Don’t Let Them Eat Cake- The Importance of Spiritual Formation

It seems there comes a time in each of our lives when we find ourselves really interested in something that never, ever interested us before. Right now for my husband, Dave, and I—proud parents of a twenty-two month old boy—that something is, of course, potty training. I, have been down this road twice, already.  I knew that this would be part of parenting when I opted to have a third child, but I had no idea how different, time consuming, and totally family involving the process would be.   What’s more, I never would have thought I’d be so willing to talk about it with others. Of course, I’m not alone here. There’s a book called The Tao of Poop by Vivian Glyck. It seems that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from not only potty training, but from all the messiness that comes with raising a child. “Parenting,” Glyck writes, “is the ultimate spiritual practice.”  In order to survive the chaos of parenthood and find enjoyment in it, she explains, we must evolve and become wiser each day. 

Doesn’t that sound glorious? Words of wisdom from The Tao of Poop. But this isn’t the first time I’ve found myself surprised by my interest in a subject that previously seemed unbelievably mundane. You may have noticed that I’m one of those fashionable older seminarians, starting vocational ministry as a second career, so I’ve already had to deal with another huge paradigm shift in my thinking, this one around homework. I’m sure that my oh-so-early-twenty-something self would be absolutely horrified at my pushing-forty-late-thirty-something self’s struggle to find time to do everything I need to do everyday. Even my early-thirty-something self might find it amusing that I have gone from reading a book a week, learning faux painting techniques, and staying up until 11 to watch television to listening to books while I drive, studying Hebrew language flashcards in the bank drive through, and staying up until midnight to study. Actually, now that I said it out loud, I, myself, am a little stunned with that bit of knowledge.  The point is life’s full of these kinds of changes in consciousness. And Vivian Glyck’s advice applies equally to all of them: in order to survive, we must evolve and become wiser each day. We have formation to do.

Now for subjects like parenting and study habits, there’s plenty of help out there. When Dave and I announced that we were going to have a baby, friends and family responded with a deluge of books, web articles, and magazines on parenting. I need only then, and still, pick up the phone and tap into the many decades of parenting experience in this congregation.   And when the first glimmer of interest in going back to school appeared in my mind, I had no trouble finding books on how to be an effective adult learner, had no shortage of well wishes, and offers of study help, baby sitting, and all manner of support.

But this sermon isn’t about parenting, or being a student. It’s about faith. And while both parenting and education may be thought of as acts of faith, that’s not the kind of faith I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the kind of faith that leads us to pose the questions “Who am I called, authentically to be, in loving relationship with God and neighbor?”   It’s the kind of faith the historian of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith described as “a quiet confidence and joy which enables one to feel at home in the universe.” I’m talking about the kind of faith about which theologian James Luther Adams remarked, “An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident. A faith worth having is a faith worth discussing and testing."

Personally, I’m not sure how well we do that sort of discussing and testing of faith. It’s been my experience that many of us are more likely to feel comfortable talking about politics, money or even potty training than we are discussing and testing our personal faith. Indeed, I’ve known a few people who, near the end of their lives, found themselves with deep and profound questions about their relationship with God; wonderful, intelligent people who were longtime church members, but who just never got around to examining their beliefs about their relationship with God. And I have to say, it’s a sad and even frightening thing to witness. How do you help someone who knows that she or he has very little time left, but who suddenly feels compelled to reexamine life’s most complicated questions?

So I’d like to make a bold statement here. As Americans, we constantly think about our physical and mental wellbeing.  But, we need to pay as much attention to our spiritual wellbeing. Just as a parent, I know that I must give my children nourishing, wholesome food so that they can grow and develop, so too, must I, as a person of faith, feed my faith life that it might be healthy and strong.  Most of us would never dream of eating only chocolate cake.  Sure, it tastes good.  It tastes great, but it would not enrich our bodies.  It would not sustain us.  We will look at the food pyramid, we will eat the dread vegetables, and we will consume the prerequisite eight glasses of water a day, we will try to eat in such a way as to keep ourselves at our best.  But, we, the same people, are content to allow our Bibles to gather dust, forego prayer, and gather our theology from the pop culture of the day. 

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, sold millions of copies and became a box office success starring Tom Hanks.  It was a great book.  I liked it a lot.  I own the book and the movie.  I even have a really cool reproduction cryptex that my husband got for me.  Still, The Da Vinci Code is theological chocolate cake.  It is easy to digest, and is even thought provoking, but it cannot sustain my faith development.  I am not going to feed my soul on just The Da Vinci Code.  No, the Bible is clear.  As the Psalmist put it, we are to treasure God’s word in our hearts.  There is an old saying that if you look where your time goes, there you will find your treasure.  How much time do you devote to reading God’s word?  How much of your day is spent in prayer?

Now, hear me say, pop culture, in and of itself, is not bad.  In fact, I am all for anything that gets people interested in talking about God.  But, it has to be a starting place rather than an ending place.  And, what a unique opportunity, to find people suddenly deeply interested in something that never interested them before.  It presses upon the church the need to be engaging, as well.  People read The Da Vinci Code, The Left Behind series and The Secret because they present their subjects in an engaging way.  And, the kicker is, people are interested, interested to the tune of millions of dollars in sales.  So, what can the church do?

First of all, it is important that we, as a congregation, offer faith development opportunities. We have to feed the spiritually hungry. Now, we are doing a great job with two different worship services.  Each reaches people that the other would not.  We have Sunday School classes with different curriculums and different focuses.  We have a new book study, we have a single adult ministry, we have children and youth ministries.  And, most importantly, we have openness to create new opportunities that showcase and nurture the talents and interests of this congregation.  Still, how many people on our rosters, in our pews, are not involved in any of those?  How many are just waiting to be asked?

In order to reap the full spiritual benefits of these faith development opportunities, we have to participate in them.  If there is none that suits your needs, desires, or interests, start a new one. It is important.  Without nourishment, burgeoning spirituality does not grow.  And as long as I’m making bold statements, here’s another. It is up to us, each of us, to invest in our community of faith.  We are called to be community, not just experience community.  Did you catch that verb?  We are to be community.

So, how does one invest in one’s community of faith? Once upon a time (the 1950s, to be precise), investing in one’s congregation meant adopting what Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow calls a “dwelling spirituality,” which “emphasizes habitation: God occupies a definite place in the universe and creates a sacred space where humans too can dwell; to inhabit sacred space is to know its territory and to feel secure.” Many of us have encountered and even participated in this sort of spirituality. It is a spirituality of authority and conformity, of dogma and creed. It seems so easy.  We just become the passive recipients of church.  We go to church, we don’t become  the church.  But this sort of spirituality is also confining. It puts God in a box, or at least a building, and it is easily put on a shelf come Monday morning, not to be touched again until the following Sunday.  There is no relationship.

And, Wuthnow describes another kind of spirituality in his book After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s. He calls it “seeking spirituality.” Rather than the old-time religion of dwelling-oriented spirituality, seeking-oriented spirituality is New Age. People search for experiences of the transcendent in a diverse spiritual market place, handling “a hundred items and put[ting] them down,” like so many spiritual window-shoppers. Attending a community of faith may still be an option for these seekers, but they rarely, if ever, are cradle-to-grave members of a single congregation or even a single tradition. Ultimately, they see their congregation not as a home, but as “a supplier of spiritual goods and services.” The problem with this kind of spirituality is that we become consumers rather than brothers and sisters.  And where is God?  Are congregations mere franchises handing out prepackaged “experiences?”  Again, there is no relationship.

Fortunately, Wuthnow offers a third alternative, a spirituality that combines the best of both dwelling and seeking, a spirituality that can offer both a spiritual home and a spiritual journey. He calls it “practice-oriented spirituality,” and it takes a community effort to engage in this sort of spirituality. Wuthnow defines practice as “engaging intentionally in activities that deepen [one’s] relationship to the sacred.” Wuthnow says that such practice is intentional, disciplined, and long term; that it involves self-reflection and discernment; it is interlaced with daily life; it has a social dimension; it is guided by rules; it leads to a life of service; and it is rewarding.

These traits describe, I believe, what many of us would love to find in a religious community, a community that we want to participate in not because our tradition tells us we must, but because we find it so rewarding, so life-affirming, so spiritually satisfying that we couldn’t imagine our lives without it. Ah, but there’s a rub. Such communities exist only when we create them, when we invest in them. And just as in parenting or our education, the more we invest spiritually in our communities of faith the better they become. And I believe this congregation can continue to grow and strengthen, if we follow the example of the early church found in Acts:

Acts 2:42 – They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

And here is where I’d like to leave you: with the possibility of this faith community growing and becoming stronger, with members who seek intentional spiritual formation.   Think, for a moment, about all the ways we can nurture and be nurtured on our shared faith journeys, and let us not gorge ourselves on chocolate cake, but feast on study,  prayer, and community.  Amen.