"Becoming a Spiritual Grown-Up"
A sermon by
Christopher Wendell
at All Saints Parish
Brookline, Massachusetts
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 30, 2006
Text: 2 King 2:1-15
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
Mark 6:45-52
What does it mean to be a grown up?
When I was a five years old, I knew what it meant to be a grown up: you got to sit in the dining room for Thanksgiving dinner instead of the kitchen; you got to stay up as late as you wanted even on weeknights; and you got to have ice cream for dessert every night of the week instead of just Thursdays. To my kindergarten eyes, being an adult was all about being able to do special things. So I thought that when I could do those special things, that would mean I was a grown up. But when I got to about seventh grade and was able to do all those things, it turned out I still didn't feel like I had become a grown up. So I figured that well, the really adult things weren't eating ice cream every night, but rather learning to drive, being able to vote, and seeing Rated R movies. Well, eventually I received those privileges too, and graduated from high school and got into college – but the feeling of having come into my own adulthood continued to be elusive. I knew something was missing, but I figured that, it was just an itch to get into the real world. If I could go out and find a job that pays for health insurance, get a nice house, and buy a car, then I would be an adult for sure.
That way of thinking about adulthood, as a particular set of privileges to receive or challenges to accomplish, always left me feeling unsatisfied. As I gained each set of privileges or completed each set of challenges, I would feel very accomplished - but it would only last about a week. Then I would realize that though I had done something new or enjoyed another success, I didn't feel much more mature. I didn't feel like I was much different from the kindergartner who just wanted more ice cream. Although more and more people were treating me like I was an adult, and I certainly experienced the privileges and autonomy of getting older, my feelings of immaturity on the inside didn't go away. Something was missing and I kept wondering how old I had to turn before I was finally going to FEEL like I had grown up.
What I was missing was a sense of spiritual maturity. The real journey to adulthood that I desperately wanted to make required more than just doing adult things or earning adult privileges, it required developing a deeper spiritual outlook on the world - coming to see life through a different paradigm than the one of my youth.
In our first reading today, after several failed attempts as letting his father go, Elisha finally accepts that he is about to take on the mantle of prophecy, coming into his own adult vocation as a prophet. When his father asks him if there is anything that Elisha wants from him before he goes, Elisha does not ask to inherent any special abilities or for the treasures of his father's accomplishments, but rather Elisha wants "a double helping of his Spirit." Facing the beginning of a new phase of his life, coming into his own adulthood, Elisha realized the importance of developing a spiritual outlook on the world as a pathway to his own maturity. But what exactly is a mature spiritual outlook?
My difficulties in feeling grown up during college came because I was still looking at the world the way I did when I was an young adolescent - through a paradigm that emphasized individuality. What were my needs, what were my dreams, what were my hopes? During our teenage years, those are important questions to ask. I think it is essential to gain a sense of individual identity and the work ethic that comes along with self-reliance and the rewards of individual accomplishment. And over the course of our lives, that paradigm helps motivate us to identify and pursue our own legitimate needs.
But I think that developing a mature spiritual outlook pushes us beyond individual responsibility towards an embrace of interdependence and mutuality in our daily decision making. It recognizes more fully that our needs and hopes exist in relationship to the needs and hopes of others, and that as the needs and hopes of those around us change, so to do our own.
This attention to relationality and mutual interdependence is the type of mature spiritual outlook that Paul describes in the letter to the Ephesians. The Christians in Ephesus were a rather pluralistic bunch made up of both Jews and Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus. They were having a hard time getting along with each other because each group was asserting that fulfilling their own religious needs was more important than recognizing the needs of the other group. In advising the Ephesians on how to respond to that challenge, Paul uses the metaphor of coming of age, and speaks of "no longer being children" but instead "growing up in every way" into the body of Christ. For Paul, this kind of spiritual maturity means "bearing one another in love," and recognizing that the "unity of the Spirit" exists among people despite the differences in their circumstances. This approach to life means seeing the world both through the lens of our own needs and hopes, and listening to our brothers and sisters speak to us through the lens of their needs and hopes - recognizing that when we become aware of another's needs, we may change our understanding of our own.
I imagine some of us have probably experienced this before -- of coming face to face with the needs of others and in doing so, finding your own needs transformed. Oftentimes developing extended friendships with folks from parts of the world with high rates of poverty or violence, whether in developing countries or here in our own city, leads us to reevaluate our own sense of need. At first, this can be a frightening proposition, it can throw us into stormy seas where we worry about being too naïve with our charity or about giving in to some kind of liberal guilt, our minds being "tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness." The important thing is not to let such honest confusion, turn into fear or avoidance of such relationships just because they are challenging. Maturing into a truly interdependent way of looking at the world is not easy; it involves many false starts; and it takes time - perhaps a lifetime.
Which brings us to the Gospel of Mark. More than any of the other Gospels, Mark is concerned with the disciples' spiritual growth, with their coming to embody a mature, interdependent spiritual outlook on life through their journeys with Jesus. The sense of urgency in Mark's fast-paced storytelling, the constant foreshadowing of Jesus' death and resurrection, and the narrator's harsh rebukes of the disciples' shortcomings, all serve as reminders that, like Elisha assuming his father's spiritual vocation, soon it will the disciples turn to proclaim the Spirit of God in the world. Will they be ready? Will they be able to go on when Jesus is no longer with them?
This is the question posed by today's Gospel passage about the disciples' Crossing of the Sea. It is unfortunate that the lectionary chops up this week and last week's passages because they work in tandem. Last week's story of the loaves and fishes is one in a long line of examples in Mark of Jesus trying to teach the disciples about the spiritual way of interdependence. In that story, as dinner time approached the disciples had wanted to send the crowd away, to let each person provide for his or her own needs individually. They thought that if they shared what little bread they had with 5000 people, there wouldn't be enough left for them. But when Jesus urged them not to ignore the crowd's need for food, suddenly what little they had was more than enough. One way to see the meaning of the story is that it wasn't that there was more food, but rather that in becoming more aware of their friends' needs, the amount the disciples thought they needed to be satisfied actually got smaller.
Now immediately after this story, Jesus sent the disciples on ahead of him, to cross the sea and continue their ministry without him. Given Mark's focus on the urgency of the disciples' spiritual growth, Jesus sending his disciples forth continue their ministry on the other side of the Galilee, is not unlike Elijah passing his mantle of prophecy on to Elisha. Except that this is something of a dress rehearsal, an opportunity to practice carrying on their ministry without Jesus before his all-too-soon execution makes his absence more real.
Hopefully the old saying that a bad dress rehearsal means a perfect opening night will hold true for the disciples, because they never even make it across the lake. Strong winds come up, the disciples get afraid, and the challenge is over before it starts. Jesus goes out to help them - but this only scares them even more because he looks like a ghost come to torment them in their distress. Interestingly, they interpret the one who has come to help them as one who will do them great harm. This is not dissimilar from the way they thought that sharing their bread and fish with the 5,000 hungry people, would leave them with not enough to eat. In both these cases, what looks like something scary, is actually the path to spiritual maturity. But they do not yet understand such things. Even they, who have been wandering around the Galilee with Jesus for some time now, watching him heal and feed people, challenge purity laws and gather communities -- they just aren't there yet.
It takes an entire lifetime to grow into spiritual maturity - even at the hour of the Cross, the disciples abandoned Jesus in their fear, only to come back after the resurrection and carry his message into the world. Over and over again, each of us will face ghosts and become afraid along our journey into the interdependent Body of Christ. My ghost is a fear of not having enough ice cream, or enough health insurance, or enough cars, to be really be a grown up. Do you know what your ghosts are? What seems so terrifying to you about living your life in a more truly interdependent way?
Though some will judge you for being afraid of your ghosts, and call you names just as the writer of Mark calls the disciples "hard-hearted" for their fear, Jesus has a different message for you. Knowing that the way to encourage spiritual growth is through challenge and comfort, not guilt and chastisement he says to his terrified disciples "Be Not Afraid." And he gets into their boat, and goes forth with them once more, helping them in their need to become spiritual grown ups.
Amen.