Holistic Spirituality. Bruce G. Epperly
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HOLISTIC SPIRITUALITY
LIFE TRANSFORMING WISDOM
FROM THE LETTER OF JAMES
Bruce G. Epperly
Topical Line Drives, Volume 4
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, FL
2014
Copyright © 2014, Bruce G. Epperly
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Aer.io: 978-1-938434-91-4
iTunes/iBooks: 978-1-63199-431-9
Google Play: 978-1-63199-432-6
Nook: 978-1-63199-433-3
Print:
ISBN10: 1-938434-76-5
ISBN13: 978-1-938434-76-1
Energion Publications
P. O. Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
energionpubs.com
A Word of Thanksgiving
During July 2013, I began a new spiritual and professional adventure. I was called to be Pastor of South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Centerville, Massachusetts. After two decades of seminary teaching and creating programs to nurture pastoral excellence for novice and seasoned ministers, I experienced the divine lure to move forward to full-time congregational ministry. Like many congregations, this historic Cape Cod church is seeking to join tradition and novelty in responding to seekers and pilgrims. As I began my ministry, I was inspired to share the holistic vision of the Letter of James as a challenge to explore new ways of being Christian in the twenty-first century. This text emerged from a sermon series on the Letter of James, given during August and September 2013. I am grateful to this open-spirited congregation for its support of my spiritual leadership and willingness to hear the ancient stories of grace and healing in novel and innovative ways.
I am grateful to Henry and Jody Neufeld, publishers and editors, who encouraged me to fashion a small testament from a handful of sermons. I am thankful for the loving support of Kate, my spiritual companion of over thirty five years, who inspires me to live out my faith in the quotidian adventures of marriage and family life. Marriage and family life is the crucible inspiring us to become doers and not just speakers and hearers in the ways of wisdom.
I give thanks for my teachers and mentors, John Cobb, David Griffin, Marie Fox, Richard Keady, Bernard Loomer, and John Akers, and fellow companions in the pathway of Jesus, Patricia Adams Farmer, Anna Rollins, Suzanne Schmidt, Ed Aponte, and Kathy Harvey Nelson, whose faithfulness inspires my own quest to join vision, promise, and practice in service of God’s quest for Shalom. To these and others, as well as to you my reader as you seek to walk Christ’s ways of wisdom and healing, I share the words of Dag Hammarskjold:
For all that has been – thanks.
For all that shall be – yes.
May you and your congregation be blessed in your quest for holistic spirituality for just such a time as this.
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Adventures In Holistic Spirituality
An Ancient Text with a Living Message
Today, many North Americans claim to be spiritual but not religious. They practice meditation and yoga, attend spiritual life retreats, follow spiritual teachers on the internet, and utilize various forms of energy medicine. They see their lives as spiritual journeys from darkness to light and separation to unity. For them, spirituality is affirmative, forward-looking, free-spirited, and meaning-giving. But, often they are emotionally and spiritually alienated from Christianity and the church. They admire Jesus, but when they think of the church, it’s the last place they would expect to experience spiritual transformation. They perceive the church as the bastion of soul-deadening religion and backward-looking thinking. In their minds, religion is rule-oriented, anti-science, dogmatic and exclusionary, sexist, homophobic, and hypocritical. They think they need to deny the insights of science, literature, and other faith traditions when they enter the doors of our congregations. They perceive the church to be a tail light rather than a head light, as Martin Luther King once noted, in the quest for social justice and human rights. If they show up in church at all, it is for weddings, funerals, and the Christmas Eve candlelight services. They don’t know much about the church, and what they know inclines them to stay as far away as possible.
Sadly, many of these perceptions are based on fact and are exacerbated by media emphases on Quran burning pastors, protestors at Gay Pride parades, and pickets at funerals of fallen soldiers. Seekers are rightly scandalized by televangelists and megachurch pastors who connect earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes with God’s punishment on North America for its toleration of homosexuality, abortion, and divorce. While many congregations are lights in their communities and pioneers in the integration of spirituality, worship, and justice-seeking, their message of good news and their stories about the way of Jesus are drowned out by messages of fear, alienation, and exclusion.
Although faith is always lived out in the complexities of the present time, the wisdom of the past can help us chart a path toward the horizons of God’s future. At just such a time as ours, the wise teachings of the Letter of James can help active Christians claim a holistic spirituality that joins contemplation and action to bring healing to the world. The Letter of James can be the inspiration for a transformed church with a life-changing mission that welcomes with open arms the gifts of pilgrims, seekers, agnostics, and the self-described spiritual but not religious. James transcends the current dualism of spirituality and religion in its vision of a faithful community and individual faith practices that join theological reflection, healthy relationships, and social justice.
Despite Martin Luther’s misguided dismissal of James as “an epistle of straw,” due to James’ emphasis on agency and lifestyle rather than receptive grace as central to Christian experience, James is good news for congregants and seekers. It is the gospel lived out in everyday life, not by words alone or doctrinal requirements, but by actions that transform the world. This is the good news of Jesus Christ who shows us the pathway to abundant life, and not a dead letter or a soul-deadening creed or abstract doctrines about the divinity of Jesus unrelated to daily life. James invites us to be companions on the pathway of the living Christ.
The Letter of James is an embodiment of the wisdom tradition, evidenced in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the apocryphal Ben Sirach, and the parables of Jesus. It sees faith as the affirmation of the holiness of the present moment, in which God is praised and grace received in changing diapers, honest business relationships, artistic creativity, and care for vulnerable persons. The God that James imagines is fully embodied in the complexities of community life, family decision-making, and living out our individual callings one day at a time. James invites us to incarnate the wisdom of singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer’s “Holy as a Day is Spent” in its celebration of God’s presence in encountering clerks at shopping center, folding laundry, cooking breakfast, and seeking to bring beauty and justice to this Good Earth.1
James and the Butterfly Effect
According to chaos theory, small environmental factors, such as a butterfly flapping its wings in Southern California’s San Juan Capistrano, can set in motion a series of events that can lead to a thunderstorm on Cape Cod, where I live. What we do matters. Ordinary and often unnoticed interactions can change the world one person at a time. This emphasis on the importance of everyday life as sacramental is the heart of James’ message. Following the pathway of Jesus is not esoteric or extraordinary; it is the result of our daily commitment to see the holiness in one another and then move from vision to action, making every encounter a gift to God and our neighbors.
The Letter of James invites first and twenty-first century congregations to be both spiritual and religious.