Spiritual Life as Journey

Here's a little talk I did at the Baptist Student Union tonight. Any thoughts?

The Spiritual Life as Journey:
Curiosity and Community while Wandering in the Wilderness

Speaking to you students tonight is a great opportunity. I know how valuable your time is. Furthermore, I know that you came here tonight for a couple of different reasons. Of which, one of those, is not necessarily to hear me speak. (That’s just a little bonus at no extra charge.) But, I have come to believe that you are here week after week looking, for two things…communion with God and a community with others.

I have a sense that both are taking place.

So, I speak to you tonight as one experiencing communion with God in so many different ways AND as one from the community of people following in the way of Jesus.

I want to talk with you about something very personal, that is, my spiritual life, my spiritual journey. You should understand, first, that this is a journey in progress. I have not yet arrived, nor have I succeeded at anything spiritual, and I am not an expert. I am a sojourner…just like you.

There are lots of biblical images of journeys (e.g. The Exodus from Egypt, Wilderness Wanderings, the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness, the Birth of Jesus (from Nazareth to Bethlehem), Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem…Triumphal Entry, journey of the church in Acts, Paul’s missionary journeys, etc.)

(Story #1)
The beginning of my spiritual journey is rooted in my curiosity. (arguably, a spiritual discipline)

As a kid, I remember going into my parent’s room to look at books. I looked through my mother’s and father’s high school yearbooks. I saw the lives of young people in the late 1950s and early 1960s. (Or I , at least, saw it through the eyes of each yearbook’s editor.) No one was smoking. No one was strung out on crack cocaine. Maybe there was some drinking, but certainly there was no casual drug use or sex! Beyond the yearbooks, there were books about sex too. And my parents had a few…not the pornographic kind, but the educational kind. There were four, maybe six volumes, that could give me all I needed to know about my body parts, a girl’s body parts, and how they worked together to bring about a baby. As a kid, that’s what sex was for…babies. I don’t remember anything about intimacy, love, or “how far is too far?”

More to the point, there were still other books, about Jesus and Christianity (which, by the way, is my topic tonight, lest, you thought I wanted to talk with you about sex, sexuality, and that good ole question of “how far is too far?”) The books about Jesus were what captivated my curiosity and my journey began. I remember one book in particular that had a picture of Jesus on the cross complete with bloody hands and feet, a crown of thorns, and a few mourners at the foot of the cross. Oddly, I remember “sneaking” into my parents room, not to look at the yearbooks and sex-books, but to gaze curiously at, even meditate on, this picture of Jesus whom I had heard about at church.

(Observation #1) – about curiosity
They say, “curiosity killed the cat.” While that cliché may be true, I also believe that curiosity can carry us to some interesting places of a spiritual nature. So, the next step is the questioning and the searching, but not necessarily answers and discoveries.

Too many times in our lives, our Christian lives, we are focused more on the final result, the end of the journey, the right answer, or the destination. In doing so, we risk missing much of what God is doing by way of our spiritual formation.

In the Exodus story, we don’t just move from Egypt all the way to the Promised Land. We wander in desert places. We journey through dry times. We question. We doubt. We are uncertain. We are afraid. It’s what one of my favorite writers, Parker Palmer, calls the “Journey through Darkness.” And any experience of living in light is better understood when we’ve experienced that pain of being in darkness. (Repeat)

(Story #2)
What am I curious about now? (Lots of curiosity in between) For now…church. Communal Christian faith.

I didn’t always like going to church, but when I became a minister I felt like I had to go. Growing up in North Carolina made it easy to be a Christian. Children went to Sunday School every Sunday even if your parents just dropped you off then joined you later for “big” church. You didn’t have to stay in “big” church long. The minister welcomed people, prayed a prayer and everyone sang two hymns. During the second hymn all the children came to the first few rows to hear a special message just for them. I cannot remember any specific lesson taught during these moments. I remember it being a time when bible stories were told. Stories about Jesus that we had just heard in Sunday School were retold with the minister’s explanation tagged on the end. After the children’s time in worship, we were led back to the Sunday School rooms for Children’s Church. (Did you go to this?) Perhaps, this is where the idea of “church” was formed. Church, for children, meant sitting back in the Sunday School rooms waiting for our parents to finish whatever church meant to them. Children’s church consisted of playing “Bible” Football or “Bible” Charades or “Bible” Baseball. It was all knowledge-based. Therefore, church meant knowing something.

I wanted to go to church. More specifically, I wanted to go to Sunday School. Every quarter there was a special assembly held in the fellowship hall to honor attendance in Sunday School. Pins were awarded for perfect attendance. I cannot remember in what increments awards were given, but I certainly remember that I earned the “one-year” pin. However, it was a lie. It was not a lie that I told or my parents, but my Sunday School teacher fudged the books a little in my favor.

One winter Sunday morning, I remember both of my parents coming into my room. After waking me up, they informed me that it had snowed all night and that we might not be able to drive to church safely. Knowing that my sights were set on the attendance award, they asked very gently if it would be okay to stay home. I agreed. The following Sunday the Sunday School teacher asked me if I would have come to Sunday school if it had not snowed. I said yes. She changed the attendance book and some time later, I was awarded a pin for perfect attendance at Sunday school for one year. And so I was taught another lesson about church. Church meant achieving something.

(Observation #2)
These are not bad memories, but ones that come to the forefront of my mind as I think now about the nature of church. Is church about knowing something? Is church about achieving something? For many, I am afraid it is. Church is about knowing AND agreeing with a statement of faith. Many use wording such as, “We believe in….” or “We confess…” But, isn’t it true that many of these statements of faith could be said, “We know this about God,” or “We know that about the Bible,” and so forth? The implication, then, is that they know something I (you?) do not. I am not interested in that. (Don’t misunderstand…there is a place for doctrine and orthodoxy). Furthermore, the Christian life itself is characterized by achieving something (e.g., a better relationship with God, a revelation of life’s purpose, or the satisfaction on Sunday afternoon that I actually went to church and everyone saw me there and I can speak all next week with the piety of the Pharisees).

Part of this journey for me now is waiting for an experience, a revelation, a vision of what church means. So, I go back to a biblical image.

Like the Israelites wandering through the wilderness, I am afraid. I am terrified that what I might find along this journey is not what I set out to see. I’m afraid that what I might actually see is a church that is radically different than the way it looks now. Different means change and change is hard! I am not suggesting “going back” to anything, to the way things used to be. That’s what the miserable Hebrews wanted, grumbling that things were better being slaves in Egypt than nomads in the desert. No. I am hopeful and trusting in God’s faithfulness who always leads people from the desert to an oasis. I believe that even though we may be facing darkness, a light still shines. And the light is found in Jesus. Communion with God is found in a relationship with God through Jesus. It’s not knowing about Jesus. It’s knowing Jesus. It’s not about some personal pious achievement. It’s relating to others who are wandering (or wondering?) in the same way, the way of Jesus.

(A Final Image)
There’s a final image or impression I’d like to give about this idea of the spiritual life as a journey that begins with curiosity, leads through darkness, encounters Jesus all along the way, and calls us into faithful community. It comes from philosopher/theologian, Jimmy Buffet, in his song “He Went to Paris.”

He went to Paris lookin’ for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive, young and aggressive
Savin’ the world on his own

But the warm summer breezes
The french wines and cheeses
Put his ambition at bay
The summers and winters
Scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away

Then he went to england, played the piano
And married an actress named kim
They had a fine life, she was a good wife
And bore him a young son named jim

And all of the answers and all of the questions
Locked in his attic one day
’cause he liked the quiet clean country livin’
And twenty more years slipped away

Well the war took his baby, the bombs killed his lady
And left him with only one eye
His body was battered, his whole world was shattered
And all he could do was just cry

While the tears were a-fallin’ he was recallin’
Answers he never found
So he hopped on a freighter, skidded the ocean
And left england without a sound

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s
And drinks his green label each day
Writing his memoirs, losin’ his hearin’
But he don’t care what most people say

Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you he’ll smile and he’ll say
Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way

Coda:
And he went to paris lookin’ for answers
To questions that bothered him so

(Conclusion)
The spiritual life is a journey. (Even a journey as Buffet describes here.) It’s about questions, searching, and even wandering. Growth happens in the midst of the journey even when you find yourself journeying through the wilderness. Remember, “some of it’s magic and some of it’s tragic.” Certainly, the spiritual life is magical, mystical, and full of experiences to celebrate and glorify God. But, it’s also tragic, full of doubt, fear, unanswerable questions, and desperate times in the wilderness that can lead us to Promised Land, or allow us to sing, “I had a good life all the way.”

From my perspective that I’ve tried to share here…Curiosity gets things moving. Along the way, we come to know Jesus and relate to God through a relationship with him that leads us into relationships with other sojourners.