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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. Our words and actions are intended to bring beauty to the Earth, supporting insider and outsider and wealthy and poor alike in their quest for wholeness. James is no respecter of persons. His vision of church inspires a lively and diverse community that walks the talk and talks the walk with grace and honesty. There is no distinction between contemplation and action or prayer and justice-seeking for James. We pray with our lips and also our minds, hands, and hearts. Every action, James believes, can be prayerful and contribute to the healing and wholeness of persons and communities. James would have agreed with the Jewish mystics who asserted that when you save a soul you save the world, for the healing of every individual contributes to our own healing process in the dynamic, interdependent world of today’s physicists and ecologists and also in the global body of Christ.

Discovering James

Scholars speculate about the identity of the author of the Letter of James, recognizing that no answer will be definitive when we research an era in which the greatest homage you can give to a predecessor is to pen her or his name to a text. Most agree that the text alludes to James the brother of Jesus, the spiritual leader of the Jerusalem Church. Whether or not brother of Jesus penned these words addressed to Jewish Christians throughout the Mediterranean and Christians everywhere, the intention is clear: this text seeks to embody the spirit of Jesus’ brother in its emphasis on living the faith of Jesus over abstract doctrine, its concern for vulnerable and expendable members of society, and its desire to mediate tradition and novelty and particularity and universality in the evolution of Christian faith.

Written sometime between 60 and 80 CE, James finds inspiration in the teachings of Jesus and the prophetic writings. His writing mirrors the practical theology of Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount and the prophetic urgency for justice of Jesus’ Hebraic parents. While James is often pitted against Paul and seen as inferior in theology and spirituality, James may have been written not to criticize Paul’s emphasis on the primacy of grace, but to present a holistic complement to Paul’s theological insights and correct a tendency among Christians of all ages to be “so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.” James would have opposed the popular Christian saying of a few decades back, “Christians are not perfect, just forgiven,” by reminding us that Jesus invited his followers to seek perfection and to embrace their divine destiny. James would have chuckled and nodded approvingly at the bumper sticker controversies that spawned the following response to the popular slogan, “Honk if you love Jesus.” James believes that actions speak louder than words and that “If you love Jesus, seek justice. Any fool can honk!”

James invites us to focus on the life of Jesus. His words are a challenge to walk the talk and let the walk of ethical and socially concerned faith be our primary witness in the world. James’ theology is straightforward and life-changing:

 God loves you and wants you to flourish

 We are creatures of community who shape each other by our actions.

 Christianity involves following the path of Jesus in its embrace of the least of these, discovering God’s presence everywhere.

Holistic Christianity

A friend of mind gave me a paper weight that proclaims an affirmation attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” James would have approved of Gandhi’s wise counsel. The world is saved one person and community at a time. We can’t wait for others to follow the pathway to Jesus; we must live it out today. Heaven is not somewhere else. It is right where we are and not the pie in the sky when we die. As Jesus asserted, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” James wants to make this Earth heavenly, first in the lives of faithful communities and individuals and, then, in the broader society.

Many scholars believe that the Epistle of James is an invitation to the early church to embody the wisdom of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in presenting a dynamic vision of holistic spiritual practices. Faith, for James, involves cells and souls, welcome and witness, diet and doctrine, and prayers and practices. Everything fits together in the Christian life – mind, body, spirit, and actions; and individual, community, and planet. All are part of God’s quest for salvation and should shape the daily life of Jesus’ followers.

A bit of sagely advice given to spiritual leaders goes “they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” James would agree: doctrine is dead without justice, and piety is meaningless without ethics and social concern. James joins the everyday spirituality of the wisdom tradition with the social concern of the Hebrew prophets, whose quest for justice found its wellsprings in the vision of personal God who truly cares about honest business practices, fair mortgages, and meals for the hungry. Our ritual purity, worship services, and doctrinal orthodoxy mean nothing unless the hungry are fed, naked clothed, and the homeless given lodging. In the background of James’ message is the prophetic admonition:

I hate, I despise your festivals,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and

grain-offerings,

I will not accept them;

and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals

I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps .

But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

(Amos 5:21-24)

This is a truly holistic spirituality and a faith that responds to the deepest concerns of seekers, pilgrims, disaffected Christians, and the spiritual but not religious. In living with the Letter of James, we will discover a Christianity worth believing and faith that changes the world.

In the following chapters, I will focus on a few “moments” from James’ holistic spiritual vision. In the spirit of James, I will conclude each chapter with a short spiritual practice that joins action and contemplation in the quest to be God’s companions in healing the world.

1 From Carrie Newcomer’s “A Gathering of Spirits.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qZyoRiBteI