(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text for “Spiritual Maturity” originally shared on September 25, 2024. It
was the 330th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water
(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced
with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
It’s
been said that growing old is required. Growing-up is optional. I’ve said it.
But, is it? Today, we’re going to find out.
We live in a
youth-oriented, even worshiping, culture. Youth is where the trends start, the
disposable cash is, where marketers pay attention, and where the present, if
not the future is invented.
Some people will
spend big bucks to gain and maintain a youthful appearance, they’ll spend
millions to reverse aging. Why? Personally, I feel that I’ve earned
every one of these gray hairs! 😊 But that’s not what our culture values.
Culturally, what is “new” is what sells.
“New” is regarded as implicitly “better”.
I expressed an opinion at a gathering of
pastors recently and another pastor replied, “That’s an old way of thinking”
and, for the first time that I can recall, that didn’t make me feel defensive.
I just looked surprised and said, “So…?”
“New” may only mean a new direction. But it
does not necessarily foreshadow progress.
C.S. Lewis once defined cultural progress in
this way, in his small book, The Case for Christianity:
“We all want
progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.
And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any
nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and
walking back to the right road and in that case the man (sic) who turns
back soonest is the most progressive man (sic). There is nothing
progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think
if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity
has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we
must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
“New” is not necessarily better, though
that’s what our culture acts as if it believes, or, at least it believes is
expedient.
Some people will grasp the new and untried
to avoid having any responsibility, or belief, or even having opinions that
others might challenge. They will say, “I have an open mind”.
But, as G.K. Chesterton said, “Merely having
an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the
mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” 😊
That is to say, “I’ve reviewed the
information available to me and, now, this is what I believe”.
Otherwise, we remain in a perpetual state of
immaturity. Peter Pan. Ever a child, as if it were some idyllic state,
desirable by definition.
Some just want to retain their inner child,
always full of wonder, innocent of the world (except when it suits us), open,
trusting, accepting, and focusing on play. Some people value immaturity as if
it were a virtue.
So, when do we grow
up? When do we take responsibility for our lives and seek the good of others,
and of the needs of the world, outside of ourselves?
Well, like
everything else, the standards of maturity are ever changing.
I spent a semester
in Israel when I was in college and stayed some time in Rome on the way there
and on the way back. Jogging outdoors in running shorts was becoming widely
popular in the United States but not in Europe. In fact, wearing any kind of
shorts outside was only done by boys. Men would wear running pants only if they
were serious athletes. In many places, running was seen as undignified for a
grown man. So, when a group of us jogged around the Piazza Navona in Rome,
adults would point and laugh. Children would run alongside and make fun of us.
It wasn’t a grown-up thing to do, then. But now I understand that things have
changed.
When I was a
teenager, getting a driver’s license was a rite of passage into looming
adulthood. It meant a measure of freedom. I got my learners permit as soon as I
was eligible, and I took my driver’s test the day I turned 16. I passed, and I
remember my dad letting me drive him back to work and then saying, “You take
the car, David. I’ll get a ride home.” I was ecstatic! Today, many teenagers
aren’t all that interested in driving. At least not at that age.
“Adulting” is hard.
Their maturity is not defined in the same way.
“Things change” is
often said as a statement on the inevitability of change.
And change happens.
That’s true. But it doesn’t just happen. It needs acceptance, or at
least acquiescence. It requires both openness and conformity. Not spiritual
maturity. Spiritual maturity is the end, not the means. It is about being a
spiritual grown-up.
The Gospel reading
that will be shared in the vast majority of churches around the world this
coming Sunday, Mark 9:38-50, is about growing-up spiritually.
It begins with
verses 38-41,
38 John said to him,
“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop
him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do
not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon
afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is
for us. 41 For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of
water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the
reward.
God is at work in the history of Salvation.
God’s presence in the world is the world’s default setting. God is the world’s
ultimate reality. In the end, God wins.
“Whoever is not against us is for us.” That
is the good news that we have to share. The work has been done.
The paradox of the Christian faith is that
we grow up when we realize that we are dependent on God for everything.
Jesus said, in Matthew 16:25,
25 For those who want to
save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will
find it.
Spiritual maturity comes when our prayer, as
Pastor Rick Warren has said, is not to ask God to bless what we are doing, but
to do what God is blessing.
What does spiritual maturity look like?
Whatever else it is, spiritual maturity is
not our achievement. It comes from God. We are a new creation, a people set
apart. We are born again, God’s people, and we live from the inside out.
I think Paul describes this new life in his
description of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, in Galatians 5:22-26,
22 By contrast, the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law
against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If
we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 26 Let
us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.
How do we live in such a way? We see it in
the conclusion to this weeks Gospel text, in Mark 9:42-50,
42 “If any of you put a
stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be
better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were
thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut
it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to
go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot
causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than
to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., 47 And if your eye causes you
to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with
one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, 48 where
their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
49 “For everyone will be
salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if salt has lost its
saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with
one another.”
We do not help new Christians, “these little
ones”, by keeping them spiritual children.
Theologian H.
Richard Niebuhr spoke of the message coming from some of the churches in his
day in 1938 as being, “A God without wrath brought men (sic) without sin
into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a
Cross.”
He is, of course,
speaking of women as well as of men. We do no good to anyone by diminishing the
power and centrality of the cross.
We are not the
Church if we allow a message of accommodation to be the norm in our day.
That is, if we lose the message of the cross in order to chase relevance, to
pander to the trends of the day, to put the fun in funerals.
We are called to a
different standard for life: the will of God. And that will is that no one be
lost, but that all be saved. God died on the cross for us to proclaim and
demonstrate that selfless love. It can only come from God and is given to all
who will receive it as a gift.
We grow toward
spiritual maturity when we seek not a generic spirituality of ourselves, but
the living relationship with God, external yet grounded in history, in God’s
mighty acts for our sake and for the sake of all humanity, for which we were
created.
It’s been said that
Jesus taught adults and played with children. We do just the opposite.
How do we grow
toward spiritual maturity as a Church?
A child-like faith knows of its dependence,
is open to the presence of God in the Word of God and in the Sacraments, and
trusts in God for guidance in a living relationship with God.
Paul, writing in Hebrews 15:11-14
writes of spiritual maturity,
11 About
this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become
dull in understanding. 12 For though by this time
you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic
elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; 13 for
everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of
righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature,
for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good
from evil.
People come to faith by the grace of God, as
a little child receives what he/she cannot achieve but is wholly dependent to
receive. But we grow out of a childish faith through the Word of God and the
Sacraments, through the transforming relationship with God in prayer and
discipline, through sacrificial service to others, in the power of the Holy
Spirit.
Does anything in
your life draw you away from God? Get rid of it. Lean-in to God, the Word made
flesh, and live by the work of the Holy Spirit that is within you, as God made
you to live, as Paul writes in Philippians 4:8.
8 Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is
any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think
about these things.
Be transformed by
the power of the Holy Spirit that brings you life, not conformed to the world
that is killing you.
Let go of the cares
of this world and whatever takes you away from being Whose you are.
Alan Jones, former Dean of Grace Episcopal
Cathedral in San Francisco, once said that “We live in an age in which
everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven.”
We have a much better message to proclaim!
Christ crucified for the salvation of all who accept His gift! New life and the
forgiveness of sins. Repent and be baptized and know the real spiritual
maturity that comes from living in the one true living God as a gift!
The Holy Spirit renews us to such a degree
that we are described as a new creation.
Paul writes, in his 2nd
letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5:16-17,
16 From
now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even
though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no
longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has
become new!
That is the “new”-ness that is eternal.
We don’t know everything, and we are not the
Light. But we can be reflectors of the Light. In that is our spiritual maturity
as Christians, the selfless love of God that re-creates us in God’s likeness.
As Paul wrote, in what has become known as
“the Love chapter”, speaking of “agape”, the selfless love that defines us and
can only come from God, the foundation of the spiritual maturity that comes as
a gift from God, in 1 Corinthians 13:11-13,
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
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