The State Of Spirituality 2012

A few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I saw something that I thought I’d never see. Some store some place was holding a Martin Luther King Day Sale. Now I’d never seen that before, where Martin Luther King was used for consumerism and commercialism and I was kind of dispirited by that. But then I thought, well now wait a minute, they do the same thing with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, in fact I saw an ad on TV a day or so ago where Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were dancing around for some President’s Day Sale. So maybe it’s a good thing that Martin Luther King is being used in this way because it puts him on the same iconic level as our previous presidents, so maybe it’s a good spiritual thing.

I want to talk with you today about the state of spirituality. What is the state of spirituality? I was going to call this sermon, “The State of Religion,” but more and more people would rather be spiritual than religious; religion is kind of a turn off for a lot of people, so I called it “The State of Spirituality.” What is the state of spirituality? In recent weeks we’ve seen Governor Snyder give the State of the State address and President Obama give the State of the Union address. I am, of course, not on their level, but I would like to present, with all humility, the State of Spirituality, to look back and to look ahead.

Now personally, I think the most significant spiritual story of the past year, was that a church in Muskegon hired a new minister!

I saw a couple lists of the most important religious or spiritual stories of the past year. At the top of one of the lists was the killing of Osama Bin Laden and I thought, “Ew, I wouldn’t call that a spiritual story.” I was disappointed that we killed him, but apparently that was the order, “Shoot to kill,” rather than capture and try him and let him live out his days in some type of prison. I don’t consider that a spiritual story, but I do think there are several military type stories that are spiritual stories and are at the top of the lists of spiritual stories of the year, the first being the end of the war in Iraq.

I don’t want to make this a political speech or anything, but thank goodness, or thank God if you so choose, that that’s over with. I wish we would have marked it with a ticker tape parade down Madison Avenue or something. It sort of ended with a whimper, but I understand many Americans, if not most Americans are kind of embarrassed by the war that happened in Iraq. Thank goodness, though, it’s over. It’s terrible that thousands of American troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. It’s good to have it over with. I can only imagine how that must lift the spirits of our troops and of their families and how I hope it lifts the spirits of all Americans.

In a similar vein, another military story I think is one of the most important spiritual stories of the year, and that is the recent announcement that we’re going to leave Afghanistan early, by 2014. That, I hope, lifts everybody’s spirit. It would have been nice after we had killed Osama bin Laden to have declared victory and pulled out then, but at least we’re going to do it earlier than we had planned. I think that lifts all of our spirits.

The third military story that I think is spiritually significant would be ending “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.” They never should have implemented that, of course, but we can be thankful that it’s over with, and that our men and women, who proudly serve, can be all that they can be, can be who they are, whether they’re gay or straight, they don’t have to hide who they are any more, they don’t have to pretend they’re not who they are. I think that should lift all of our spirits, especially the spirits of those who are gay and lesbian.

I’ve preached several sermons over the years about gay rights, and I’ve always said that Jesus was so concerned about homosexuals and homosexuality that he never said a word about them. I thought that would prove the point because obviously Paul, who was a contemporary of Jesus spoke out against homosexuals, so if Jesus had wanted to he could have, but he didn’t. But recently I’ve had an epiphany, an aha moment, an insight, and it’s this: that Jesus did speak about homosexuals. When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” he wasn’t saying, “Love your neighbor except for homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he wasn’t saying “except homosexuals.” When Jesus said, “Judge not and you will not be judged,” he wasn’t saying it’s OK to judge homosexuals. Jesus did speak out about homosexuals. He was inclusive. He said love your neighbor including homosexuals. Do to others as you would have them do to you including homosexuals. Judge not and you will not be judged including not judging homosexuals. Now I just bring that up, not because I think very many people are Christians, including me, but so many Christians are homophobes and they use the Bible, the seven passages, to prove their homophobia about homosexuals. It seems to me they now have to take into account what Jesus essentially said about homosexuals in his inclusive way. I think that’s significant, spiritually important. Now there have probably been other people who have thought of this before I did. I always think I’ve come up with something unique and new and then I Google it and ten thousand hits come up, but it’s new to me.

As you know, I’ve been in a contentious situation with the City of Holland’s Council about gay rights. Back in May of 2010, I asked the City of Holland to add the words, “sexual orientation and gender identity” to the already existing anti-discrimination ordinances in the city with regards to education, employment, services and housing. Then, this past June, the city council voted 5 to 4 not to do that. I attended every city council meeting with others to urge them to change their minds, except for the one a few weeks ago when I was on vacation, but that’s the only one I missed. Then, as you probably are aware, back in October, I decided to “occupy” City Hall after the council meeting, although the city insists on saying that I “trespassed.” I was arrested and that court case is still pending. We had a hearing on Wednesday and it may be postponed for a month or two, but I went to the Holland City Council meeting Wednesday night and the mayor started off the meeting saying “We don’t need to take roll because we’ve already met in closed session where we discussed pending litigation.” So after the meeting I asked one of the council members, who I’d asked a couple of months ago when they said the same thing, “Have you talked about the case against me?” and he, at that time said no. Wednesday night he said, “I can’t say whether we did or we didn’t, I couldn’t tell you either way.” I thought, “Hello!” So I asked another council member and he said, “Yes we talked about your case.” I said, “Did you make any decision, like perhaps to drop the charges?” He said, “We can’t make a decision behind closed doors; we have to come out in the open to make a decision, but no we didn’t make a decision.” So then I asked, “What about the City Attorney’s office (the City Attorney is the prosecutor in this case), have they decided what to do?” and I’m thinking drop the case. He said, “Yeah, but I can’t tell you what that decision is.” So there may be some news here soon. Not that I don’t like to make news or anything. I think that if the Holland City Council changes their mind or somehow all the people of the City of Holland are treated equally, that would be spiritually uplifting to so many people.

One spiritual story that some of you may not have heard or paid attention to in the last year or so is what’s being called the “Tebowing of America.” Now if you don’t know what that is, Tim Tebow is a quarterback for some football team or other – Denver? Anyway whenever he has success on the field, he drops to one knee and thanks Jesus and many Christians are excited about this, they think it’s wonderful. I don’t want to comment on that, but it always bugged me that after a big game, for example after tonight’s Super Bowl game, I’m sure they’ll go to the winning team’s locker room and they’ll talk to the quarterback or whoever and ask, “What happened? How come you won?” and they’ll usually say, “Well, it was because Jesus was on our side,” or God. But they never go to the losing team’s locker room and ask the losing quarterback or whoever, “What happened?” And they never say, “I did all I could, but Jesus dropped the ball,” or “God messed up.”

I want to talk about the deaths of a couple of people that I think are spiritually significant. Now anybody’s death is spiritually significant, but these two I would like to lift up. One of them probably wouldn’t like me including him in a sermon in church on the state of spirituality. Christopher Hitchens died a few weeks ago. Christopher Hitchens was a prolific political writer and analyst, he was also an atheist. As far as I know, and we would have heard about this if it had happened, he did not make a deathbed conversion. He did not become a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or whatever. He stuck to his guns and I respect that. I believe if there’s a God, God would respect that, too.

The other person is Steve Jobs, who died a couple of months ago. I preached about him and his final six words, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow!” But a month or two ago I talked with a fundamentalist Christian friend of mine. We had coffee and he knew that Steve Jobs had said those words and that Steve Jobs was a Buddhist. So it could not be possible, to him, that Steve Jobs was saying, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow,” perhaps to the opening up of the gates of heaven to welcome Steve Jobs. So this fundamentalist Christian friend of mine said that what he actually said was, “Oh ow, Oh ow, Oh ow!” We can only hope that fundamentalists of every religion will one day accept the possibility that if there is a heaven everybody gets there, not just those of their particular sect.

Then there was a death of a different kind this past year that I think was spiritually significant and that is the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Now I know some people snicker about this, but I think Oprah Winfrey, who continues on with her Oprah Winfrey Network and her magazine and all her other stuff, so don’t feel sorry for Oprah, but after 25 years she decided to end her show, a show I found very spiritually uplifting, as Oprah is. She is very spiritually empowering for many people, many women, and I think of Oprah as really the greatest preacher in America. She had as her congregation millions and millions of people. She was a preacher to the masses. I think the only other person who comes close is Garrison Keillor, who, if he were born 100 years before radio was invented, I think he would have been a minister up in Minnesota someplace. One thing that I like about Oprah is her philosophy: Live your best life. I think that’s what we all should do, live our best life. What do you do to live your best life?

Henry David Thoreau was a Unitarian and I think a mystic in many ways, certainly someone in touch with his spirit. Henry David Thoreau said, “To affect the quality of your day is the highest of arts.” What is it you do to affect the quality of your day?

Deepak Chopra is certainly someone in touch with his spirit. I saw a commercial he did a year or so ago in which he said, “I am a human being. Not a human doing.” I like that. Deepak Chopra says that to be all that we can be, to live our best life, we have to control our ego. What is it that you do to live a spiritual life and how do you control your ego? I think that’s important for our spirit, to control our ego.

As you know, Kathleen and I drove to Florida a few weeks ago. Whenever I drive in the car, I like to put the radio on scan and whenever I come across a song that I like, I stop the scan and listen to that. Or if I come across a preacher I will listen to the preacher. Well, when you drive in the south, about every other radio station has a preacher. One day on the way down, we heard a preacher who was going to explain what the Bible means by the word “justice.” I thought, this ought to be good. He said what the Bible means by the word justice is “government protecting our property.” What? I’d never heard that before. I’ve heard the Texas definition of justice – hang ‘em high – according to the Bible, but I never heard that what justice means according to the Bible is “government protecting our property.” I and Dr. King and others would say that what the Bible means by justice is what the Bible says: to protect the widow and the orphan, feed the hungry, house the homeless. It’s pretty simple, especially for people who are Biblical literalists, to find out what the Bible means by justice. That was the most hilarious spiritual event of my experience in the past year.

What is the state of your spirituality? How is your spirit? To put it the way Oprah does, are you living your best life? I think of living in the spirit as “living fully alive.” Are you living fully alive?

One person who inspires me I saw the night of the State of the Union address – Gabby Giffords. To see her in that chamber and to get greeted by people on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, and then to see the president give her a big hug and a little shake was just so wonderful. As you know, I’m sure, Gabby Giffords was shot in the head in an assassination attempt a little more than a year ago and she recovered. The day after the State of the Union address, she resigned from Congress. She did that to continue her rehabilitation, which has been miraculous. But she said she might be back. She might run for Congress again. How inspirational would that be?

When I think of Gabby Giffords, I think of one of my favorite songs. I think I might have mentioned this song to all of you before – I Hope You Dance. “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens. Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.” I hope you dance.