Spirituality
A Sermon of The Rev. Dr. David A. Killian, Rector
All Saints Parish
Brookline, Massachusetts
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 15, 1995
Text: John 2: 1-11: "When the steward tasted the water that had become wine. . ."
Today I am embarking on a three-part journey to respond to a request from many of you to set out my vision for All Saints Parish. Today in Part I - Spirituality, we can reflect on the deep hunger within our society for something beyond ourselves. A few weeks ago, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story on "The Search for the Sacred: America's Quest for Spiritual Meaning." The article detailed that 58% of Americans felt a need to experience spiritual growth. A sizable percentage (35%) said that they had a religious or mystical experience. A Gallup survey reported that one half of Episcopalians said they at some time in their lives had a profound religious experience. Go to a bookstore and you will see a profusion of titles with the words "soul, sacred, and spiritual." Many movies explore the possibility of an afterlife. There is a profusion of interest in angels; in Brookline there is even an "angel store." Do you have an angel? A CD of monks chanting is a run-away hit. The Pope has written a best-seller. There are signs all through our culture of a reawakening of interest in spirituality. It is leading some people to return to traditional churches in the hope and the wish that these churches could fill their spiritual hunger.
People ask, Why this new interest in spirituality? One author said it is because the baby-boomers are growing up. They are coming to realize that jogging, lip-o-suction, and all the brown rice from China cannot keep them from growing older. They are coming to grips with their mortality. They realize they need something more.
And so my vision of All Saints Parish begins with a dream that we will be known primarily as a spiritual center, a place where people can be spiritually nourished, where they can find soul mates and support on their spiritual journey. In short, where they can find God. By spirituality, I mean our relationship with God -- as individuals and as a parish. We as All Saints Parish have to be grounded in God.
I
Our groundedness flows out of our baptismal faith in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
First, we state in our baptismal covenant, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth." We believe that we have our origin and destiny in God. I did not create myself. I do not find meaning totally in myself. I have a spiritual purpose, and I will never achieve my full human potential unless I live as a spiritual being.
Today, on the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, it is well that we remember that Dr. King was first of all a minister of the Gospel, a man with a spiritual purpose. When he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, he rooted the progress of black and white people in this country on the recognition that we are all God's children and that there is one God and Creator of us all. Our spirituality is open to learn from traditions other than our own -- Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu -- because these people also are God's children and they can teach us of the search for God.
Our vision of spirituality begins in a belief that God is our creator and that you and I are created with a spiritual dimension. The reason we come together in this parish is to foster this spiritual awareness. This is what our parish is all about. This is why Church exists: To remind us that our origin is from God, that our lives find their meaning in God, and that God is our final destiny.
II
Secondly, we affirm in our baptismal covenant, "I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary." When we say we believe in Jesus Christ, we affirm our identity as Christians. We affirm that God loved us so much that God became one of us.
The baptismal covenant affirms also that Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried." Christian spirituality is for the tough times as well as the joyous. Christian spirituality helps us make sense of the suffering, disappointments, discouragements, and failures in life. In short, this is a spirituality of Good Friday as well as Easter Sunday.
What I say now may surprise some of you. We are accustomed to speaking of the twelve-step groups that meet here as part of our mission or outreach. But these groups actually advance the spiritual purpose of our parish. These groups help people live with dignity and strength. They help people recover from debilitating addictions. They help people become healthy and whole. Spiritual health fosters emotional, mental, and even bodily health. Holiness leads to wholeness.
Wasn't this the mission of Jesus -- to heal the sick, to forgive sinners, to make people whole? We see his concern for heath and wholeness in today's Gospel passage about the wedding at Cana. Jesus and his disciples come to a very human event, a wedding, that was about to turn into an embarrassment maybe even a disaster. My home state of Wisconsin is famous for its Polish weddings -- which helps me to identify with the problem at the wedding in Cana, because a Jewish wedding without wine is like a Polish wedding without beer.
For the evangelist John, wine symbolizes more than the earthly significance of adding festivity to a wedding. For John, wine symbolizes the abundance of life. This Gospel passage asks each of us: What kind of life do you want -- one that is only the water of routine, drudgery, and meaninglessness? Or do you want a life that is the wine of challenge, vitality, excitement, and meaning? As one person at bible study here at All Saints put it, "Each of us is a water jar and we say to Jesus, 'Change the water of my life into fine wine.'" And don't change me into ordinary Gallo, but into Chateauneuf du Pape.
Jesus changes our water into wine. Each Sunday in the Eucharist, we come with our disappointments, failures, and the ordinariness of our daily lives and the risen Christ gives us the spiritual joy and hope to live a fully human life. Worship is central to our vision as a parish. If we cease gathering to worship, there would no longer be All Saints Parish. Our worship sums up and expresses who we are.
So, our vision of Christian spirituality affirms the call to health and wholeness and the centrality of Eucharistic worship in our parish life.
III
Third, in our baptismal covenant, we assert, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." We believe that the Spirit is active in this world, making important things happen today. If someone asks, "Where is God?" we should take our thumb and point it back at ourselves. God is here, God is in our hearts. The Holy Spirit is the enlivening, vivifying spirit of God within me.
After my sermon on Christmas Eve, Keith Glavash, director of our children's choir, told me that he liked the story I told about Pablo Casals because it illustrated what he was trying to teach the young people in the choir. You may recall that I spoke about the great cellist Casals' first memory of attending Church on Christmas Eve when he was five years old. He walked to the church in a small village in Spain hand-in-hand with his father, who was the church organist. As he walked, he shivered -- not because the night was cold, but because the atmosphere was so mysterious.
"I felt that something wonderful was about to happen," Casals said. "High overhead, the heavens were full of stars, and as we walked in silence I held my father's hand. . . . In the dark, narrow streets, there were moving figures, shadowy and spectral and silent, too, moving into the church, silently. . . . My father played the organ, and when I sang, it was my heart that was singing, and I poured out everything that was in me."
Keith Glavash liked Casals' emphasis that "it was my heart that was singing, and I poured out everything that was in me." This is how Keith hopes his young people will sing -- with all their hearts and pour out everything in their song.
The Holy Spirit within us makes our hearts sing, so we can pour out all that is in us. Each of us is on a spiritual journey. There is something unique and special about our lives -- something artistic. You are called to fashion a work of art which is your life. Whether you are a butcher, baker or a candlestick maker, make your life a work of art. Whether you are male or female, single or married, a child, parent, or grandparent, make your life a reflection of God.
Yesterday here at All Saints, at a workshop for 80 Lay Eucharistic Ministers from twenty parishes in the diocese, a speaker described the significance of cleaning the sacred vessels in a prayerful way after returning from taking Holy Communion to someone who was hospitalized or confined at home: "Don't rush it and hurry just to get it done and over with. But reflect on what you have done, pray again for the person who is sick; let this moment also be a part of your ministry."
What if each us could do what we do in a prayerful way? It could be at our jobs, shoveling snow, doing the dishes, writing a letter, reading a book -- done in an awareness of God's presence. Today's epistle speaks of the variety of spiritual gifts and spiritual services -- "each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." I think of the many manifestations of spiritual gifts in our parish: Worship, Explorations and Journeys in Faith, RUAH, the Church School of the Arts, our teenager's groups, bible study, adult education, Koinonia, the ministry to prisoners at MCI-Longwood or to Rosie's Place and many other programs.
Four years ago, when this parish was searching for a Rector, the Parish Profile document stated, "It is extremely significant that 96% of individuals answering the All Saints survey want a Rector who will support them in their spiritual journey; who will encourage and offer regular training in prayer and spiritual life to all members; and who will emphasize a spiritual life grounded in Holy Scripture with a commitment to God, His people, and His world." Spirituality is not something new at All Saints Parish -- it has been at the heart of parish life from the beginning and is very clearly reflected in the document which you used in searching for a new Rector.
My vision for All Saints Parish starts then with a reaffirmation of our baptismal convenant which roots our identity in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By spirituality, I mean our rootedness in God, by which we find meaning as individuals and as a parish. This vision of a parish rooted in God then gives energy to practical strategies that assist our spiritual journey. This vision might cause us to ask about each program proposal or financial expenditure: Will this assist the parish in growing closer to God?
My dream is that All Saints Parish will be known far and wide as a spiritual center, a place and a people that will nourish each of us on the spiritual journey and will support us as we seek to create lives of gracefulness, courage, justice and love that reflect God's presence in the world. My prayer is that we will give each other the encouragement to live our faith today and to build a strong parish that will hand on this faith to the generations to come.
Amen.