Why did you come        Lent          March 25, 2007

This season of Lent, I’ve been doing a series about the marks of discipleship. Today I’m talking about spirituality, and the mark of discipleship called developing spiritual friendships. These friends will understand how we experience God’s presence in our lives. Their beliefs may not be the same as us, but they will understand and accept what we believe, and help us grow.

Let’s begin with a question. Why did you come here to worship? That’s a fair question, isn’t it? And the answer is simple. We all came to worship today to experience the presence of God. But each of us has that experience in different aspects of the worship service.

In the past few weeks, I offered a kind of self guide to our spirituality called the Spiritual Style sorter. The goal is to help us understand and assess how each person experiences the presence of God. Many of you have already done the Spiritual Style Sorter. If you would like to do one after worship today, more copies are available. The assessment takes about 15 minutes.

The Spiritual Style sorter is based on the work of Corrine Ware, who has written several books on spirituality. She found that we will find the presence of God in four different styles. We may find each of the four helpful at times but often we tend to gravitate to one style or the other.

The first spiritual type is called thinking spirituality. People with this tendency like to learn new things during the sermon. They like lectures and studies. If they like this topic, they will really enjoy this sermon. They favor prayers read from a well-versed book. If they are asked to pray, they might write them out ahead of time. They like to read books by authors like C.S. Lewis. For them, prayer is thinking about God. Many seminary professors are in this quadrant.

I remember in the seminary, I had a class called Biblical Theology. We had two professors, both with somewhat different theological view. They would each present their view on the topic, and often argue with each other. I actually learned very much from their arguing. But many of my classmates didn’t like it.

For people in this quadrant, they get into a problem when confuse their thoughts about God with the reality of God, who is beyond human understanding. Perhaps they could to learn to relax in the presence of God’s grace, and to forgive others who have different thoughts about God.

The second spiritual type is called feeling spirituality. Those in this quadrant know God with their emotions, or with their sentiments. They look for a heartfelt message that moves their emotions. Their spiritual life follows the movements of their heart. They might like old time or traditional religion, or a new charismatic worship style, it all depends on what touches their emotions. People in this quadrant often wonder why others don’t feel like they do.

I remember about ten years ago, one dear widower told me that when we used the old worship book, he felt the presence of his departed wife, even his departed mother and father. But he didn’t like the new worship book. He said whenever we used that book, he no longer felt their presence.

The growing edge for him and all those in this quadrant is focusing on the reality of God apart from their feelings about God. Martin Luther taught that God is present in the sacraments, regardless of our feelings. He said that when we don’t feel God’s presence is when we need the sacraments the most. I believe that is really good news.

The third spiritual type is called the mystic quadrant. People in this quadrant want to simply be in the sanctuary in the awe and mystery of God’s presence. They like silence in the worship. They might come to church early simply to sit in the sanctuary. Their prayer is often without many words. They like to meditate on the verse from the Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Now I confess, I am mostly in this quadrant, and to some extent in the first quadrant. As a young person, I was in the feeling quadrant. But in my prayer life, I have come to a place where I just want to listen to the small voice of God speaking in the silence of my heart. I like to sit in the sanctuary alone. Sometimes I’ll read a few verses from a psalm. I also can be in God’s presence while I play the violin. Music for me can be like a doorway into the presence of God.

The fourth and final quadrant is called the “doing” or crusader’s spirituality. These folk are on a crusade to do what they believe God is calling them to do. They will feel the presence of God helping the poor, working on environment concerns, or at the food pantry. Their convictions may lead them a life as a crusade. They feel spiritually satisfied when they do something good for the world. Ware maintains that many of them don’t come to church. If they did, they would probably join a church like the Salvation Army.

Their growing edge is to learn that God does not judge us by our works, but rather accepts us through the love of Christ. They need what every Lutheran knows, justification by grace alone through faith alone. We know this by God’s Word alone. Lutheran do lots of good things. But all the good things we do are merely a thankful response to the awesome thing that God has done for us through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Now for the 33 people who have used the spiritual style sorter in our congregation. Here are the results.

We had 71 answers in the thinking quadrant. We had 63 answers in the feeling quadrant. We had 24 answers in the mystic quadrant We had only six answers in the crusader quadrant.

So what do we make of this? We are different. We experience God’s presence in different ways, and that’s to be expected. God is present, regardless of our experience. So long as we keep the focus on Jesus Christ, we can have deep spiritual friends even with people who are in different quadrants. In fact, it is good that we are not alike, because we can learn from people who are spiritually different.

Sometimes the differences occur within members of the same family. I believe our gospel reading presents all four spiritual types has the marks of a family.

Jesus went to visit his beloved friend Lazarus, his sisters Mary and Martha. Since Jesus has just raised him from the dead, and Lazarus has become a popular local celebrity. I imagine he is delighted by all the attention. If so, he would be in the charismatic feeling quadrant.

Then there’s Mary, Lazarus sister. We can imagine that Mary is cleaning house again. Like my mother when she was younger, she had trouble sitting still. Mom often said that cleanliness is next to Godliness. She is definitely in the doing quadrant.

Then there’s Judas. Judas is the one who says that what Martha is doing is a waste of money. He says that she could have sold the oil and given the money to help the poor. That would put him definitely in the doing quadrant. But John’s gospel also tells us that Judas is a thief. You see at the bottom of those who really desire to help the poor is the issue of justice. Those who are truly poor have suffered an injustice.

Unfortunately, Judas had found a way to do further injustice to the poor, and take money that was given to help them and put it in his own pocket. This happens frequently. So it is important to hold people accountable.

Then there’s Martha, Lazarus other sister. Martha was spiritually different from her sister Mary. She would not busy herself with the housework when Jesus was around. She is at the feet of Jesus listening to him. Martha poured out expensive oil worth tens of thousands of dollars upon Jesus feet and dried them with her hair. She did that out of love for Jesus. It’s difficult to put her in one quadrant. She seems to divided equally among the four.

Clearly, the point is that Martha put Jesus first. She gave out of thanksgiving for what Jesus had done for her, like raising her bother from the dead. She was grateful for the hope of a new creation that Jesus brought to all people, they way he had the power to forgive sins.

So it doesn’t matter which quadrant we are in, what exactly we think, feel or do, so long as we put Jesus first. We may not all be alike in the way we pray, or experience the presence of God, so long as we hear the Word and receive the sacraments. Jesus is the one who forgave our sin by dying on the cross, he is the one who gives us the hope of the resurrection. In him the old creation is passing away, and a new creation has begun. Lift high the cross, and let us proclaim his love in our heart, mind and soul.

Amen