People use words, but words also use people.  One of the marks of spiritual maturity is the keen awareness of this reciprocal relationship between who we are and the things we say. 

Spiritual growth is about learning how to listen past the sensationalism and the inflammatory hype that dominates most religious and political discourse.  It’s about hungering for nuance and being okay from time to time with a little uncertainty.  To be formed in the likeness of Jesus Christ is to recognize abusive, absolutist language for what it is, and to push on towards wholeness and peace – all the while never forgetting that every word, every deed, every context and every situation has the potential to profoundly impact your spiritual growth.   

Remember – spiritual formation is the process of becoming the people God is calling us to be.  Words and actions are not always as independent of each other as some suggest, but keep in mind there’s simply no such thing as a causal connection between the two either.  Your faith lives and breathes within a broader ecology that shapes you as much as you shape it. 

If you want to grow, study your contexts.

It’s a brand new year – how are your New Year’s resolutions holding up so far?  My guess is your neighborhood gym is getting a little less crowded each morning, cigarette sales are already beginning to return to their late 2010 levels, and Amazon is busy processing a glut of diet cookbook returns.  Happy New Year indeed!

For a moment, think about the process of making (and breaking) New Year’s resolutions as a religious ritual.  Like many rituals, resolution-making is repeated regularly at the same time every year.  Resolutions make us feel better about ourselves, and – like most rituals – they create a shared experience that is held in common by a group of people.  Resolution-making even contains a degree of confession and repentance (that is, recognizing the need for change and then taking action to bring about that change).

So, if a New Year’s resolution were a ritual, would it be a Christian ritual?  I don’t think so.  Instead, I’d call it a ritual taken from American civil religion.  Most folks who fill the pews in 21^st century churches don’t know the difference between the two – do you?

In a nutshell, American civil religion is a mishmash of cultural myths, therapeutic moralism and capitalist grit crammed together into a vaguely Christian framework.  It’s aimed at becoming a “good person”, a “model citizen”, and being “respectable” in the community.  It endorses success, happiness and individual choice, while demonizing failure and forced conformity.  It teaches that hard work and sacrifice are always handsomely rewarded, and that God helps those who help themselves. 

What would have happened if the Church had always confused the American civil religion with the message of Christ’s death and resurrection?  In other words, what if our mothers and fathers in the faith had lived according to their yearly ritual of making (and breaking) resolutions instead of the process of becoming the people God is calling us to be?  Maybe our Bibles would read more like this –

• In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus appears to his disciples and commands them to go into all the world and be good people, to work hard, and make friends.
• On the day of Pentecost as recorded in the book of Acts, the followers of Jesus are recognized as respected, model citizens when they are baptized with the Holy Spirit. 
• In the early centuries of the Christian Church, untold numbers of martyrs shed their blood and gave up their lives because they endorsed the status quo and unthinkingly took part in the power plays embedded in everyday culture. 

I pointed out a while back that we’re always being spiritually formed – and it’s really a question of what kind of spiritual formation we’re getting.   This New Year, I challenge you to think critically about the rituals, lifestyles and values that are forming you.

Christmas is the perfect time to laugh, because in the Christmas story, God’s sense of humor shines through.

Reversal, surprise, and irony are the main ingredients of comedy.  A well-crafted joke deconstructs our sensibilities and challenges us to think about the world in a new way.  So depending on your perspective, you may not think a joke is very funny – that is, if the joke is on you.

Think about the Christmas story, for instance –

• Our Messiah – God’s Mighty Deliverer, the Hope of the Nations, whose name was to be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father Prince of Peace’ – turned out to be a baby.  Think about that – our King introduced himself to us amidst spit-up, dirty diapers, and birth fluids. No wonder we didn’t have room for him in that Bethlehem inn.
• And the first to hear the good news of his birth were not the religious leaders, not the political movers and shakers, not even the devout believers devoted to prayer and fasting.  No –the angels instead went way out into the countryside and celebrated with a bunch of smelly shepherds.  Shepherds in the ancient world rarely had the chance to speak to other people, much less an entire chorus of angels.
• And the wise men from the East – the first ones in line to bow before Jesus and offer their gifts to the Son of God – were foreigners. They were little more than bureaucratic ambassadors from another country, discharging their duty to greet Israel’s new King. They had no right to welcome God in the flesh because they were outsiders.  It would’ve been like the president of the United States inviting a bunch of Canadians to the inauguration ceremony.

Depending on where you are in the story, the birth of Jesus could either be seriously insulting, or unexpectedly hilarious.  Are you expecting God’s favor because your social standing says you deserve it?  Better talk to those smelly shepherds.  Are you expecting a formal, mature, sophisticated God to officially endorse the status quo?  Better talk to the guy in charge of cleaning that Bethlehem stable.  Are you an honored member of the “in” crowd expecting to exercise your membership privileges?  Better get in line behind the wise men.

So take a step back and laugh a little this Christmas.  Don’t take yourself too seriously, and don’t forget – if humor is the art of the unexpected, God is the master at toying with our expectations.

Merry Christmas –