“Christianity is not about following rules, it is about having a relationship with Jesus.”

I might imagine this quote coming from evangelical brothers and sisters who speak often about having a personal relationship with Jesus. The quote actually comes from Pope Frances. In a homily preached on May 15, he went on to say that such relationship is not a matter of ‘things to do’ – ‘If I do this, you give me that.” He noted: Such a relationship would be “commercial” while Jesus gives everything, including his life, gratuitously.

Grace.

The theme of relationship is embedded in the service of Holy Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer. The candidate is asked: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Do you promise to follow him and obey him as Lord? Sounds like relationship to me.

I’ve been thinking about how we go about building that relationship. I compared it last week to a car trip, whether God is in on the side of the road, at the service station, in the car with us or maybe behind the steering wheel. That analogy, with its limits, triggered other parables from readers.

One friend said that church leaders, clergy in particular, often get “too caught up with the splash programming or community draw, forgetting that, as Evelyn Underhill notes, God is the interesting thing about religion.” He said it’s like hosting a basketball game and spending all the time on the concessions stand and lighting of the stadium, but just a smidgeon on the actual game prep.

The Rev. Dr. Dawn Davis said that the difference between knowing about God and being in a relationship with God is like reading a recipe instead of enjoying the meal. You can see more of her comments on relationship with God included above. Good stuff.

I myself often marvel that at museums, the gift shop is the most crowded room. Masterpieces go unnoticed. What’s that about? Instead of just experiencing, enjoying the beauty from a creative hand greater than ourselves, we try to possess it, capture it, maybe even limit it, control it. Is there any parallel with religious experience?

What would it mean to deepen a relationship with God? How do we experience such a thing? Experience is a big part of the journey of faith. Along with reading scripture, learning from our tradition, tapping into God-given reason, measuring it all against the wisdom of the community, some kind of experience of God is key to spiritual growth. Otherwise, why bother?

Sure, like anything, the notion of a relationship with God can go off the rails. It can become overly individualistic. You and me and God, and I’m not so sure about you. As in all things religious, we can use the notion to divide or separate if we so choose. Years ago, my sister jokingly (I think) gave me a bumper sticker that read: Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.  Again, scripture, tradition, reason, community can keep us on track.

All of that comes with practice, in both senses of the word. We practice in the sense that we get better, go deeper, the more we do it. That’s true of any relationship, growing as we attend to it. We also practice in the sense that we make it practical. We act on it, which is why spiritual practices matter. We do that through prayer, not only giving God our wish list, but sitting in God’s presence and listening. We do that as we attend to God’s word. It comes with a regular commitment to worship, letting bread and wine feed us. It comes with generosity, being a giver, being of service which is how we come to know God’s character, how we meet Jesus.

Take this week to think about what it means to have a relationship with the Holy One, the living God, with Jesus. What might you do this week to help that relationship grow?

At the door, parishioner greets the preacher…

“Thank you so much for that powerful sermon. When you began by saying ‘Let us pray,’ that really struck me. It made me think about my need to pray, how amazing it is that God wishes us to pray. It was so impactful. In fact, I didn’t hear anything else you said.”

I was reminded of that story in Morning Prayer last week. We begin that service with the confession, and we begin the confession with three words: “Most merciful God.”  For some reason, after reciting that confession many times. I stopped at that first line, meditating on what those three words mean, how much they convey. In those three words, there’s a world of theology. There’s a creed.

Those three words remind me that I am called to live my life not solely as a free agent, as a matter of my own choosing, my own preferences on what it means to be ethical or good or successful. Those choices have everything to do with life lived in a relationship with a living God who calls me to a particular path, a way of life, who calls me to obedience.

The good news, of course, in that three-word creed is that we pray to a God whose quality it is always to have mercy. That opening line suggests an expansive theology of grace through which, as Rob Bell says, there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. As intro to the confession, it also invites reflection on our actions and attitudes. It challenges us to mindfulness, remembering that our lives unfold in God’s presence, that our lives are meant to move into deeper union with God and neighbor, that we have both freedom and responsibility in that relationship. We confess the ways in which we block growth in that relationship. We confess in order to go deeper in love of God and neighbor.

There’s a similar reminder in the first few words of the Lord’s prayer. It begins: Our Father who art in heaven. There’s a lot of theology in those few words as well. Meditate on all that phrase means. We are called to live our lives, to express our concerns to a transcendent God miraculously engaged in our lives, to a God who exists in that reality we call heaven. Sure, we now see through a glass darkly and don’t know what that celestial reality is like. We get only inklings, but we also claim it as foundational reality for all of life, all our prayers, all our hopes. God, in his heaven, is interested in our daily bread, in our temptations, in our ability to forgive. That’s quite amazing actually.

Maybe all of this sounds basic and obvious. But I know for myself, I often live as a functional atheist, forgetting or ignoring God’s presence. I often refer to a letter that Evelyn Underhill wrote in the 1930’s to the Archbishop of Canterbury. She was concerned about what she observed in the clergy of the day. A key line in that letter: God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God. I have wondered what compelled her to note that God is the interesting thing about religion. Had the clergy forgotten? I wonder how I might be like those clergy, worrying about to-do lists, about how people perceive and receive me, about temporal measures of success, pushing aside awareness of God’s loving presence, as creator, redeemer, sustainer, forgetting to give thanks for the amazing grace of a most merciful God.

A colleague describes that growing relationship as follows. If our spiritual journey is like a road trip, sometimes we act as if we drive the car all alone. The journey is up to us. Sometimes as we drive, we stop for directions or fuel or snacks, maybe getting a dose of religion to keep us going, but not overdoing it. Maybe God is actually in the car with us in the passenger seat, God as our co-pilot. Or maybe God is actually driving the car and we travel with God leading the way, God at the center. It’s not a perfect analogy, but makes me ask: where is God in my life’s road trip?

A friend once hosted a dinner for co-workers. Most were not religiously observant. She invited them, giving them a heads-up that dinner conversation would be about each guest completing this sentence. God in my life… Much to her surprise, everyone had a story. As you reflect on your life this week, what does it look like to live in the presence of a most merciful God, a Father in heaven? What would you say if you had been invited to that dinner party?