Spiritual Hiccups - Signs of the Times

Jesus clearly upset a lot of people during his earthly ministry.  If Jesus had just sat around and taught a handful of followers some timeless spiritual truths, no one would have felt the need to get rid of him, to kill him.  But Jesus troubled people.  His talk of a coming kingdom could not help but catch the attention of the Romans.  Alternate kings and kingdoms were not tolerated by Rome.  And Jesus' words of good new to the poor and oppressed also threatened the economic system on which Rome rested.

But Jesus also seems to have been a religious threat to some of his fellow Jews.  Jesus remained a faithful Jew his entire life.  He went to synagogue and made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Yet the established religious institutions were bothered by him.  Whether it was priestly Judaism that had closely aligned itself with Roman power, or synagogue Judaism, Jesus posed a problem.

It is interesting to speculate on whether or not Jesus had any intention of starting a new religion.  I think not.  In a manner not completely different from Martin Luther unintentionally starting the Reformation, Jesus came to call his people into a fuller experience of God's presence, and into a life shaped by God's coming dominion.  But established religious institutions found that a threat to patterns of life that had become treasured, deeply ingrained, and presumed to be integral parts of a life of faith.

A fundamental problem with religion is that, over time, it is inclined to replace faith in God with faith in its teachings about and methods connected to God.  Its traditions and habits become holy, and they are worshiped.  This holiness makes it difficult, even impossible, to toss habits and traditions even when they no longer are appropriate, when they no longer fit the times.

Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being unable to "interpret the signs of the times," perhaps words somewhat akin to Bob Dylan's once insisting that "the times they are a changing."  And I wonder if we are any better at reading the signs of the times now that religious folks were in Jesus' day.

It has become the religious mantra of a generation.  "I'm spiritual but not religious."  Sometimes this is nothing but a cop out, a narcissism that acknowledges a desire for God but has no interest in dealing with the messiness inherent in all communities.  It wants God without neighbor.  It wants God divorced from bodies and the incarnation.

But this mantra can also be an indictment of a Church that has lost its way.  It can be the sincere statement of those who long for God, but are unable to find God at Church.  They find traditions and practices that are related to God.  They find lots of information about God.  But God seems to be missing.

I believe that when we in the Church dismiss all those who are spiritual but not religious, lumping them altogether in the camp of individualistic narcissists, we misread the signs of the times.  And we miss the Spirit speaking to us, calling us to refocus our faith life on Christ's living presence with us.  We ignore the Spirit seeking to transform us into new creations, those who have died to old lives and false selves, and have discovered new life in Christ.

Jesus says that for the new to be born the old must give way.  "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."  Interpreting the signs of the times requires discerning what needs to die so that something more wonderful can be born.  And unless we think our congregations and our world have fully embodied God's coming Kingdom, there is still much to come, and so still much that must die. 

Jesus, help me be among those who can read the signs of the times.

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