neighbor.  Be loving.  And believe this:  the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and the grace of the Lord Jesus goes with you and will abide with you this day and evermore.  Amen.

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