In these early days of the New Year, we are exploring the world of spirituality.

But today is the Sunday before the holiday Americans celebrate as Martin Luther King Day, and I want to take a moment at the outset of this sermon to say that I think there is an important aspect of Dr. King's life that we often overlook.

Some, of course, admire the Civil Rights leader's political skills which organized millions and millions of people - both black and white - to work for racial equality. It is not difficult to identify in Dr. King a kind of national leadership ability of the sort that we did not see before he came along, and of the sort we don't see very much of since his life was ended by an assassin's bullet on April 4th, 1968.

So also, people admire the moral underpinnings of Dr. King's work. His belief in and practice of non-violent political struggle is what historians and others conclude provided a kind of moral high ground which eventually persuaded the nation of the righteousness of the cause. You may remember that the Civil Rights movement in those days was at a crossroads, and many in the black community were being drawn to the leadership of Malcolm X who advocated violent resistance and change. Were it not for Dr. King's stepping forward with a more peaceful - and, as it turned out - a more powerful way, the history of our nation would be considerably different.

But while people everywhere discuss Dr. King's politics and the moral principles upon which he based his leadership, I want to call you to another dimension of Martin's life which is so often overlooked. And that is his spirituality.

Last week I noted the words of Eugene Peterson who says that spirituality is the concern we have for the interior that underlies every exterior, the invisibility that inhabits every visibility. In other words, when you look at the exterior and visible elements of Dr. King's life - his politics, his moral foundations, his powerful ability to lead and change the nation - you are only looking at the outer results of an inner, invisible process. What is the story-behind-the-story of Dr. King's achievements? What inner reserves or unseen powers caused an obscure Baptist preacher to become a person whose life literally moved and transformed a whole society?

Of course, Martin Luther King told us - over and over again, in many different words - what that inner dimension was.

On the night before he was killed, King preached in Memphis, and his words speak volumes about what made him tick. Listen to the last paragraph of the last sermon he preached:

At the heart of Martin Luther King's life was a soul alive to God.

Spirituality is the attention you pay to your soul. And it is the recognition that what is going on in your soul underlies and empowers everything else in your life. It is the human soul - alive to God - that transforms Baptist preachers like Martin Luther King into powerful leaders who change a nation - and little nuns like Mother Theresa into incredible saints who change the world. Not only that, but it is the soul activated and empowered by God that enables people to follow Christ. For prayer is powerless, forgiveness is unachievable, sacrifice is meaningless, reconciliation with others is impossible, mediating healing is undoable, and facing death as victory rather than as tragedy is unthinkable - without a soul that is alive to God.

If you were to ask me what I think is the number one problem in our society today - the reason so many people are unhappy, unfulfilled and out of sorts with themselves and each other - I would say that I suspect we live among a people whose souls have withered and perhaps even died.

Of course, that's exactly why Jesus came into the world.

I hope you've been reading the Gospel of St. Mark? If you were not here last week, I suggested that you'll find it helpful to read through Mark as we come to grips each week with the subject of Christian spirituality. Mark is the basic text for spirituality. And its important that you read this book, if for no other reason than the fact that it will help set you free from what you learned as a child in Sunday School.

Now I'm not trashing Sunday School. But I am saying that there's a problem with it. And the problem is that Sunday School produces more drop outs than graduates. You see, in Sunday School, the introductory level is basically what you cover from the time you're a little toddler to the time you graduate from high school. During those years we learn some important things:

God is love. God is the Creator. God gives us laws to live by. We learn that here's the church, here's the steeple, open the door and see all the people! We learn the B-I-B-L-E, that's the book for me. We learn that Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. We learn the Ten Commandments, and the Beatitudes, maybe even the names of the sixty-six Books of the Bible. We surely learn that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." We learn Christian values, and as we get older we try to apply those values to our decision-making about college and the future.

And then, for many of us, it's over. And we never come back again. We're Sunday School dropouts. We finished the introductory level and that's all. We've been taught just enough superficial stuff about the Christian faith to make us dangerous to both ourselves and to other people.

But you know what we've never learned?

Most of us never learned a thing about spirituality. Most of us never learned a thing about our souls.

And though we have been taught a lot of stuff about this person Jesus who is at the center of our faith, most of it isn't worth diddlysquat unless we can move past the images of Jesus as a baby, Jesus as a carpenter, Jesus as a teacher, Jesus as a moral example and get on to the larger and deeper truth about Jesus.

And that larger and deeper truth - if you'll permit me to use nontraditional language - is that Jesus is our soulmate. Jesus is the one who makes our souls come alive to God! And you see this deeper dimension of Jesus' life played out on page after page of the Gospel of Mark.

There they are, going about their everyday business as commercial fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Like most of us, they've given up most of their dreams to take up the certainty of a job that will put food on the table. Night after night, they put out their boats. Morning after morning, they haul their catch to the piers. Afternoon after afternoon, they mend their nets to get ready to put out to sea again.

And then he comes walking along the shore, and into their lives. When he looks at them, it's as if they are transparent, as though he can see into the very depths of the emptiness that comprises their lives.

And he doesn't say, "God is love. God is the Creator. God gives us laws to live by. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the door and see all the people...."

Oh no, he doesn't say any of those things that we usually associate with Jesus!

What does he say? Why, he speaks to their souls.

And for the first time in their lives, something deep inside - long dormant and dead - begins to stir and awaken. And it is such a powerful force within that they have no reasonable choice but to leave everything behind to take up the call!

I have a friend named Linda who is a paraplegic. When I knew her back in the 1970's, Linda was aflame with this crazy idea that she would become a doctor. She was married to a man who was quadraplegic and they had a son together, and, if ever there was a woman who had a full plate as it was, it was Linda. Yet she was consumed by a sense of calling, and that calling originated within her relationship with Jesus Christ. When I left that community, Linda was just getting ready to go off to Harvard Medical School.

Human beings are creatures of purpose! You may recall that our Village Connection a few weeks ago printed a list of all the people who scored holes-in-one on our golf courses this year. Mine was the only name not on the list. But I've noticed something about those whose names were on the list. They're still out there….swinging away! As if there is something more to experience, something more to achieve!

This is how human beings are wired! And it goes deeper than golf. There is deep within us a predisposition for higher purpose and destiny, for bringing good out of evil, and achieving great things for God and others.

And it is Jesus Christ who speaks to this part of us. He stirs human souls, and awakens them to higher destiny.

Oh, when was the last time someone called you to a purpose or a destiny that so energized your soul that you could not be a happy or whole person unless you put everything aside to go and accomplish it?

Then Jesus went on to Capernaum and there he was met by a man possessed by demons. Now you may not be too comfortable in talking about demons, but I think you well-understand that we all wrestle with the powers and principalities of life. I saw it in the face of our good friend Sally a few years ago when we went out to breakfast and she told me about how - just before the holidays - her dad had come into her room one night and told her that he was leaving her mother because he didn't love her anymore and because he had fallen in love with a girl just a few years older than Sally. When I looked in Sally's eyes that morning, there was something there that made me realize that this poor kid was wrestling with something much greater than she could handle.

In recent weeks, several families in our church have lost loved ones. And now that the initial shock is subsiding, there is faced the incredible challenge of figuring out how to go on without loved ones who have been such integral parts of their lives. They are wrestling with the powers and principalities of grief.

And I have been moved, in recent weeks, whenever I've seen a commercial on television. The scene is a doctor's office at Baptist Hospital. There are x-rays displayed of a person's lungs. The doctor gently says to the patient that he's completed the battery of tests. "You have a form of lung cancer," he says. And if you've ever been on either side of that coin, or know someone who has, you know first hand what a dark and overwhelming experience it is. How can one go on in the face of such powerful forces?

Now I've learned something over the years. When people like Sally, or our grieving church families, or that patient in the commercial suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by the powers and principalities of life, not one of them turns to God for the purpose of finding out about where Jesus was born, or what the third Beatitude is, or how to spell Deuteronomy. What people need in times like these is not religious knowledge, but the resurrection of our soul! We need divine inner resources so that we can find a way to take hold of the evil, and rise up above it, and make it through the day!

What is the Gospel of Mark about? It's about spirituality. Why, its story after story about Jesus touching peoples' souls, and making them alive to God! Mark is the first biography of our divine soulmate and how he is able to reach into the depths of peoples' lives, opening up whole new vistas of human possibility!

You see, our faith is not a set of rules or teachings. It's not religious living or even ethics. These things are the outward expressions of a deeper interior experience.

Our faith is about Jesus Christ bringing human souls to life!

What challenges are you facing as this new week begins? Where are the hurts? Where are you struggling? Where do you need healing? Where do you see the need for good to overcome evil? What relationships need to be strengthened or rebuilt? What would you do with the rest of your life if you knew that God would work through you, and you could not fail?

Like Martin Luther King, you and I are confronted by the realities of our lives and times.

Like Martin, like Mother Theresa, like the ordinary people whose stories are told on the pages of St. Mark, your greatest resource is your soul-made-alive-to-God through Jesus Christ.

Seek him. Focus on him. Listen to him. Trust him. Discover him as your soulmate.

You see, Christian spirituality begins with Christ, the whole Christ, and nothing but the Christ.

Today, begin a journey with him, and discover the undreamed of wonders of your soul!