Spiritual Spunk: Church Buildings, Mountaintops, Cafes and Discovering Your Place with God
Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian
April 24. 2023
Spiritual Spunk: Church Buildings, Mountaintops, Cafes, and Discovering Your Place with God
In church life, in religious life, it’s important to know, to realize, that you are not on a journey to a fulfillment or contentment. You are not on a path to enlightenment. When you come to God, or let’s say a religious worship service, it’s easy, perhaps even natural, to think you are on that path, to be in the seeking and proactive searching mode (a word on that “natural” aspect of things: human nature has as an attribute which is the worldview of being the Subject that has agency and takes action on all things, including God, to fulfill its needs).
Here, in our natural approach to worship, we look to appropriate ideas and strategies we can take with us and use during the week for spiritual spunk. A worship gathering becomes one more tool for us to use on our “spiritual journey” and one day it, It, (identity + community + meaning + destiny) will all make sense and we’ll know how to live, how to respond and we’ll have arrived.
Oswald Chambers writes this (giving us echoes of Ezekiel 37 and the dry bones rising): “Can that sinner be turned into a saint? Can that twisted life be put right? There is only one answer: ‘O Lord, Thou knowest, I don’t.’ Never trample in with religious common sense and say ‘Oh yes, with a little more Bible reading and devotion and prayer, I see how it can be done.’ It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration. That is why there are so few fellow workers with God and so many workers for God. We would rather work for God than believe in God.” (My Utmost for His Highest, Chambers, 1874-1917. I’m no Chambers fan, but this showed up in my daily devotions and is really good).
Yes, come broken and discontented to worship, but realize that it is the devil coming to devour God for its own use. There is someone, the You that is ever charging forward to fulfill its own desires, that is underneath or behind your brokenness. Better to come to worship with your pride, your hubris. Call it coming to God with honesty.
But then, why would you attend worship? Why would you come if you did not feel the need to be repaired and restored?
Okay, restoration is indeed needed, brokenness can be brought, but this awareness that we cannot not be thinking of ourselves, the putting of ourselves, not God, at the center of our lives as Subject that directs and impacts all, this awareness must be the first thing confessed and indeed is the core of our confession (on this “cannot not be thinking of ourselves”: this is the very definition of sin and therefore we cannot not be a sinner).
In our bringing of our brokenness to God the core of our sin is still our hubris. We are not really or actually broken. We are hurt, we are down-trodden and yes, even in despair, but we are a project that simply needs a repair. We are like St. Augustine’s definition of our place before God: the fire is no longer flaming and is down to low embers covered with ash but that buried burning only needs a little and steady breath from God upon it to help it revive and burn brightly again. We are not actually extinguished and in need of a brand new fire. We just need a little inspiration (for a good piece on this concerning Augustine, and in particular how Luther, an Augustinian Monk & Priest, “Out Augustined” Augustine, see Luther for Armchair Theologians, Steven Paulson, especially pp. 51-52).
Rather than actually being broken before God, where being broken means not even having brokenness to bring, we are using our brokenness as the way to place ourselves properly before God. We like to think we come with our brokenness to be healed. But, rather, what’s going on most of the time is this: we come with our “it’s getting better all the time” selves, that includes “brokenness” that needs repairing instead of what brokenness really is: having nothing, zero, zilch, to bring to God. When this nothing is confessed, stated, brought to God, then, and only then (only a dead body is raised. Live bodies, by definition, cannot be raised!) can actual resurrection happen and it happens by the simple and straightforward word from God: “I am For You.”
But, we see, and I am trying to argue here, there is no “proper” place before God. There is only our place before God. And that place is, astonishingly so, one of blessed creation. It is not proper or improper. It only is what it is, the place. And it is as the “apple of God’s eye” (Psalm 17:8). You are Beloved. By normal counts, you might think that with all my talk of barrenness, nothingness before God, that what I am saying is that we are Barren and Nothing. Not at all. Unfortunately, most of what passes today as encouragement and positivity (e.g. “don’t let anybody deny you your ‘me time,’” from daily routines to life-time vocations) is simply a lot of fragrant mist sprayed on a life that has not heard the Creator speak the core truth of being Beloved. Granted, this word “Beloved” is hard to hear in the din of life and sin (note the definition of sin above). And Baptism is the sacrament given by God so that we do hear it, daily [but Baptism has fallen out of vogue today because of the responsibilities it lays upon you to actually take care of other people and all creation in the church as well as world. The baby, the Privilege of “Beloved!,” is thus thrown out with the bathwater, (Responsibility for Creation!]. Beloved: you cannot get further away from Barren and Nothing than that.
You are Beloved. But we will not believe this (Chambers: “We would rather work for God than believe in God”). We mistake this identity of being a Creation before the Creator as meaning we are subservient or second-class. It is not. It is first-class (I’m thinking here of Jesus’ statement to his followers: “I have called you friends,” John 15:15). We will not believe God when God says our fabulousness is not irresistible and our foibles are not irreversible. We will not believe God’s Promise, in creation, let alone any covenant God strikes (and there are plenty spoken of throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, all of which we break but God still saves “the remnant” because it’s not all about a deal struck, then restored, but rather about all being grace first, middle and last). We will not believe God. We usually call it “believing in God,” but “believing God” is more accurate and lets us see this is not all about our applying our faculties or suspending our rationalities but rather whether we can recognize a good thing when we hear it.
I come to worship because I do not believe God. I do not believe in God. And I can’t find anywhere I can find the Promise of being Beloved but in the spoken and visible Promise (Word and Sacrament). And there, in that Word and Sacrament, I am a believer again. I am born again.
Discovering your place with God does not require traveling to the Himalayas for that mountaintop retreat. I think we all know this. In fact, if you did try the remote and meditative approach the probabilities are against you. Getting away and retreating, however silent and singular, can, yes, do a world of good for peace of mind. But peace with God? Not so much (back to that “path to enlightenment” thing).
But do we know that the chances are much better for the peace of God result if you head down to that local brick and mortar church building that these days is so empty that it will soon be sold and turned into a café and yoga center? Of course, and this is a big caveat, be aware, beware, not every church building actually houses a gospel community and the building might actually be a better use to the community as a place for coffee and fitness. More on that elsewhere in the “What is The Gospel, Anyway?” Project*.
Heading to that church building will humble you, break you down, for how could anyone possibly put oneself in such a vulnerable position as to say one thinks God is present and can be experienced in such a pedestrian, woebegone, human place. Oh, the humanity. Profoundly, as Chalcedon worked to dogmatize it in 425 C.E., oh the divinity!
If you are fortunate you’ll hear that Word audibly in the sermon of the day, but if the Preacher falls short any given Sunday (and, trust me, it’s hard work delivering the Good News of Promise rather than the Bad News of Demand, all the while giving the call to justice and reconciliation that God sends us out to do and God knows the world needs!), no worries, the Bread and Wine will bring visibly that Word and you just can’t mess that up, thank goodness!
“I Am For You.” “You Are Beloved.” So says and is God for you and me. Amazing. Yes, amazing.
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*”Just What is the Gospel, Anyway?” Project: Can you in 100 words or less tell me what you mean when you say “Gospel”? I gave it a shot, and wrote a book about it. I think every Christian should be able to say what they mean by “Gospel,” but I think it’s uber-important for church pastors and leaders to be able to do this. My worry is that much of what passes as “gospel” is not only irrelevant to most folks, but it’s wrong. And to make it relevant and right it’s going to take putting it out there in words and wrestling it down together. It took me 80 words to do mine. What’s yours? Can we talk? (see the “Just What is the Gospel, Anyway” blog for my 80).
