“This is not a ‘Goodbye’”, said Alison in her eulogy.  “This is not a goodbye: If we say goodbye we will lose you: and we girls will not let that happen.  Every time we are together, we will raise our champagne glasses and continue with you.”  

And of all the 4 woman who spoke at the funeral, each echoed a version of avoiding saying ‘Goodbye’: and proclaiming that their friend was now ‘with her mum and dad, along with her dog Scooter, in some unnamed, but definitely real place: a place above the clouds, “up there”.’

For a group of people who were making a non-religious funeral service, that content I just shared with you is a lot of religion.  If I were to preach like that, you’d say “He’s shoving that stuff down our throat.” And the more sceptical would say “How can you know about the unknowable?”, (or worse!!!)

These women were making sense of the death of their friend Andrea: she was the first in their circle to die inver 50 years for friendship. And it’s OK. I get it. I understand what they are saying and doing. I’m not judging them: I’m just describing their conscious-unconscious Spirituality.

2 days later, in North America, the Queen of Contemporary Christian Music, my beloved Amy Grant, released her new Album; 10 songs of life and faith (The Me That Remains), and she humbly confronts us with this lyric:

You may catch Him in the garden

If the evening light is good

Is that Him moving ‘cross the hillside

With soldier’s nails and wood?

You may feel Him in your body

Weighing heavy as a thought

Our every notion of His mind, Is everything He’s not.

(Amy Grant · Mike Reid The Me That Remains ℗ 2026 Amy Grant productions)

Let me say that last line again, in non-gendered language:

“Our every notion of God’s mind: is everything God’s not.”

That’s the humility of Christian faith: we know what we don’t know: and we feel our way: we study, we pray, we wonder, we walk The Way of Jesus: we live out the questions: we live into the questions: we discover that is God with us in the most unexpected of ways…  The Spirit is amongst us… 

So, here’s another moment from Thursday night: when I was invited to a book launch of an author named Holden Shepard. Holden is a writer in my pile of “yet to read books.”  He’s a man from country Geraldton in Western Australia, and is a writer of Gay Fiction.  He’s recently had his book “Invisible Boys” made into a series with streaming service STAN.  His stories are set in Australia, among footy players, boys being boys and the awakening of male sexuality.  Apparently he’s quite a STEAMY writer!  He’s SPICY! The friends who invited me were smitten and proudly ‘Fans’. 

While my friends were doing “Fan Boy” line-up to the ‘Meet and Great’, I remained in the auditorium with another audience member, and we ended up talking with a woman, Jacqueline, who is an announcer on JOY-FM.  I was sitting ‘side-line’ to the conversation, as the question of religion came up.  The other man in the conversation had come out is now in his mid 40s, after living in the Mega-Church Pentecostal world most of his life. 

“Oh, do you believe in God” Jacquline asked him.  (Great question!  How would you go about answering that?)  

He answered that he did believe in God: and elaborated a little.  

Jaquline said she didn’t believe.

So I asked her, “So, regardless of religion, do you have a sense of Spirit or a sense of ‘Other’ in your life?”  Which indeed she did. The conversation opened up. She described it an Energy or Flow, or something you just KNOW.

It didn’t take long before I had to come out as a Uniting Church Minister!

What am I saying?  In my experience, even just this week: is that we live in a world of Spirituality.  In the reading from the book of Acts we didn’t listen to today:  “Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.  For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ ”   The altars in our world may be more like Northland, The MCG, The Shrine,  or some massive Rock concert.  Or maybe our Devices.  Screen time?  

To live in the Ways of Jesus in our times is a risky thing.  For us at the moment, being revealed as a Christian is a risk to be misunderstood; to be placed in a “Jesus said it; I believe it; that settles it”, kind of bumpersticker faith.   In places like the USA, it’s about being misunderstood as aligned with an authoritarian regime that actively distorts the message of Jesus.  In other places Christians hide or die.

Retired Uniting Church theologian Rex A E Hunt makes a helpful distinction.

• the religion of Jesus, and
• the religion about Jesus.

I think that was the conversation I was having with the woman at the book launch, was that difference: the religion of Jesus, or the religion about Jesus.

The religion of Jesus is found in the echoes of the sayings he spoke & the stories he told; not as law, but as an invitation to life, of how to treat one another, how we might re-imagine our world.

On the other hand, Rex says “The religion about Jesus has often been the religion of literalism and fundamentalism.”  The religion about Jesus is caught up in its theology/doctrine, rather than in relationship with God.  It is a believing in a certain, almost, ‘one-size-fits-all’ idea of God, with the promise that if you do believe THAT, you’ll be ‘saved’ some day after you die.  You’ll be up there with Andrea and Scooter, drinking champagne.

The religion of Jesus is about how we can live into our human wholeness, in the here and now, and how we can help make the world more whole, in the here and now.

Davidson Loehr, Unitarian Minister, describes the faith like this:
The religion about Jesus is ‘Easter’.  The religion of Jesus is ‘Eastering’.

He says Eastering is “about the miracle of new life coming from old, life out of death, right here and now.  Nothing supernatural, though it feels so magical when it happens…  Life is about honouring that spirit of life that comes and goes as it likes, but when it comes our way, it can make all the difference between feeling dead and feeling alive…”.

(UUAustin Web site, 2008 https://austinuu.org/wp2013/category/sermons/former-ministers/davidson-loehr/).

I like this idea of being Eastering People. Sounds fun.

The reading today… from John 14:15-21 Jesus said to the disciples: ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments. ‘I shall ask the One who sent me, who will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive since it neither sees nor knows this Spirit; but you know the Spirit, because the Spirit is with you and dwells within you.’

Scripture offers profound words: complex and simple. 

Catholic theologian, James Alison’s notes this about the Holy Spirit in this text: That the Holy Spirit “will bring into creative presence the person of Jesus through the loving imitation of his disciples. It is not that the Holy Spirit is simply a substitute presence, acting instead of Jesus, but rather it is by Jesus going to his death (and, by giving up his Spirit bringing to completion his creative work: ‘tetelestai,’ “it is accomplished,” 19:30) that all Jesus’ creative activity will be made alive in the creative activity of his disciples.”

We who follow the Way of Jesus, are given this incredible Gospel.  It is life giving.  And it is here for us; in the here and now.  Spirituality is all around us.  It is a reminder to us to live into the questions and experiences of ‘living in the Spirit’.  And the responsibility of being the ones following Christ in our time is immense.  In the three stories I have shared this morning: the funeral, the lyrics and the book launch: each one of them demonstrate the ability of the Gospel to open up and decompress life: giving life for others.  Simple, gentle; and effective.

In the conscious/unconscious imagination, there is Spirituality and faith every where.  As followers of Jesus, our journey is one of coming into our Human Wholeness: and recognising the Spirit at work in us and others.  Being humble enough to know what we don’t know: and to be gentle enough to know Jesus in what we do, in how we live, and recognising God’s Spirit with us: within us, between us, is the Way of Jesus; and it’s an invitation to life: not for our own benefit: but for the wellbeing of all.