I am learning a lot about the millennial generation – persons between the ages of 18-30. For one thing they are passionate about spirituality and believe that we are all connected and held by a divine Other. They are, however, less passionate about religion. It’s made me wonder why being part of a specific religious tradition has been so important in my life. I could argue that my parents took me every Sunday and that practice shaped my beliefs. I could say that the liturgy speaks to my soul – helps me to pray my life. I could admit that Sunday worship sustains me through the week – reminds me who I really am in the world. All these things are true. Yet, there is something more – something less explicable.
When I was an undergrad I read the great works of Mircea Eliade and Rudolph Otto. Eliade documented the human capacity to detect the sacred apart from the everyday or “profane.”[1] Although that distinction has had a profound affect on our understanding of religious behavior, it no longer helps when we begin to see everything in life infused with God’s grace. God is not just in the Scriptures but also in the streets – in Holy Communion but also in holy conversation. Otto wrote about our encounter with this holy Presence and how our personal intuition of the mysterium tremendum – though essential – was profoundly different from the experience of the collective at prayer.[2] In other words we are wired to know God in our hearts but we experience something different when we gather together.
I believe this is true. My solitary spiritual practices are essential to my life in Christ, but without the experience of worship in community, something would be missing. I don’t think God needs me to go to church on Sunday. I need to go because God is uniquely present when two or three are gathered (Matthew 18:20). Although I am generally a very happy person, when I am facing something difficult in my life, the Christian community carries me. Even when I don’t feel particularly energized by personal prayer or when I’ve been unfaithful to it, the community at worship heals me. God’s people at prayer have a power – a power we cannot experience alone.
There is something Trinitarian about this, too. This is part of our faith in a God who is One and Three – persons in community. If we are made – truly – in God’s image and likeness, then we need each other. Our Christian faith abides in us – body and soul – but it is lived out in community. If we are not, somehow, positioned to be at one another’s service, something intrinsic to the Gospel endeavor is lacking. Basil, the great Cappadocian monk, admonished a few self-absorbed hermits saying, “Whose feet then will you wash?”[3]
Now, whether that “community” has to be a formal religious organization or can be a more casual association – that is for each soul to determine. I need the structure of a “church” or congregation. More than that I need to pray with others and to have a context in which to serve. Community gives my faith flesh and bone – gives me a place in which to practice being a Christian. I think this generation of seekers will find that they need community, too. We must not worry for them because their searching looks different from ours. God’s got this. God’s got them. We just need to live the Gospel as best we can. That is the best advertisement for organized religion there is! The quality of our loving will draw the curious and the lost. Then, we do what Jesus did. We invite them to come and see (John 1:38-39).
Blessings and love to you all…
Vicki
God is Always More 