Growing Spiritually, Part 2: From Rags to Riches

Growing Spiritually, Part 2: From Rags to Riches

Psalm 130, Colossians 1:3-14

October 26, 2008 – Rev. Jerry Duggins

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if what Paul says about the church in Colossae could be said of most churches today? Wouldn’t it be great if others had heard of our faith in Christ, our love for one another and our hope grounded in the gospel? How exciting it would be if Westminster’s experience of God’s grace were bearing fruit and multiplying in this community!

And did you catch Paul’s prayer for the church here? That they be filled with the knowledge of God, spiritual wisdom and understanding, that they might lead lives worthy of the gospel…. In this opening chapter of Colossians, we see the image of a spiritually mature church, intent on growing in the knowledge, love and grace of God. I want you to hold that vision in your mind as we continue to talk about spiritual growth this week. As Janet did last week, I’m not going to talk about the scripture much, but it does reflect much of what I want to say this morning.

You may recall that Janet invited you to take home with you the question: “Who am I?” She set that question in the context of a Spiritual Typology adapted from Urban Holmes. This typology assumes that we are all different, but that our spiritual identity flows from some basic attitudes. First, do we process faith primarily using our intellect or does experience or our feelings govern our faith? Most of us don’t use one or the other but find ourselves somewhere on the thinking/feeling spectrum.

THINKING

FEELING

The second axis that Holmes uses relates to our experience of God. Do we think about God as more transcendent/mysterious or as immanent/ near to us?

God is mysterious God is near

Where you are on these fundamental questions will determine what spiritual type you fall into. Holmes proposes four spiritual types and you can see them on the diagram behind me:

Others later added to Holmes typology a couple other “types” that in some ways reflecting a blending of opposites and in others reflect a completely different emphasis. You’ll see from this chart that Janet added “pilgrim and servant spiritualities.”

Now I don’t want to go over again what these types are. You’ll find that Janet has a nice summary in last week’s sermon that you can access from the church’s website or you’ll find them more thoroughly explained in a book by Corinne Ware called Discover your Spiritual Type which you’ll find in the Presbytery resource center when I’m done with it. I will remind you that this is only one way of thinking about spiritual types. The point is that we are all different and that this is generally a good thing. One type is not better than another. And more importantly spiritual growth depends on some awareness of who you are, your spiritual identity. So if you haven’t given some thought to it, let me encourage you to do so. It could help you develop an intentional plan for growth.

For instance, Ware suggests three ways for thinking about growth as you look at the chart. First, she says it’s important to acknowledge and strengthen the gifts you have, to build and deepen your identity. If your type is head spirituality, reading and group study might be one way to deepen your gift of working with concepts and ideas. If your passion is for changing the unjust structures of the world, your “vision spirituality” might be enhanced by participating in groups like ISAAC.

Second, she suggests that moving toward the opposite type is important to develop a balance in your spiritual life. The idealism of the vision spirituality is brought into balance with an appreciation for the practical compassion of the heart type. The head person needs to come to grips with limits to our ability to understand God that the mystic spirituality accepts and celebrates.

Third, we need to develop an appreciation for all spiritual types, recognizing that the differences make us stronger. How can we learn to love someone whose spirituality we have no respect for? This is what Paul is talking about in Corinthians when he says that there are many gifts but the same spirit, that each is given a gift for the common good. This applies to the worship preferences, ways of praying, ways of reading and understanding scripture. We’re different, not better or worse. Those who fail to appreciate the differences practice a form of spiritual elitism, not one of the identifying marks of spiritual maturity.

If you’re not enamored of spiritual typologies, Marjorie Thompson puts these some things in another form. In her book, Soul Feast, she talks about developing a “rule of life,” a kind of discipline that leads to growth. She suggests we ask three questions:

Nurturing strengths, finding balance and an appreciation for differences all need to be a part of a plan for spiritual growth. Earlier in her book, Ware lays out five components for spiritual growth, and I think they bear mentioning. She begins with the importance of being willing to change and grow. Sometimes we forget that none of us have arrived yet. We remain imperfect human beings. Too often we are comfortable with that, believing we don’t need to change or that we couldn’t even if we wanted to. The call of God in Jesus Christ certainly begins with grace, with the promise of forgiveness; but it also is a call to spiritual maturity. It empowers us to become something better than we are. No we don’t love our neighbor as we ought, but as we follow Christ, surely we can do better than we have. The desire to change is important if growth is to happen.

Then she tells us that it is important to be intentional about growth. We plan our day. We plan dinner. We plan vacations. We plan careers, families. We plan our future. We need to put “spiritual growth” at the top of our “to do” list. Thompson’s book among many others offer many practical suggestions in planning for growth.

Third, in Ware’s words, we need to “integrate tradition.” There’s a lot of wisdom that has accumulated over the centuries of Christian faith. There’s a lot of wisdom in our immediate past. One of the best ways that I know to integrate the past is through the practice of gratitude.

Fourth, Ware calls it commitment to individuation. I think of it as a commitment to being yourself, being the person God has made you to be or if you prefer to think in future terms, the person God intends you to be. It’s a particular kind of self-acceptance, based not in how good you are, but in an awareness of God’s love for you

Finally, she tells us that spiritual growth entails a commitment to becoming an agent of change. This may not seem obvious at first, but if you think about, becoming an agent of change is nothing more than living out the gospel. It’s putting into practice what we learn as we experience and increase in our knowledge of God.

Spiritual growth, you see, begins with an assumption of basic human neediness. Before God we are poor and needy. Who among us made the air we breathe, the ground we walk upon? Whose world is it where the leaves change color impressing us with their beauty in the fall? Into the world we are born naked and needy; unable to feed ourselves, unable to focus on objects around us. From the beginning to the end we are dependent on others and in the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher, “absolutely dependent” on God. In one way, spiritual growth is an exploration of human need and the discovery of God’s willingness to fill us up. As we discover this sacredness in life, we can not help but see the need around us and feel the desire to fill it up with the love we have come to know in Christ.

The spiritual life is a “rags to riches” story, not in the sense of fulfilling the American dream, not in the sense of the “self-made man” or woman, but in the deepening experience of the richness of God’s love. Paul writes of the Colossians as being “rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.”

We live somewhere between those two worlds, between poverty and blessing, between need and fulfillment, between the empty void that knows nothing of God and the awareness of the sacred in all things.

If the first question in spiritual growth is “who am I?” the second could be: “What do I need?” We haven’t arrived yet, there is growth and change in our future. What do we need to move forward? Would balance help? How about developing our gifts? Appreciation for others? Do we need an intentional plan? A commitment to change?

Wouldn’t it be great if folks said about Westminster, that you could experience the faith, the love and the hope of God in this place? What do we need to get there? Amen.

Discover Your Spiritual Type: A Guide to Individual and Congregational Growth, Corinne Ware. Alban Institute, 1995.

Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life, Marjorie Thompson. Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville KY), 1995