Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (Romans 13:11-14).
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left.
Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect (Matthew 24:36-44).
I remember the first time I heard someone identify as “spiritual, but not religious.” Very early in my career as a psychologist, I met with a young woman with a physical deformity and an edgy outlook. As a routine intake question, I asked what part, if any, religion played in her life, and she answered: “I consider myself spiritual, but not religious.” She let me know that her spiritual life was very private and personal, but that sometimes she felt a connection there. She did not relate her spirituality to her reason to seek counseling, which I respected, so we never returned to the topic.
But oddly, I, a rather conventional sort of guy with a religious upbringing that stuck, resonated with her. For just several years before, I decided not to go to seminary, not likely ever to pursue ministry in the context of institutional religion because I constantly felt in church as if everyone else read a rule book that I had not. After poring over scripture, I concluded that the Bible must not be it. For as long as I could remember, I felt as though my reasons for participating in church did not jibe with the reasons of my pewmates. I did not know their reasons, and I could not think of a more awkward question to ask during the coffee hour than, “So why do you come here in the first place?”
But in solitude, I prayed a lot and found God quite companionable. God’s mercy and forgiveness meant to me that I could be completely open with God who knew my words before I spoke them and my coming and going anyway. Moreover, God knew my sins but welcomed me anyway. Asking why I should pray if God already knows missed the point. I prayed because God wanted my companionship, and I wanted God’s. But again, who wants to talk about that during the coffee hour?
So I resonated with my client: The religious agenda eluded me, but the spiritual agenda came very naturally. Religious people cared a lot about what they believe and whether they agree with the beliefs of others. They formed groups with denominational names, and I could sense differences between them. Many cared about the judgment of God in end times as well as our eternal destiny after death. Much of it seemed based on fearful exclusion; yet, some religious people I knew extended extraordinary care to others.
All of us at our various churches found worship meaningful, at least occasionally. Sometimes in worship, I felt connected to God much as I did in private prayers. That kept me in church. Obviously, spirituality had a huge private and personal component. But as much as I loved private prayer, Bible study, and theological reflection, I always knew that the church – the very public community of the faithful – supplied the language of prayer. Even if I did not know what that language meant to neighbors in the pew, we prayed together on a shared spiritual quest. For corporate worship is spirituality too.
So while I resonated with the identifier, “spiritual, but not religious,” I did not buy it for myself. Furthermore, I learned that many people in church do not identify with the word, “spiritual,” finding it strange and even threatening. They see themselves as religious but not spiritual. In their defense, yes, “spirituality” means many things to different people; moreover, a person who cites spiritual experience may do so to justify disruptive and even harmful behavior. Passionately spiritual people are hard to rein in. Nevertheless, as much as I try as a psychotherapist to empathize with the experience of a wide diversity of people, I cannot quite get into the shoes of someone who is religious but not spiritual. If spirituality without religion is unmoored, religion without spirituality seems stuck.
In scripture, spirituality appears in unexpected places. We church folks make some of our most frustrating blunders by seeing religious injunctions where the speaker intends spiritual invitations. For example, the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25:31-46 portrays judgment day with Jesus separating the good from the bad. Yikes! That immediately smacks of religious judgment in the name of a stern, merciless deity.
But look more closely: He says you encounter Jesus in acts of kindness to vulnerable people: “Insofar as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (v. 40). Jesus meets us, not as a stern, sword-wielding judge, but as a thirsty fellow traveler holding out a cup. We meet him as we have compassion and share. God turns out to be love. We experience Christ in a loving, living relationship. Spirituality involves such concrete experience of the divine, not just our propositional assent or fearful capitulation to abstract creeds.
Spirituality also emerges in the New Testament readings for this week. Everyone from the most erudite scholars to backwoods fundamentalist snake handlers immediately think of the end times when they read these passages. Jesus says get ready, judgment day is near. Paul says, yeah, clean up your act because you want Christ to find you looking good when he meets you face to face. Scholars call that “eschatology,” meaning theology of end times. Less critical thinkers talk about “Left Behind” movies.
Keeping with the scholars, a great one from the mid-20th century, C. H. Dodd, noticed that Jesus’s eschatological teachings oscillate between future happenings and the present. For example, in Luke’s version of the same teaching we read from Matthew, Jesus responds to the press for signs by answering, “In fact, the kingdom of God is among you” (Lk 17:21b). When he insists in Matthew that, since we cannot know the future time, we must be alert and watchful, he says essentially the same thing. Look around. I am with you now.
When he walked this earth in the flesh, that obviously meant, well, “Here I am, in the flesh! The one you’ve been waiting for!” But it applies all the more to us, for Christ is risen. He dwells among us. We find him in the least of these whom we serve, in the fellowship of believers – even now in this catechumenate class – in the sacraments, in submission to his creative word coming to us in prayer and scripture, in daily interruptions, and in other unexpected times and places. When he talks about the future coming, his main point is really to be alert to him in the meantime, now. That is Christian spirituality.
Paul is more direct: “You know what time it is,” he says. Now is the time. What gets in the way of your seeing Christ? The problem with “reveling and drunkenness…. illicit sex and licentiousness…. (and) quarreling and jealousy” is not merely that they are uncouth and often immoral, but that they get in the way of seeing Christ among us. They are forms of being asleep, not awake. How often I have heard patients in my therapy practice correctly refer to spells of such behavior as escapes from reality. True spirituality does not escape reality but embraces it; that is one reason spirituality can be so healing.
Skeptics call faith an escape from reality, but the baptized know that Christ finds us in reality and calls us deeper into it with him. God moves and shakes in reality with all its messiness and beauty, tragedy and comedy, death and life. Those awake to Christ will abide with him forever in Paradise, yes, but for now, that is a secondary gain. The point is both to wait and not to wait: Wait for Christ to wipe every tear from our eyes and bring peace and justice to our world, but do not wait until then to befriend and follow him in prayer and service, in the community of believers and in the world that longs for him and rejects him at the same time. This is the spirituality that our religion offers. With your baptism, take it and live it. Now.
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Augustine Wakes Up: Sermon on Romans 13:11-14
A Wakeful Faith: Expecting Christ Every Day
Mother Teresa and the Thirsty Christ
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Matthew 5:7-8).
Image: Zanyar Ibrahim on Unsplash. Public Domain.
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