Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
Nov. 6, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

OK. So it wasn’t a summer vacation, it was a fall vacation. And it was as much sabbatical or study leave as it was vacation. Still, what I want to do this morning is tell you about a couple of things I did during my time off in October and say a bit about what I think it might mean for us here at Monroe Congregational UCC. After all, I intended this time off to be, and as I said, it was sabbatical time as much as vacation time; and I actually did a good deal of study and thinking while I was away. Specifically I want to tell you about two speakers I heard, one of them actually a couple of days before my time off began and the other during my time off. Both of them had things to say that I think suggest a couple of emphases that we may want to adopt as we seek to be church and to follow God’s calling as we go forward together in this place and time.

The first speaker was Diana Butler Bass. Bass is an historian who works a lot with sociological data concerning churches. She has a new book coming out next year with the title Christianity After Religion. Bass talked a lot about the well-known distinction between religion and spirituality. We hear people around here say all the time that they are spiritual but not religious. I’ve always maintained that that is a false distinction, because religion properly understood is a kind of spirituality. Still, people often hold spirituality and religion up as some kind of opposites, where it is possible to be one but not the other. As Bass used the terms “spiritual” is associated with an experience of connection with the transcendent that is internally valid. We feel it, and we feel it’s truth inside. Religion on the other had is associated with an institution with rules and regulations around divine things that are externally derived and externally authoritative. Spirituality is something internal that has to do with connection, both with God and with other people. Religion is something external that has to do with institutions, rules, and doctrines.

Bass cited a good deal of recent social scientific research that suggests that what people are longing for, and what people are moving toward, is a combination of spirituality and religion. People are thinking not spirituality or religion but spirituality and religion. Religion and spirituality both have their virtues and their shortcomings. Left to the individual spirituality can easily become self-centered and idiosyncratic. Without a focus on the spiritual religion can easily become rigid and emotionally sterile. Spirituality combined with religion, in the sense Bass used those terms, could help us avoid the pitfalls of both an amorphous, self-centered spirituality and a rigid, sterile religiosity.

I don’t know if Bass is right about the movement in our society being in the direction of combining spirituality and religion, but I hope she is. As I heard her talk I was quite taken with the notion that God is calling us today to live in the “and” of spirituality and religion. We are of course a religious institution. We have a structure, and that structure has a culture that is about both what it believes and how it operates. Our structure in the UCC may be less rigid that is the structure of many other denominations, but it is still a religious structure. Our worship has a particular form. It follows a familiar pattern week after week. We have our way of doing things, and we are in covenant with other UCC churches and the regional and national structures of the UCC. Bass’ talk leads me to ask questions like: What would it mean for us to focus on making our institutional forms, our structures, the familiar patterns of our religious life more spiritual, more infused with the moving of the Holy Spirit among us? How could we make worship more experiential, more participatory and less passive (for you—it’s not particularly passive for me), less just sitting there and listening? I don’t have answers to those questions. I don’t think that it is up to me alone to come up with answers to those questions. They are, however, questions I would like to explore with you as go forward here at Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ.

Robin Meyers, the other speaker I heard, comes at things in a very different way than does Diana Butler Bass. Bass is a scholar, Meyers is a pastor and a preacher, pastor of Mayflower Congregational UCC in Oklahoma City, OK. Our Sunday morning adult education forum began reading his book Saving Jesus From the Church just this morning. We’re just getting started, so feel free to come join us next Sunday if you like. Meyers’ work is complex, and there is much of it with which I disagree. We’ll be talking about that as we read the book on Sunday mornings. Still, the major thrust of Meyers’ writing and speaking is definitely worth listening to. Meyers calls the church to worry a whole lot less about doctrine than it usually does and to start following Jesus rather than worshiping him. For Meyers following Jesus means doing the work of social justice, being a center of peaceful resistance to the use of violence, being a truly inclusive community where all are truly welcome. His work raises a lot of very difficult questions about what God is calling us to do, how God is calling us to be, as faithful followers of Jesus in this time and place. Again, I don’t have answers to those questions, and . I don’t think it is up to me alone to find answers to them. They are however questions I would like to focus on with you

Our scripture lessons this morning frame these questions for us in a helpful way. In the reading from Joshua we hear Joshua, Moses’ successor as the leader of the Hebrew people, put before the people the challenge of whether they will worship their God Yahweh, the God who freed them from bondage in Israel, or worship other gods. Joshua leaves the decision up to the people, but he says “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”, that is, we will serve Yahweh, our one true God. The parable of the bridesmaids with the lamps from Matthew is about being ready for the coming of the Lord, in this case Jesus Christ. The parable calls us to consider what we need to do, individually and as a community, to be ready to serve God when God comes knocking on our door, when God seeks to enter our lives and inspire us to do the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Together these stories ask us: What are you doing to be ready to serve the Lord when God calls you to serve? Are we ready to serve the Lord in our worship? In other aspects of our life together? In doing the work of peace and justice outside the walls of the church? If we’re going to serve the Lord, are our lamps filled with oil and ready to burn with the light of Christ? These are important questions. They are questions I hope to discuss with you so that together we may grope our way toward answers. As we do, God will be with us, so we have nothing to fear. I hope that you too are ready for those conversations. Amen.