What does it mean to be spiritual? People sometimes tell me that they’re ‘spiritual but not religious’. Sometimes people tell me someone else is spiritual – ‘oh Doreen, she’s such a spiritual person!’. Or sometimes people describe something as being ‘really spiritual’ and there’s whole lines of books and websites dedicated to spirituality, but what does it actually mean?
Quiet things are often described as spiritual. Meditating, praying, reading, maybe listening to whale sounds or plinky plonky music. Walking a labyrinth – that’s definitely spiritual. But are noisy things, but extension, non-spiritual? Can you have a spiritual experience at a heavy metal concert or on a crowded train or at a rally?
Beautiful things are often described as spiritual. Some people set up spiritual spaces, with an icon and a candle and some flowers and maybe some coloured glass that catches the eye – or seek out spiritual places like the bush, the beach and the desert. But might spiritual things also happen on a street full of houses that all look the same, or in a tacky GP’s waiting room, or out the back of a warehouse smoking durries?
Of course, no tangible item, no place and no activity have a monopoly on spirituality. People may feel just as spiritual in a gothic cathedral as they do in a public laundry. So we’re still not much closer to defining what ‘spiritual’ actually is.
We know about the Holy Spirit, who has some clear tasks in the life of the church and the world – equal parts inspiration and nuisance. There’s a sense that God is generally quite sort-of spirit-y. There’s that bit in John’s gospel where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well ‘God is spirit and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth’. So there’s that.
But what about me? Am I a spirit trapped inside a meat prison, waiting to be liberated? Or am I just an animal with an extra bit called ‘spirit’ that makes me human? The word ‘spirit’ is used in all these ways, and it gets to a point the words spiritual or spirituality or spirit don’t really have an agreed meaning. We become like Alice in Wonderland: "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
In the portion of the letter to the Romans which we read today, St Paul is rhetorically declaring a dichotomy between spirit and flesh. Let’s hear what he had to say to those Romans about flesh:
…those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh
…to set the mind on the flesh is death
…the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law
…those who are in the flesh cannot please God
…if you live according to the flesh, you will die
Crikey, this flesh business sounds pretty bad. By contrast, the Spirit is A1 ridgey-didge fantastic, according to Paul:
…those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
…to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace
…though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness
…if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies
…if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live
…for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God
So that’s all pretty straightforward then, isn’t it? Spirit good, flesh bad. Do more spirit. Do less flesh. Up Spirit, down flesh. Bingo bango you’re all sorted.
Except we still don’t have a useful categorisation system to divide the fleshy stuffy from the spirit-y stuff. What about breakfast? Flesh or spirit? What about sleeping? Is that spirit or flesh? What about ice-skating? What about juggling? What’s the taxonomy here? How do I distinguish between flesh and spirit, so I can set my mind on the spirit as Paul instructs?
OK, how about I put us out of our collective misery here and give you my take on this?
Paul has just spent umpteen pages arguing that the Mosaic Law, the Jewish covenant with God, is really, really good – but not quite good enough, so it couldn’t do the job of reconciling all of humanity to God. So Jesus’s death and resurrection was needed to share the love, so that everyone (not just one group of people) could be brought close to God. Paul wants to make it clear that sin is not just failing to observe the covenant, or any particular rules, it is missing the mark. It is not being all that we are created to be.
And all this flesh talk? Living according to the flesh, setting the mind on flesh, being in the flesh – these are shorthand ways of being obsessed with and focused on the self. Selfishness. Self-absorption. Self-aggrandisement. The pathway towards wholeness lies in putting others first, and in focusing on God as the source of truth and light.
So what that does it mean to be spiritual, or ‘live according to the spirit’? It means that the old self is cast away. The other – neighbours and enemies - becomes the focus of our love, instead of ourselves. God’s purity and fulness become our ultimate goal, rather than our own success or even happiness. When we do this, this living according to the Spirit, a new self emerges. Not just in a single climactic mountain-top event – but again and again as the old self is stripped away and the New Creation wells up in us.
This means that spirituality is whatever helps the old self to die, and the new self to rise. If that’s meditating on a hilltop or lighting incense at the shrine of saint, then strength to your arm. But spirituality is probably also mundane. It’s how we treat the harried staff at the local supermarket, and how we respond to our neighbours in distress. Spirituality is how we talk and how we behave in our workplaces and families. It’s how we vote and communicate and laugh and celebrate.
To live according to the Spirit and set our minds on the things of the spirit is to become resurrection people, in whom the old laws are put to death and the new being arises.
The Lord Be With You