Back in the 80s, Linda and I were
rediscovering Christian faith. When we visited DC for work, we set out to visit
The Church of The Savior, http://inwardoutward.org/the-church-of-the-saviour/churches/,
which along with The Sojourner’s Community (also in DC) and Koinonia Farms (in
South Georgia), was at the cutting edge of socially engaged progressive
Christianity in those days. We did not understand that The Church of The Savior
was no longer a church but a partnership of 6 different faith communities then
– 9 today – each serving God’s mission in a distinct way but connected to and
supported by The Church of the Savior Partnership.
So what we found at the CTS location
was just an office, a mostly empty office. We were greeted by an unremarkable
older lady who introduced herself as “Elizabeth O’Connor.” We did not take much
note of her but she invited us to a gathering at The Potter’s House, one of the
affiliated faith communities. We attended and enjoyed The Potter’s House. A few
weeks later I learned that Elizabeth O’Connor was a brilliant and prolific
writer. She was in fact the author of a seminal book that became a classic of
faith, Journey Inward, Journey Outward. http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Inward-Outward-Elizabeth-OConnor/dp/0060663324/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425076249&sr=1-1&keywords=O%27Connor+journey+inward+journey+outward
I won’t quote her book, hoping you
will read it for yourselves. Instead I’ll give you my own take on her message
using resources that have more recently become dear to me. O’Connor’s book has
a message for each of us as an individual and also for our congregations. How
apt is that! The life of a congregation should shape and sustain each of our
individual spiritual lives and each of our individual spiritual lives should
serve as a tributary to the mission of God’s people praying and serving
together.
O’Connor’s message to the individual
Christian is two-fold: On the one hand, we cannot serve others effectively
unless we first put our own souls in order. Arguably the greatest peacemaker of
the 20th Century, U. N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold said:
Our
work for peace must begin within the private
world
of each one of us. To build a world without fear,
we must be without fear. To build a world
of justice,
we must be just. And who can we fight
for liberty if
we are not free in our own minds?
A follower
of Jesus, Hammarskjold knew Matthew 7: 5:
First take the plank out of your own
eye.
Then you can see clearly to remove
the speck
from your brother’s eye.
This is why
Hammarskjold built a room for quiet, meditation, and prayer in the United
Nations Building. When this great activist for peace was killed on a mission of
peace in the Congo, he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was
accepted by the Swedish diplomat Rolf Edberg. In his acceptance speech he said
of Hammarskjold,
He had a room of quiet within
himself.
No one was ever able to reach into
that room.
Except for
the random sociopath, we all would like to do some good in the world. Perhaps
we simply and humbly aspire to be a positive presence in our family or with
friends. Maybe we play on the larger field of social and economic justice. We
cannot live a truly human life without some engagement with our fellow mortals.
We hope that engagement will be a blessing to others. But if we do not tend our
own souls, then our interactions with others will be warped by something.
Augustine had one way of describing that something. Freud had another. Whatever
we call it, if we have not attended to our own inner work, our efforts to be
helpful to others will do more harm than good.
First take the plank out of your own
eye.
Then you can see clearly to remove
the speck
from your brother’s eye.
But there
is another side to that coin. Hammarskjold also said:
In
our era the road to holiness necessarily lies
through
the world of action.
A
privatized spirituality is not the path to holiness. It is the path to
spiritual narcissism. The late Marcus Borg challenged this individualistic
me-&-Jesus spirituality in one of his last writings. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/marcusborg/2014/09/top-religious-trends-2014-a-christianity-co-opted-by-individualistic-exclusivist-faith/
But it isn’t just conservative evangelicals who fall pray to spiritual
narcissism. We have plenty of more-spiritual-than-thou contemplatives tripping
on their own cloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlhPRuAve8k
The main reason individualistic spirituality doesn’t work is
that it isn’t true. We live in a matrix of relationality. When we Christians
set out to say Reality is knit together by relationality, we call it the
Trinity. When we say we are called to live as part of each other, we call it
the Body of Christ. But this truth comes across especially clearly in the
African spirituality of Ubuntu, so beautifully expressed and exemplified by a
great peacemaker and liberator of our time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/2013/10/life-lessons-inspired-by-desmond-tutu/
It comes
together in this simple axiom:
I
am only me because of you.
The Holy
Spirit in Scripture does three things – life giving; empowering, connecting –
but they are really just three aspects of one thing. Life is a power that
arises in our midst when we are in godly relationship. I believe it was Rabbi Heschel,
who after returning from the march at Selma was asked if he had prayed while
there, and he replied;
I
prayed with my feet.
He would
have been paraphrasing Frederick Douglass who said:
I
prayed for 20 years but received no answer
until
I prayed with my legs.
This is why
Quaker writer and educator wrote The
Active Life as a guide to the spirituality of engagement with the world we
all inhabit together. http://www.amazon.com/The-Active-Life-Spirituality-Creativity/dp/0787949345
Authentic spiritual practice leads to
and is inseparable from work for justice and mercy. Authentic work for justice
and mercy leads to and is inseparable from intentional spiritual practice.
So the message to each of us in our
personal lives is clear. Health requires a balance of spiritual practice (which
in turn is a balance of prayers, study, worship, and other elements – that is
for another Epistle) and action (which is also calls for a balance of elements
such as charity and justice – yet another Epistle). For now suffice it to say
that the journey inward and the journey outward are like two paths that have
been intertwined into one. I cannot do you a bit of good until I see the image
of God in you. And I cannot see God unless I see God in you. 1 John 4: 20.
But if what is true for us as
individual Christians is also true for the Church, then what does this say to
the Church? I wonder – just wonder -- if in the era roughly 1995 to 2005
perhaps we spoke a bit much about contemplation and not so much about mission;
and if roughly 2005 to today we have spoken more about mission and less of
contemplation. I am not at all sure of the history of that. It is just a
musing. But I will say with confidence that contemplation without mission is
bogus; and mission without contemplation is bogus. This does not mean we all
have to pray in any particular way or that we all have to serve the world in
any particular way. There is plenty of room for variety on both sides of this
equation – but it is an equation. We need both in tandem.
So is the business of the Church to
tend to the flock or to send the flock out into the world to love and serve the
Lord, seeking and serving Christ in all people, striving for justice and peace among
all people (sound familiar?)? The answer is clearly and unambiguously: Yes.
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