Pentecost in the age of spirituality

It’s remarkable to me, sometimes, that so many choose to live the Christian life. Not because it’s too demanding. In fact, the modern church has probably packaged Christianity in ways less demanding than at any time in its history.

Rather, it’s remarkable people choose to live the Christian life because there are so many vocabulary words!

Think about the words we casually throw around in the church: Salvation … revelation … Epiphany … trinity … sacrament … atonement. And they’re not always big words. Sin. There’s a 5-cent word with a 10-dollar definition.

Learning the faith is often like studying a language that’s foreign to so many people. Even our weekly bulletins assume that worshipers have a working definition of such “common” terms as confession, assurance, tithe, offering and Eucharist.

I think that might be one reason why many people have dropped “organized religion” in favor of “spirituality.”

“Religion” is so many words, which translates into so many rules, which translates into too much work, or so the thinking seems to be.

“Religion” seems to have gone the way of gas-guzzling cars. Spirituality is “in.” It’s the new hybrid. Spirituality is the religious equivalent of “going green.” It even sounds better.

“Are you religious?” “No, but I’m spiritual.”

My sense is that spirituality appeals to some people because it seems safer, less demanding, and less confusing. Spirituality doesn’t remind them of the nun who used to break rulers over the back of their hands, or of the boring preacher who droned on and on Sunday after Sunday about who knows what. So people become bored or confused or tired, and they give up on the church. They leave their religious home and they declare themselves spiritual nomads.

I am quite certain that at least part of the appeal of being “spiritual” is that its seems freer than being religious. Spirituality seems liberating to those for whom the vocabulary of religion seems not only wooden, but perhaps disconcerting, even threatening. If being religious imposes an enormous weight upon a person, then spirituality might beckon them to trade in their heavy emotional baggage for a comfortable, lightweight new backpack.

I don’t intend to be critical of “spirituality.” To the contrary. But I see an irony in how we embrace the concept of being “spiritual” without being “religious.”

It’s not being religious that I wish to defend. I think Jesus wouldn’t often be very impressed with our religion and would call us out on how we use our religion to exclude those who are different from us, those whom we don’t like, those with whom we disagree, those whom it’s not convenient to be around.

When our religion divides us – and we have to admit it has – we can retreat to spirituality because it breaks the tension, it frees us to go our own way.

So where is the irony?

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound … like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” (From the 2nd chapter of Acts)

The irony is that the Holy Spirit – spirituality – has never been seen as a retreat from the rest of the Christian life but has been at the very heart of it.

When words fail us – or worse, when they confound us – the Holy Spirit is present to us and allows us to hang in.

The curiosity of our day shouldn’t be those who claim to be spiritual but not religious. The curiosity of our day should be religion devoid of spirituality.

God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit – which we celebrate on this Pentecost – because our faith can’t always be about our rational thinking, our words, our vocabulary. And that takes a lot for a preacher to admit.