The Spiritual Path: Poverty,
Authenticity and Transformation
Some
Key Koine words and Ideas in the lectionary passages:
Pto-khos (πτωχοσ)—poverty ,
recognising our dependence and our need, no longer clinging to false
wants and needs
Exousia (εξουσια) –
authority as in freely able. The power that we participate in but that
comes when we are authentically ourselves—pretense disappears, we no
longer try, we simply become who we are. The power of such
authentic humanness is the power of God as creative transformation and
incarnation: “The truly human and the truly divine”
Therapeia and iahomahai
(θεραπεια και ιαομαι) –serving (Therapeia) that which transforms and
brings wholeness (iaomahee). The transformation is not to something
devoid of our humanity, we are not just changed but go through a
“metanoia”, being released from our false selves or demons to risk all
in love. The “therapist” is not in control of the healing but
rather opens the other to the healing.
Jean Vanier:
“You see, I believe that we are all very
broken in our capacity to relate. Human beings like power and to be
admired and to be brilliant. When you start living with people with
disabilities, you begin to discover a whole lot of things about
yourself. Some are easy to live with, but others can make you climb the
wall. Others can make you touch your own brokenness, your own poverty,
your own violence and so on. I have lived experiences when I have
sensed incredible violence inside of myself. Maybe being in community I
didn't hurt anyone, but I discovered who I was. I discovered also that
the truth will set me free, and so there's the gradual realization
about what it means to be human. To be human is that capacity to love
which is the phenomenal reality that we can give life to people; we can
transform people by our attentiveness, by our love, and they can
transform us. It is a whole question of giving life and receiving life,
but also to discover how broken we are.”
In the past two weeks I have been
trying, as I often have tried without much success, to be an agent for
this human transformation of which Jean Vanier speaks, and of which
Jesus is the model. If you haven’t been here for that series of
sermons, or like me, you didn’t realize they were a series until after
the fact, let's think back to the first and the second sermons.
Two weeks ago, we read a small piece of that short novel imbedded in
Hebrew Scripture called “Jonah,” and the beginning of the ministry of
Jesus as recounted in the Gospel of Mark. What struck me at the
time was that both lessons were about a Spiritual calling that required
a letting go, or leaving behind of those things once regarded as being
certain, centrally important, under our control and the source of our
identity. The spiritual call to the Disciples was to abandon
those nets and the places they held in Galilean village society, and to
risk the poverty of following a teacher who led them, as Kafka once
wrote, “Away, always away” from old certainties.
In the story of Jonah, and the
story-teller is taking full aim at the self-righteousness of the
religious elite of the day, Jonah is forced first to bring his message
to a community outside the religious acceptable group, and then is
forced to recognize that he cannot control or predict the outcomes of
his preaching. Both present a great teaching for those of us who
attempt to be religious leaders, but as well these texts are about that
disturbing poverty of spirit of Jesus and of all those who have or feel
called to walk the path of God’s compassionate way. One of those
I noted to the children, Dorothy Day, a modern saint once called by the
mayor of New York City, “A Pain in a Region of my Body I’d rather not
be quoted as speaking about.” As for Day, when she heard that people
spoke of her as a saint, she commented, “I’d rather not be dismissed
that easily.”
This brings me to remind you of
last week's rambling set of words, stories and ideas I loosely call a
sermon. Last week, I wanted to speak of the second mark of a
Spiritual life, as having “Exousia” or the freedom and power of being
rooted in authentic being. Quite a mouthful, and a difficult
spiritual path. The lesson in Mark last week spoke of how Jesus
had an authority that came from his own authentic voice—not from his
being a member of a religious elite or group. He spoke out of his
own true humanity as the way to be grasped by the Holy One.
I was foolish enough to suggest that
living in this Authentic way, having the power of authenticity, was
something to do with owning our own humanity and brokenness. I
tried to suggest that in some sense we needed not to “try” to do
better, but rather to abandon the “trying” for the doing. God’s
unconditional acceptance challenges us to recognize that we do not need
to run away from our humanity, but rather we should reckon with it and
own it. Where I made an enormous mistake was when I may have
suggested that no transformation of self is necessary. Rather
what I should have said—rather than short circuiting the full meaning
of Spiritual Exousia—was that when we have truly owned our authentic
humanity—in all its dependence and need, all its flaws and
difficulties—we will have arrived at the place, and know it ourselves
as if for the first time. Spiritually to come home to ourselves is but
to begin again the journey of transformation. The spiritual path
is a Way not an end. To come home is not an ending, but a new
beginning. Home is the place of spiritual transformation.
What I wanted to say, to quote that Jim Hensen puppet Joda who now
appears in popular religious thought as a Spiritual Director, “Not Try but Do.”
The great error in Spiritual
life is to believe that by trying we can become good, beautiful and
just. Sadly, all I can offer at times is my trying. But on
the spiritual path, trying may be important only as a tool or a
rehearsal for the hard work of doing and becoming. Trying is when
we are working on our ego to let go enough to do, to be
transformed. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest Theologian of
the Western Church, once put it this way, “It is not difficult to be good, but it is
difficult to become good.”
After coming into a full
awareness of the Presence of God in the world not long before the end
of his life, he also looked on all his theological writings and said, “These are all trash when compared to the
wonder of God’s presence.”
The point is that in the way of spiritual poverty, authenticity gives
transformation, not as something we have planned or tried out, but as a
gift of our being. The spiritual path does not end with us coming
to possess anything, or anyone, but rather in coming to a full
awareness of the transforming goodness given in all creation.
Let's think about this through the
analogy of the artist. Think of any great artist—painter, dancer,
musician, actor, writer. The great effort that goes into
preparing them for their art is not what I am denying. They must
have the skills and the confidence to execute them. But in the
work itself—in Loren Harris’s painting “Snow II” or Karen Kain’s
leading role in “Swan Lake” or Bruce Cockburn’s composition “Messenger
Wind”—the painting, the dance, the song transcends all effort. It
is not about the trying, but about a doing. The Spiritual act
transforms all trying into doing, trying is left behind.
So Jesus, we are told as the great
artist of the spirit offers therapeia—the Greek work often translated
as healing but actually rooted in the word for a household
servant. The Spiritual act of Therapeia is the practice of one
who attends the needs of another/serves with no claim to power for
oneself.
In the passage we read this morning, Mark uses the word therapeia, I
think intentionally, to point out that Jesus’ power, while coming from
his own authentic self—his Exousia/authority as demonstrated a few
lines before the ones that we read this morning—is rooted in the
Spiritual Poverty of refusing to believe in the power to control, or
possess as the ultimate ground of being. Rather the great healing
for human being is when we come to be grounded in the reality of
serving and being served, of existing in the great cosmic dance of Holy
becoming. The God we discover is love, that power of creative
transformation that calls the stars, the waters, the child to be
born as a life within Life itself. The God we discover on the
Spiritual Path of Poverty, Authenticity and Transformation, is not one
who controls or dictates the universe but one who calls it forth in
freedom to be itself. The transformation of Jesus therapaeia is
not one that gives us power over others, or control even of our own
salvation. The healing of Jesus calls even our demons to be
changed, to serve no longer themselves, but rather the Lover of
the Universe, God. The healing of Jesus both affirms our own
humanity and shows that we know our humaity in as much as we can be
vulnerable, caring and just in our relationships to and with
others. The inner spiritual path of poverty, authenticity as
authority, and transformation leads us to know ourselves as partners in
the creative love of God. I close by quoting Vanier again:
"The Spiritual Journey with Jesus “is
about the liberation of the human heart from the tentacles of chaos and
loneliness, and from those fears that provoke us to exclude and reject
others. It is a liberation that opens us up and leads us to the
discovery of our common humanity. This is a journey from
loneliness to love that transforms; it is the discovery that ultimately
finds its fulfillment in forgiveness and loving those who are our
enemies. It is the process of truly becoming human.”
This spiritual path brings us
to discover our true humanity in the Holy Other known in every human
face and through the face of a Galilean Peasant Rabbi who walked the
earth 2000 years before our birth. Let us be so transformed, that
we become more fully human, more fully the gift God calls us to
be. Beyond all our trying is the Spiritual Journey and Holy
Process of becoming truly human.