Title: Growing Spiritually
Scripture: Philippians 2:1-13; Exodus 17:1-7
9/25/05 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
A child is born into the world completely dependent on the care of his or her parent(s) to survive.
The child has no ability to retrieve food on his own accord when he is hungry or drink when she is thirsty.
In reading this weeks-assigned passage from the book of Exodus the early Israelites reminded me of newborn babies turning to their leader Moses as if he was their momma. “We are thirsty”, they cry, “give us something to drink right now!”
The Apostle Paul would say that as people of faith - we are all like infants, hungry for God's attention and providence. This is a common place from which faith in God begins. God is Holy Other - far away and distant yet with the right words from us he might be prodded into supplying us with what we need to survive.
The dependent infant grows into the talkative two-year-old and eventually into the demanding three-year-old and before you know it is in elementary school and can tie his own shoes and brush her own hair, learn math tables and name the capitols of each state in the U.S. We become more and more independent through the years and believe that we know it all and can do anything we want! But, THANK GOD, if we survive our teens and our young adult years! We begin to realize that we are not so independent or smart after all, but are actually quite interdependent on many people and resources in order to survive, much less thrive.
Our spirituality is meant to do the same - to grow and evolve as we mature as human beings. We can certainly stay as spiritual infants crying out to God all of our lives to do this or that for us - but we were not built to remain spiritual infants any more than we are built to remain physical infants either.
The Israelites at this point in Exodus were still “infants” on their faith journey with God. They were accustomed to being slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, being told what to do and being provided with the basics of food and drink. They were also accustomed to a plethora of gods in Egypt that ruled over this or that and were in no way involved in some form of a “covenant” with human beings where there was any sense of relationship and mutual responsibility.
This whole idea of there being only one God that would liberate them from slavery and invite them into a covenant of mutual responsibility was more than they were ready to understand.
Paul's letter to the Philippians stands in solid contrast to the story in Exodus! In this letter one can hear that God's people are no longer infants crying for milk - through the generations they have matured in their understanding of covenant and are trying to be faithful to embodying God's will in their daily lives, even in extremely difficult times.
Faith has evolved and matured. In Exodus, though God was the giver of their freedom from slavery, the people still saw God as a being far away and distant. In Paul's letter to the Philippians we see the people grasping the spiritual paradox of God being both beyond our imagination AND as near as breath. Paul has taught this newly formed church what Jesus showed through his life and death: that God is also found in their ability to relate to one another and care for one another. And in particular - in how they care for the outcast and the poor.
God's love and providence is not just something that we are given from the outside, it is something we are to embody and live out in relationship with others.
The Israelites learn this over time as we witness in the later books of the Old Testament. Spiritual maturation is a process that takes time. I want to believe that spiritual maturation is taking place with each passing generation and that we are slowly but surely moving towards a deeper understanding of our relationship to God and living it out more fully.
If my faith relied on a belief that God was way out there somewhere and we were completely dependent upon him like a child is to her mother, like a puppet is to its strings - I would have lost God a long time ago. Jesus witnessed to me with his life and his death that God is in covenant with us, working through us to embody the divine compassion that brought the world into being in the first place. I need God, but in some strange, beautiful and sometimes frightening way - God needs us too.
This week the world said goodbye to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. For so many years he embodied God's will for justice as he pursued World War II's criminals and kept the rest of us from forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust. God could not have done this without Mr. Wiesenthal and Mr. Wiesenthal could not have done this without God.
This year in our adult Spiritual Formation groups we are using a resource entitled “Exploring the Way” by writer and teacher, Marjorie Thompson. She calls the spiritual maturing process our “journey into Christ”. She writes:
“Our “journey into Christ” is that lifelong process which our tradition has called sanctification - growth into holiness. But holiness is not some ephemeral, antiseptic state separated from our family, work, or life as a public citizen. It is absolutely practical and concrete. Holy people (saints) get into the dirt and sweat of real life, where light and darkness contend with real consequences. This is where God is at work.” (Pg. 20)
How many of you will recall the name Ashley Smith? She was the woman known for what she did earlier this year when a fugitive named Brian Nichols, who had shot and killed four people in an Atlanta courthouse, accosted Ashley and held her captive in her own home for seven hours. I was reminded of her story this week and was once again moved by how she embodied God to Nichols in the midst of such a life-threatening situation. She was a holy person right in the “dirt and sweat of real life, where light and darkness contend with real consequences.” And in that moment Ashley read to him out of Rick Warren's now popular book, “The Purpose-Driven Life”.
It was Chapter 33 entitled “How Real Servants Act” which reads: “We serve God by serving others. The world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige, and position…Jesus, however, measured greatness in terms of service, not status. God determines your greatness by how many people you serve, not how many people serve you.”
Her captor asked her to read it again.
They stayed up and talked that night and she made him pancakes to eat. In the morning he released her.
Ashley's spiritual maturity is remarkable in that moment; she had been doing her spiritual work. I am not sure if I could have done what she did - her loving and compassionate response to a violent man embodies God's most amazing grace, doesn't it? In a time when fear causes us to keep a gun under our bed Ashley Smith was doing her spiritual work and responded to violence with compassion and reconciliation.
We are encouraged to grow and mature in every way in our lives, from birth to death. For the sake of this beautiful planet and for the sake of our children and our children's children, we (no matter what our age) must also grow and mature in our spiritual lives that we might deepen our understanding of what it means to be in covenant with God. We are God's children, but we are also Christ's partners - filled with the Holy Spirit that we might “become like Christ” embodying God's love in our actions as well as our words.
Amen.