IN TODAYS EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS, Paul discusses spiritual maturity, what we look like when we live in the fulness of Christ – he in us, and we in him.   George Saunders wrote a remembrance of a childhood incident, an experience that shaped his relationship and understanding of God.  He called the piece, “Hypocrites.”¹  It can help us reflect upon what growing in Christ looks like.

On those Wednesday afternoons when I was Reader for all-school Mass, I would leave class early, confident yet stressed, like a little businessman, and hustle down to the sacristy, where I’d read the Epistle passage aloud so that Father X could check my pronunciation.  He’d mark the reading with one of several silk ribbons bound into the pages, and I’d take the book out to the lectern and stand there a minute, thinking, Soon I’ll be up here, and the light will be on me, and the church will be full of my friends.

Normally on Wednesdays I found Father X working at something in the sacristy. This Wednesday, I came up the aisle quietly, so quietly that I discovered Father X and a nun I’ll call Sister Y in the middle of—well, I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. It appeared to be some particularly athletic form of kissing...

Sister Y was extremely tall.  She had taken part in our Student-Faculty basketball game that fall, a ringer despite having to play in her habit. She was the tallest person on the court by at least eight inches.  Also, she had skills.  By the end of the game (a rout, Faculty obliterating Students), her cheeks were red with the exhilaration of universal domination. She outscored her lay male teammates, barked bits of technical strategy, shook her head in disgust when her orders were botched.  In the stands, early muffled hilarity gave way to respectful silence, applause, shouted encouragement.  The nun, it was conceded, could play.

Now here she was, French-kissing Father X.... [Saunders describes a fairly passionate and electric congress.]  Behind them, aghast, sat the holy implements.

Father X, it had been rumored, was gay.  He was pale, slight.

Hereby that rumor was refuted.

Or at least complicated.

I stood watching. (In memory, I am frozen in midstep, one sneakered foot in the air, my mouth a little O, like the mouth on a choirboy in a glass Christmas town.)

Then I backed silently out.

Wow wow wow.

There was no way I had just seen that.

What a world, that contained even this.

By now I knew enough about the time in which I was living to know that one of our fundamental narratives was that a critical moment of disillusion could be followed by a bitter but justified downward slide into decadence. Having seen what I had seen, in other words, entitled me to cry Hypocrites! and leave religion behind forever.

These people, these priests and nuns, dominated our lives, bossed us around, shamed us for our crass actions (writing with dull pencils, whispering excitedly when it started to rain outside the classroom window), actions that were even more appalling when juxtaposed against the fact that Christ had bled and died for us.

And now this.

Hypocrites! (I tried it on for size.)

This vignette proved, in effect, that the whole religion deal was a sham.

Didn’t it?

In a moment of clarity I saw that it did not. The kiss proved only that two young vow-makers had failed in their vows. It did not debunk the act of vowing.  If I ever made a vow, I knew, I would keep it.  Therefore my feelings and insights vis-à-vis God were as valid, arguably more valid, than those of Father X and Sister Y, who now seemed pitiable, weak, and left behind.  Already, this early in their lives, they had failed their own best selves.

Then something long festering began to rise in me. If these two, who’d been vetted by the system, and who actively, and every day, professed their belief in that system, and lectured us on our failings, could so surreptitiously defy, even insult, the system, didn’t this suggest that the system’s most senior representatives ... might also be merely human, and thereby flawed?  Mightn’t the system, supposedly overseen in even its smallest details by God Himself, via these representatives, actually be just a crude, man-made form, inspired by, but inaccurately addressing, even obscuring, some greater and more difficult-to-discern truth?  A truth that was still out there, waiting to be discerned?  By me?

Yes, it’s just you and Me now, Jesus said inside me. You can know Me all on your own. In fact, that is how you must know Me.

I went loudly back up the aisle (coughing, coughing again, whistling, letting out a weary “Oh man!” as if pre-exhausted by all the reading I was about to do), then plopped down in the second row and paged through a missalette.

Out came Sister Y, looking beautiful in the way someone will when she has just, against all sense, done exactly what she most wanted to. She strode past me on those mile-long legs, her sensible nun shoes making a hollow klopf-klopf, the sound of Joy itself agreeing to some pragmatic temporary reconstraint.

I went into the sacristy and got my Epistle assignment from Father X, who dealt with me so much as usual—as if I were outraging and boring him at once—that my opinion of mankind’s duplicity was elevated on the spot.

I wonder if we can each see ourselves in that boy’s story.  How have we felt in those moments of disillusionment, when we feel let down, let down by the Church, by its authorities, by its people?  Has it made us feel bitterness, confusion, sorrow?  Has it excited us in any way?  Or relieved us?  Experiencing disillusionment is an essential experience in developing spiritual maturity, that is if we have the honesty to acknowledge it and the faith and hope to allow our shock to be constructive.  Do we allow our disillusionment to be an opportunity for learning?  So a first mark of spiritual maturity is the capacity for disillusionment – to have our world shaken, but still trust that God is with us, that God loves us.

Scandalized by the kiss, Saunders fills with judgment and condemnation of Father X and Sister Y, but I’m not convinced he’s judging their worst flaws.  It’s just that sex tends to unsettle us a lot more than most other things.  Saunders comes down on them for the kiss, but he seems much less punitive in response to their bossing him around and shaming him, to the priest usually treating him as if he were both outrageous and boring.  Is a kiss, even that hearty French kiss, really worse than berating someone?  Is that really what Jesus was most concerned about?

The raunchy kiss grabs our attention not only because it excites us, not only because it’s something we want, but also because it so obviously breaks the rules.  The kiss appears to be a simple, straightforward violation of their vows.  We like clear rules, and they were clearly broken.  A kiss, and now there’s reason to doubt the spiritual maturity of Father X and Sister Y. 

81% of Christians equate spiritual maturity with following the rules described in the Bible.²  Or, at least, the rules as they understand to exist in the Bible.  That the Bible’s rules may be unclear, misunderstood, or inconsistent is another issue.  The point for us now is that most Christians risk allowing their religion to be about demand and obligation.  A recent poll showed that for most Christians, spiritual maturity is “trying hard to follow the rules.”  It’s the belief that God accepts us if we toe the line and do things the right way. 

I know that attitude lurks in me, but it’s not Christianity.  It doesn’t set us free or help us grow up.  It’s not the way of Jesus.  Rules may be helpful, but they’re not primary.  Jesus is about grace, not rules.  For Jesus, everything is free, a gift.  We can’t earn anything from God.  We receive, and our lives become meaningful, purposeful, rich if we respond to God’s generosity to us by using our gifts for the common good instead of using them for selfish and indulgent things.  We receive from God, recognize his graciousness to us, count our blessings, and give thanks.  That’s a second mark of spiritual maturity.

Here’s a third.  Profoundly shaken by what he’d seen, Saunders calculated that he could now dump the Church.  “It’s just you and Me now, Jesus said inside [him].  You can know me all on your own.  In fact that is how you must know Me.”  It’s an attitude that suits our culture perfectly – highly individualistic, anti-institutional.  And, of course, in a way, it’s absolutely correct.  Each of us bears individual responsibility for responding to God, for allowing our relationship with him to grow and ripen, but can we really do it all on our own?  Is there really no need for the Church and the corruptions, annoyances, weaknesses, failures, challenges of other people?

Paul’s goal is an inclusive Church, one with variety, one with differences, and yet a Church that is united.  Paul doesn’t confuse unity with uniformity or like-mindedness.  If it’s just me and Jesus, or if it’s just me, Jesus, and people like me, then we’re not going to grow as Christians.  We’ll be children, stunted and immature.

Today’s epistle begins with Paul calling for people to walk like Christ, that is with humility, gentleness, forbearance, and love.  These qualities help us to listen to one another, to appreciate one another’s gifts, to apprehend the truth as each of us see it. 

Saunders’ anger, righteous anger, at the Church is because the Church wouldn’t recognize that he has a voice, that he has gifts other than reading the epistle to offer it.  Only after seeing the kiss, only after becoming aware of the weakness and fallibility of Father X and Sister Y, Saunders expresses confidence that now his feelings and insights about God were as valid as those of Father X and Sister Y.  The point is that kiss or no kiss, Saunders’ feelings and insights about God were valid, and always were valid and important.  That Father X and Sister Y were part of a system that repressed spiritual expression and the sharing of spiritual experiences and feelings may be a far greater crime than their wet kiss.

Paul tells the Ephesians that God has given different gifts to people for the building up of the Church, but everyone has a role and a purpose within the Church.  People with differences and different gifts come together and commit themselves to a common purpose.  Spiritual maturity allows for unity in diversity and diversity in unity.  Then we’re reflecting the mystery of the Trinity, of God’s very being.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

---

¹ George Saunders, “Hypocrites,” The New Yorker, June 8, 2009.

² The Barna Group, “Many Churchgoers and Faith Leaders Struggle to Define Spiritual Maturity,” May 11, 2009. http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/264-many-churchgoers-and-faith-leaders-struggle-to-define-spiritual-maturit