It seems we're at war.
During my hospital chaplaincy training, one of our instructors shared that when she entered a patient's room, she would often ask, "How's your spirit?" It was an open-ended enough question to get a conversation going.
So I ask you, "How's your spirit?"
There is a story of a three-year-old girl, the firstborn and only child in her family. Her mother became pregnant again, and the little girl was super excited about having a new brother or sister. The family welcomed a healthy, sweet baby boy, and after only a few hours at home with the new baby, the little girl asked her parents for some alone time with her new baby brother. Specifically, she asked that this be in his room with the door closed. Her insistence on privacy made her parents a little nervous, but then they remembered that they had installed a new baby monitor, so they could keep an eye on things. If anything seemed suspicious, they figured they could quickly get to the nursery.
So, the parents walked their young daughter to the infant’s room, shut the door, and then raced to the monitor. Holding their breath, they watched the little pajama-clad body moving toward the crib. With only the back of her tiny head in view, she poked her face through the bars. The parents leaned closer and listened as the child whispered to her new sibling:
“Tell me about God. I’m starting to forget.”[1]
How easily it is to forget that pure awareness of who we are, and whose we are. Which is why I firmly believe religion is still relevant, and spirituality, for today and tomorrow’s Christian, is no longer only an option, but a necessity. Both can serve as reminders of our Christian identity. Together, religion and spirituality can help us mature our faith.
I asked EpiscoBOT, an AI resource developed by and for the Episcopal Church, for working definitions of religion and spirituality:
- Religion is the organized, communal expression of faith: beliefs, doctrines, rituals, worship, and institutions (churches, sacraments, creeds) that shape a people’s life together.
- Spirituality is the personal, interior life of relating to God (or the sacred): prayer, conscience, experience of the Spirit, and the ways a person grows in love, meaning, and holiness.
Not bad, EpiscoBOT!
While the three-year-old little girl in our story and, certainly, the writer of the Gospel of John, also known as the Spiritual Gospel, have a grasp of the importance of a healthy spiritual life, I am not so sure about the protagonists in our two Gospel passages.
See what you think.
Nicodemus, a leader in the Jewish community, has heard about Jesus. For reasons unknown to us, he comes to Jesus by night to ask some questions. He’s curious, intellectual, and eager to learn. He’s respectful, too, flattering even, but Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, Jesus takes their private conversation from the religious to the spiritual, the mundane to the transcendent. No one can see (perhaps more to the point, sense) the Kingdom of God without being born again, anew, or from above. (We have some choices here.)[2]
Bewildered and perhaps a bit bewitched by the charismatic rabbi, Nicodemus, taking a literal approach, wonders aloud how one might physically enter back into one’s mother’s womb to be born again. It’s comical. Jesus elaborates using wind as an example of the spirit’s mystifying movement. One can only imagine Nicodemus’ confused facial expression, in the flickering candlelight, as Jesus presses the issue, with more symbolic imagery and language that leave the poor Pharisee more in the dark than he was when he first arrived.
And just like that, John leaves Nicodemus to ponder this clandestine exchange for several more chapters. He’ll be back in chapter seven to testify on behalf of Jesus. And in 19, he brings a hundred pounds of myrrh to the tomb to anoint Jesus, on the presumption that his body will remain dead.
The Spirit forms us as disciples over time, it seems. Sometimes.
Traditionally, wells were early-morning gathering places where gossip was exchanged, and laughter rang out, signs of kinship and vital community. In the ancient world, wells were where God did new things. Even all alone with her thoughts, perspiration dripping down her back, she senses the promise of new life bubble up when she comes to dip her bucket in the water. As she approaches, she braces herself spotting a male figure sitting on the edge of the well. She notices the tassels on his tunic. A Jew. They would not speak. Jews and Samaritans do not socialize.
“Give me a drink,” he says.
“You talking to me? A Samaritan?”
“Yes, and if you knew who you were talking to, you would have asked me for a drink,” Jesus says.
In the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in scripture, male or female, back and forth they go, like a fiercely competitive singles tennis match.[3]
Jesus serves. “Go call your husband.”
“Sorry, don’t have one.”
“You are right. You’ve had five.”
Jesus gives voice to her uncomfortable truth. How could he know?
Stunned, she drops everything and runs into the village to tell anyone she can find.
“Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done!”
This woman has nothing to lose. She was ripe for transformation.[4]
What might we glean from these two characters for our own spiritual life as disciples of Christ?
Perhaps that laying down our stories can be the hardest, best thing that can happen to us. That the timetable for our spiritual awakening can be fluid, that gender is inconsequential.
God so loves the world, the whole world, that God sends Jesus, the word, the truth, the light, the bread, the vine, the way to eternal life. Based on our two examples, a genuine encounter with Jesus will be life-changing. And our response to that encounter will be unique. Like Nicodemus, some of us will participate in the background. Like the Samaritan woman (St. Photini, whose feast day is February 26), some of us will bear public witness. If we’re serious about following Jesus, what happens in the dark will eventually come to light. And, finally, we would do well (pun intended) to expect the unexpected.
At its very best, organized religion supports our discipleship in community. At its best, spirituality also supports our discipleship, especially when accompanied by a spiritually mature, inclusive, expansive theological imagination and regular prayer and practice.
Without religion, spirituality can become unmoored, subjective, or exclusive. Without spirituality, religion can become empty ritual or mere tradition. The Christian life calls for both: faithful practice in private and in community, and an interior life of repentance and prayer, leading to compassion in action.
In this dangerous and unpredictable time, we can no longer afford to be religious but not spiritual. Our spirituality can form us to be the disciples we are called to be – blessed to be blessings, partners with God, serving in ways that seek to love and heal the world so that we may never forget the sweetness of God’s lavish love for each and every one of us. May it be so.
Amen💛
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated and read by Joanna Macy
Book of Hours, I 59
[1] Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 113–14.
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, The Gospel of John: A Beginner’s Guide to the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 1st ed (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2024), Ch. 2.
[3] Lindsay Hardin Freeman, Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter (Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 2014), 518.
[4] Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 2018), 142–46.
