A Generous Spirit: One of the Four Pillars of Christian Spirituality

“The time is fast approaching when we will either be a mystic or a non-believer.”

This is a 1987 quote from a theologian named Karl Rahner. He is talking about the challenge of being a Christian in a highly secular, materialist culture.  We can no longer count on our community or our culture to carry us along on our faith journey. It requires a depth of commitment and an intentionality to stay grounded in faith in this climate. 

So how do we do that?  A lot of people are looking for insight on spiritual practices and how to deepen their relationship with God in this day and age.  When this parish was searching for a new rector, you went through a process of identifying goals for the parish. One goal was spiritual growth, and learning spiritual disciplines.  The other two were attracting more youth and children, and deepening our outreach to the poor and needy.   

In a sense, spiritual growth is the most essential goal, because it is the wellspring for everything else we do.  But it is also a very intangible goal—how can you measure spiritual growth?  What does a healthy spirituality look like? 

One of my favorite books on Christian spirituality, one that I reviewed in the parish  newsletter during Lent, is Ronald Rolheiser’s book, The Holy Longing:  The Search for a Christian Spirituality.  Rolheiser goes into depth about the incarnation and Christ’s death and resurrection and the implications they have for our spirituality.  He argues that there are four pillars of Christian spirituality, comparable to the five pillars of Islam.  The four elements of spirituality that he believes are non-negotiable for Christians are:

1. Private prayer and morality.
2. Commitment to justice for the poor.
3. Being part of a community of faith.
4. Generosity of spirit.

I will say more about each of these as I go along.  Rolheiser shows how important each of these are by telling stories about what life looks like when one is missing.  Private prayer and morality refers to having a personal relationship with God, sustained by daily prayer, and also striving to live with moral integrity.  That is certainly very central to Jesus’ teaching.  But even if you pray daily and keep the ten commandments, if you don’t concern yourself with justice for the poor, then you have missed part of the gospel.  Sometimes people argue that religion should steer clear of politics and economics, and focus on prayer and individual morality—but Jesus was very clear that praying for someone in need without trying to address the need is completely inadequate.  Following Jesus leads us to deal with systemic issues of justice, just as it led him to challenge the Romans and the religious authorities for the way they oppressed people.  On the other hand, if you try to work for justice without a sustaining relationship with God, you will become bitter and angry and burn out.  I can testify to that because I was a legal aid lawyer, determined to seek justice for the poor, but I burned out rather quickly because I had no faith to sustain me at the time. 

The third pillar is being a part of a community of faith.  You can be deeply prayerful, committed to social justice, but if you don’t go to church, you are still missing something.  Church gives us the opportunity to meet and be challenged by people of different temperaments, ideology and background.  We learn by bumping up against people who are different from us, and also by committing ourselves to stay even when something happens that we don’t like.  Living in community is humbling because it exposes our illusions and opens our eyes to other people’s pain.

The fourth pillar of Christian spirituality is a generosity and mellowness of spirit.  Here is the story Rolheiser tells to illustrate this quality.  He went to a church conference in Belgium that brought people from every continent together to talk about the church’s response to poverty in the world.  At the conference was a young nun from Asia, who came from a remarkable community.  The women of the community had given up all their comforts in order to live in solidarity with the poor.  They were completely dedicated to helping the poor.  This young woman was deeply prayerful, had great integrity, lived in community and was committed to justice for the poor.  The participants at the conference worked hard—with sessions in the morning, afternoon and evening.  In the middle of the week, the leader of the conference announced that everyone should take the afternoon off and go sightseeing and shopping and meet for drinks and dinner at a local hotel.  At the closing Eucharist, people were asked to share an experience of grace that they had experienced at the conference.  After several people had spoken, the young nun went forward and described how she had been furious when the conference leader had announced the afternoon off.  How can we stroll around, shop, drink alcohol and eat gourmet food when the poor are suffering?  We’re supposed to be here to help them.  She had been too angry to go into the hotel for drinks or dinner—instead, she sat on the bus for several hours fuming.  But as she sat out there, she asked herself whether Jesus would be in there eating and drinking and having a good time, and she suddenly realized that yes, he would. She realized that she had become like the older brother of the prodigal son, doing all the right things but with no celebration in her heart.  She was missing the generosity of spirit to appreciate grace, either for herself or others.

That brings me to this morning’s gospel lesson.  You were probably wondering if I would ever get there.  The parable of the laborers is about this fourth pillar of Christian spirituality—generosity of spirit.   It’s a funny parable because it flies in the face of common sense and our settled idea of justice.  Equal pay for equal work, right?  How many times have people struggled for this principle?  Yet the owner of the vineyard carelessly hires people at different times during the day and gives them the same wage no matter how much or how little they worked.  What is the deal? 

The deal is that God’s grace is free and available to everyone.  We don’t receive grace because we work harder or deserve it more than other people.  We receive grace because God is generous and loves us—no matter what we do or don’t do.   Doesn’t that sound like a good deal?   Free grace for everyone! Why does that make us angry?  Why couldn’t the laborers who got there in the morning be happy that they got their wages, and the others, who came in later, also got theirs?  Why is it so easy to identify with their resentment?

When my children were young, we used to refer to them as the equality police.  If there was a piece of cake to be divided, we practically had to get out a tape measure to make sure each one got an equal share.  We come into the world with a profound sense of scarcity—a deep insecurity that there is not enough of the world’s goods to go around.  Especially we fear that there is not enough love to go around—and we secretly believe that we are not loveable in any case.  So, we constantly strive to secure what we need—by competing with others for limited goods and by working so that we feel that we have a right to what we receive.  The laborers who worked all day felt that they had earned more than the ones who came late— they were entitled to a greater share.  But this is a parable of God’s grace—the truth is that no one earns it, and no one is entitled to more than anyone else.  It is simply a gift that God chooses to give us, because God’s nature is overflowing generosity and love.

The more we open our hearts to receive that overflowing grace, the more we will be able to celebrate with others when they receive grace.  The more we trust God to love us and meet our needs, the less we will resent others when they are loved and have their needs met.  The more generous we allow God to be with us, the more generous we will be with others.