by Doug Hammack
Before the holidays we looked at two elements that help us find a place of internal rest and leisure that the ancients tell us is our heritage on the spiritual journey. There was another I wanted to discuss, and now that we’re though the holidays and our community meetings, I want to finish that up. God bless you.
1 Peter 2:9-10 (MSG paraphrase)
But you…
You are a generation I have chosen.
You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
You’re a peculiar people; set apart with a mission…
To show forth the day and night difference God has made in you
Christian spirituality has been ill for a while.
• This illness shows up in the lives of our leaders
• They have been falling down like dominos for decades
There are staggering statistics about ministers doing unholy things
• And the illness shows up I the fringe movements
The fringe expresses things in a way that often only exaggerates what also exists in the mainstream:
angry, fearful, ashamed, compensating, intolerant, unloving people doing and saying things in Jesus’ name
• But the illness also shows up in daily lives of ordinary Christian people
Of course pockets of spiritual health exist, but in broad terms in the western world…
• Christian spirituality has been at best anemic, at worst cancerous
• Our practices have betrayed us
• Going to church, reading the Bible, giving our monies, evangelizing the lost…
• These practices have not been working into us the depth of redemption/transformation Jesus indicates is ours to have
• Our practices have not prepared us for tough times
• So when they hit us, we are not prepared
• In broad strokes the church of Jesus Christ is not experiencing a steady rise of virtue, character, fruit and life
Demographic studies show an abysmal rate of character transformation among normal people practicing Christian spirituality
• In all metrics of character, inner health, relational well-being, there is almost no statistical difference – Christians/society at large
• In broad strokes, Christian people vary little from the culture in which we live; in some areas, even worse
• But these things go in cycles throughout history
• This is not the first time Christians have lost their way
Not the first time we’ve lost sight of the big picture
• And if history or scripture are any indicator…
• The life and light of God will again infuse church of Jesus Christ
In fact, it is that belief that has guided NRCC’s focus for several years
• We’ve been seeking God’s Spirit to lead us to recover an authentic form of Christian spirituality
And to the degree that God is answering our prayers…
We are seeing a picture emerge
• As Christian spirituality recovers its health…
• As we recover the essence of Jesus-following…
• The way of life we inherited from our society, is wildly altered
Growing up in our world as we did…
We inherited a set of assumptions that were passed on to us
• people are this way; things are that way
• you can expect this from life if you do that
• you can expect to be happy if you hit these benchmarks
• but if you don’t, you can expect to be sad
but a vibrant Christian spirituality changes all that
• when we are alive to God
• when we are awake to the indwelling Spirit
• we see the world differently than everyone else does
Listen again to the text (1 Peter 2:9-10 (MSG paraphrase))
But you, you are a generation I have chosen.
You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
You’re a peculiar people; set apart with a mission…
To show forth the day and night difference God has made in you
When Christian spirituality is healthy, it awakens us to a sense of calling
• we have been chosen by the Divine for a purpose
• we aren’t absorbed by the assumptions, beliefs, and pursuits that other people are
• we are a peculiar people in most people’s views
• A people who think differently, act differently
• A people with a completely different way of approaching life
And Peter uses a couple of words that to describe us
• You are peculiar
• You are a priesthood
Both pretty strange to our thinking
• We don’t think of peculiar as a good thing
• And most of us don’t think of ourselves as priests
it’s that priesthood role that makes us so peculiar
• As followers of Jesus, our lives are about doing what priests do
• (not the professional clergy meaning of priest)
• But priests…
Who minister to people on behalf of God
Who minister to God on behalf of the people
• Priests take what they experience of the Divine, and give it to people
• Priests take what they know and love of people and hold them before God
When Christian spirituality is healthy…
• We live this way; we live as priests
• People in the business of making life on earth like life in heaven
• Priests bridge the gap between the realm of the Divine…
Realm of joyfulness, understanding, wisdom, peacefulness…
Realm of compassion, caring, and goodness toward others…
…and the realm where people live
• Priests bridge the gap between these two realms
And that makes them peculiar
• Strange at best, slightly odd, out of the norm, and abnormal
• When Christian spirituality is healthy, the world sees us as slightly idiosyncratic at best
• At least atypical, certainly standing out…
and to their minds, slightly irregular
Because our mission is different from the mission of the masses
• When Christian spirituality is healthy we’re about a different business
• Of course, we work jobs, have friends, raise families
• But as we do, we are about the real business of our lives…
• Showing the Divine to people
• Holding people before the Divine
And again, this makes us odd.
ours are different assumptions about life
• ours are different assumptions about what makes life good
• ours are different assumptions about people
• ours are different assumptions about how to spend our days
• what objectives we should be working toward
but there’s always been a problem with us being peculiar…
• the very people with this idiosyncratic calling…
• the people finding the life of Jesus, the life of Spirit…
…are born into, and raised by families, schools, and institutions that teach them to be just like everybody else
From the day we are born…
We, who are called to be so very different
• Are pressured, taught, cajoled, and deceived…
• Into being exactly the same as the society around us
An unusual people influenced every day to be usual
A strange people trained every day to conform and be normal
The world around us exerts an enormous pressure on us to be just like everybody else
• to dress like everybody else
• to buy like everybody else
• to judge people’s worth by the same standard as everybody else
and throughtout history, the peculiarness of the people of God has periodically, and regularly drifted away
• such as the time we’re living in
• and we become normal, customary, typical, average
• just like everybody else, we fit in
• We absorb the values/thoughts/mannerisms of our society
• We fear the same things everyone fears
• We chase the same things everyone else does
• We spend our resources running after the same dreams they do
But for us, it’s worse…
When we are on the same track everybody else is on, we know in the back of our minds that we aren’t supposed to be
• We know there’s a higher calling for us
• We know there are loftier dreams
• We know that the abundant life has to mean more than a better house, a better car, brighter teeth, and a happier home life
So having been exposed to the words of Jesus
• Having been made aware of the promise of a bigger life…
• But not being immersed in it…
• we’re actually worse off than we would have been in ignorant bliss
if we had never heard Jesus’ words about life, light, the way, the truth
• if we had never run across Jesus teaching about comforting the wounded
• about being peacemakers in the face of conflict
• about showing mercy to the harsh and broken people of the earth
if we had never heard these, we would have been better off
• now, we have to dance a funny dance of avoidance
• I am a peculiar people, but I’m not very peculiar
• I am a priest on the earth, but I’m not very priestly
And this internal dissonance sets up a downward spiral
• Raised by a culture to fit in w/ the dominant beliefs and deeds
• And exposed to an anemic Christian spirituality that does not help us transcend these cultural norms…
• We are given a call to be different but not the tools to do so
• Then, unable to overcome the un-differentness in our souls
• We become even more anemic in our spirituality
To break this downward spiral…
• As we discover an authentic, healthy Christian spirituality
• We will find an internal shift of belief, values, thoughts, instincts
So, for the years we’ve been together as NRCC, I’ve been pushing us as followers of Jesus, to rediscover our spiritual roots…
• our spiritual heritage, our spiritual sweet spot
we’ve talked about the indwelling presence of the HS
we’ve talked about listening for the Inner Voice
we’ve spoken about how critical authentic spiritual friendships are
we’ve spoken about moving away from the hierarchical focus of institutional church, to a focus on community
• I’ve told you a surrogate priest should never tell you how to live
• That you should find your own place of priesthood
• Primarily by accessing HS w/in you
• By finding your own way of experiencing the Inner Voice of God
And I’ve said we can help one another
• History can help us; scripture can help us; tradition can help us
…but they can also hinder us
• So, each of us must find that place of baptism of HS
…that place of being infilled w/ life/light of God
And as we do…
• We are transformed; we are changed
• We are made whole and we are made holy
• We become different, a peculiar people
• A priesthood serving the earth
And the assumptions we pick up from the dominant culture around us begin to dissolve away
• Instincts that are as normal as normal can be to everyone we know begin to dissolve away
• Values that help people navigate the society successfully…
• That help conform us to the expectations of society…
• Are poison to being a priest
• Are poison to being peculiar
• Poison to being instruments of the Divine on the earth
• Poison to dancing the spiritual dance with God
Now in our defense, we couldn’t help it
• We were raised in the society we were raised in
• And in this society we were all trained and conditioned to think certain ways
• E.G. We know that if we have a bigger, better house, people will think better things about us
• If we have a prestigious job earning lots of money, people will slot us in a different category in their brains, a better category
And so we wake up in the morning to serve those realities
• We wake in the morning and get right to work getting ahead
• And like everybody else in society, we become deeply afraid when the economy threatens to take away the progress we’ve made
• And like everybody else in the society, we let things/people we love take 2nd place to other, lesser things
And we actually feel ashamed to pursue something that the Divine Spirit w/in may nudge us to do
• Because Divine-nudge kinds of pursuits rarely move us up society’s value chart
• and to be honest, we don’t like being peculiar
• so the few moments of time we get on this earth usually get sucked up serving the values of the society
• dismissing the values of the Divine
• missing out on our deepest destinies
I can’t tell you how many people have told me they would love to be a school teacher
• but I can’t do that: I can’t make enough money
• now it is true that it an indictment on our society that we pay people more to sell toilet paper than to train our young people
• But that’s the broken society we’re in
• But peculiar people often do peculiar things…
• Things like giving up socially important careers, and perusing strange, low-paying ones
• Peculiar things like living on less in order to follow the Inner Voice
• And to give up chasing society’s dreams, and chasing other, odd ones
But society is extraordinarily powerful in its persuasiveness
• It uses guilt and shame very effectively
• It uses fear about our worth to get us to conform
And because those tools are so effective…
• many of us just aren’t peculiar enough
When a visitor comes to church and I get to go meet w/ them, the most fun I have is meeting w/ the weird ones
• The ones who are a bit offbeat
• The ones who don’t fit into the social norms
• Certainly those who are questioning church norms
• And to be quite frank, many of you are quite weird
• And I thank you for it!
And I think my enjoyment of off-beat characters is rooted in my desire for us as a community
• To return to our calling: be different from everybody else
• Quit being yanked around by the same commercials that yank everybody else around
• Quit chasing the same model of business, commerce, finance that the rest of society chases
The spiritual life…
The spiritual journey…
Spiritual awareness…
Following Jesus in this abundant life, the eternal life he talks about…
• These are about finding a natural cadence of life
• But not the same cadence as society finds
These are about finding a tempo that is indeed abundant, eternal, natural…
• But it’s a tempo that is strange and weird because it is so out of step w/ everything we’ve been taught
When we tap into the Divine life, we are different…
• We see things differently…
• Eg. there is always a way to be loving in any difficult circumstance
• Eg. There is always a way to hunt down forgiveness in our souls
• Eg. There is always a way to be rummaging for peace
Because these are Divine attributes
• And the Divine is always present (as present as present can be)
Now again…
the spiritual journey…
The life of following Jesus…
Is a “peculiar” journey for “peculiar” people
• And what makes us so peculiar is becoming attuned to the Divine
• More and more deeply participating in the Divine life
• And it just makes us different from everybody else. Weird!
Divine graces are always around us
But people who bring them into daily life are strange…
• It is peculiar to bring wisdom confusing times; few do it
• It is peculiar to bring compassion to the workplace instead of judgment; very few do it
• Peculiar to offer an alternative to fear that is gripping a society when the news tells us the ship is sinking
• Peculiar to keep our eyes on a bigger Truth, when the lesser truths tell us to despair, to cave, to give up
But as we are transformed by this Divine dance we talk about…
Inside, we change, and we do these things
• We step into situations that are tense, and bring peace
• We step into situations that are wounded, and bring healing
Unlike a society fed on the values of me, my, mine…
• We become self-forgetful…
• able to serve others w/o burnout, and w/ authentic joy
Our eyes see differently than everybody else’s eyes do
We are, after all, peculiar
And we are, after all, all priests
So of course, our eyes see differently
We look for different stuff than we used to
When we’re looking for what our consumerist, independent, nationalist values tells us to look for, we find it
• But when what matters to us shifts, what we look for shifts too
• We begin looking for the well being of the earth; and find it
• We begin looking for the stuff that matters to God; and find it
• We begin looking for how love will be found in this situation
• how peace will be integrated here
• how Truth will overcome falsehood here
• We’re looking for how this person will be freed from the trap of addiction, the trap of fearfulness and shame
• We’re looking for how our friend’s marriage will become a sacrament, not just happy
• We look for children’s careers to be a calling, not just a job
We look for these things, and when we do, of course, we find them
• They are always there
• God is always present
When our Christian spirituality is healthy…
• Our eyes are not clouded by fear, and we see differently
• Our hearts are not clouded by shame, and we perceive differently
• Our minds are not co-opted by social norms, we act differently
And seeing, feeling, and acting differently…
• We become peculiar, odd, strange
And that’s the spiritual community I want to lead
Offbeat, different, chasing different dreams, following different paths
I grew up in S. CA
Lots of hippies, long after the hippy thing died down
And I loved the hippies
• I didn’t always like what they were pursuing, but I loved that they were pursuing something out of the norm
• They were the people I gravitated to
• They were the ones I hung with
• And I think I was drawn to them because they represented what I thought Jesus-followers were like
• Peculiar, outside convention, strange
Now sadly, theirs wasn’t always the pursuit of the Divine
• But today, I’m letting you in on a secret the Christian family sometimes tries to keep hidden…
• Spiritual journey is designed to make you strange to our society
• as strange as you’re ready to be
• And I’m inviting you to go with it
• I’m inviting you to let the Divine journey take you to places even more peculiar than you’ve been able to take
In little ways…
Listen to HS about how you dress
• Perhaps your clothing will open a door to different values than the ones society has dictated upon you
And in big ways…
Go to work for different, more divine reasons
• Something bigger than just paying the bills, being financially secure, or doing a kind of work you like
• Find Divine presence in how you do what you do each day
Pursue friendships for different reasons than companionship
• With your friends, find, live in, and experience Divine moments
• Search out Divine Love in your friendships, be transformed by it
• Search out service, altruism, and be transformed by it
Now I’ve gone my limit of pages for a reasonable lesson so I’m about to stop for today…
• Today I was framing in general terms, what I’ll talking about in very specific terms next
You may recall before the holidays, I did a series of lessons entitled:
Sabbath consciousness
• In it, I talked about the ancient “rule” of taking a day off
• And I told you that over the 5000 years since the rule was instituted…
• Spiritual people had come to understand much richer and deeper dimensions of rest
Sabbath consciousness…
• That’s how I talked about it
• A way of being that integrates rest into the way we live our lives
• Rest as an element of raising kids, going to work, living daily lives
I want to look at one more element of how we embrace the consciousness of rest
• And it has to do w/ how we dismantle the social assumptions that run deep and keep us from being peculiar
I want to talk about one more way we carve out the interior space necessary for HS to dismantle our conformity
• One more way we allow God to draw us into peculiarness
• One more way we find the internal posture of rest and leisure that allows us to experience this change