Title: The Stirrings of God
Scripture: Matthew 4:12-23, I Corinthians 1:10-18
1/23/05 Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
The unison prayer we shared this morning is from the Seasons of the Spirit curriculum we use in our Sunday school program, a wonderful curriculum that gives us many rich resources to use in worship as well. I appreciated how the prayer lifted up two central aspects of faith in the United Church of Christ, that in choosing to follow God we are called to serve, and service can take many various shapes. Discerning our call is the process of coming to recognize where our gifts meet the worlds need.
But before we can discern where to serve, we must first recognize the inner stirring that invites us to open ourselves to God - to the Holy - to the sacred Source of our Strength.
In Paul's letter to the Corinthian church we get a glimpse of what it was like in the early church as its members were moved by their inner yearning to seek God. And as is common in our seeking, we look to “guides”, teachers and books to help us and so learn in the letter that some of the church members had been helped by Paul; others by Apollo, an Alexandrian Jew, and still others were helped by the disciple Peter. Apparently there was division in the new church as people argued over which teacher was THE teacher. Paul was trying to clarify in his letter to them that it was not the teacher that was important, but what was taught. Paul did not seek to have “followers of Paul” but to guide the people in the Corinth church in the way of Christ, that they might find their way towards a relationship with God and then towards a life of service.
According to historians, the conflict was intense because there were lots of various opportunities for spiritual searching in the city of Corinth and Paul's version of Jesus and God was not the only game in town. The Corinth of Paul's day was relatively new due to the old Corinth being burned to the ground by the Romans in 146 BCE. 100 years passed before Julius Caesar rebuilt it and named it Julia Corinthus. It became an important seaport and a significant commercial center where people from many various places would come and go, bringing their goods and their troubles with them. Apparently the city was dealing with issues of sexual immorality (sexual activity outside of marriage), sacrificing to idols, people taking their personal problems to court and plugging the justice system, there were debates over who could marry who and arguments over the rights of women. (Things have not changed all that much!)
It is no easy task to come into a diverse and changing seaport like Corinth and try to convince people that Christ is the only way to God when there are so many other paths to choose from and distractions to claim you!
Over this past month in my studies for the pastoral leadership program at Seattle University I have learned that the same could be said for we who live in the Pacific Northwest. We live in a part of the country that is more religiously and spiritually diverse than any other part of the United States. The following three facts provide the broad contours of the region's religious environment: In the PNW (Washington, Oregon and Alaska) a bit more than a third of the population identify and participate institutionally - (and as far as Christianity goes, there is no one denomination that clearly dominates in numbers).
A slightly larger portion (just more than 1/3) of the PNW population identify but do not participate, and a quarter or more of adults neither identify nor participate. (Religion and Public Life in the PNW)
Compared to the nation, approximately 37.2% of people in WA, OR and AK attend a religious institution, while nationally 59.4% attend.
The number of people that identify with a religious tradition but do not participate in a religious community is larger in the PNW than anywhere else in the nation.
The 25% of folk in the PNW that neither identify or participate are called the “Nones” by the authors of the book Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest, The None Zone. BUT, by far the majority of these “Nones” do believe in God and in the power of prayer, only a very small number are agnostic or atheist. The Nones do not participate in institutionalized religion but they do see themselves as being spiritually connected to something, and for many - what they are most connected to spiritually is nature.
The two fastest growing groups in the PNW are the evangelicals and the spiritual minded environmentalists. Ironically, most of the evangelical churches are not environmentally inclined yet seem to speak to some of the other spiritual longings people look for in our area. For the most part, the evangelical churches are “new”. We in the PNW like “new” starts, things that don't have a lot of already set traditions connected to it and that symbolize an entrepreneural spirit. People in the PNW seem to be obsessed with big. Researchers found that we like big, mega-churches. If the religious group is big, than it means it is “real”.
We are also ambivalent about community in the PNW- we want it yet we are ambivalent about it. It is easier to be in that in-between place of being connected but not connected in a mega church. People in our area like individualistic and emotionally intense spiritual experiences, with the use of technology, music and the charisma of the pastors, that kind of intensity is more readily available.
Despite the popularity of the mega church in the PNW, it is believed by those who research these kinds of things, that the spiritually minded environmentalists will eventually become the dominant “religion” in the PNW. In general, we in the PNW are very connected to our geographical landscape and it invokes in us a drive to protect it and enjoy it.
This is all to say that Paul would have a challenging time in the Pacific Northwest of convincing its citizens that Christ was the only real spiritual path to follow to find God. However, Paul would come here and find that the majority of people do indeed experience the stirring of the Holy within and around them but we are just not easily tied down to one way of understanding, expressing or nurturing it. Personally, I think that is one of the reasons why it is so exciting to pastor in the PNW!
How many of you realized that by being in church, you are a part of the minority in this part of the country?
I may have shared with you just enough information about religious life in the PNW to make you wonder if even Jesus, much less Paul or any of us in the Christian church, have a chance of ultimately surviving out here in the Wild West! You will need to come back to church next Sunday to find out my answer!
Let us pray…