Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the WorldSample

Broken Signposts: Spirituality

Consider for a moment what the word ‘spirituality’ means to you. For some, the ideas and images that come to mind differ greatly from traditional expressions of Christian faith and practice. Today, it seems that popular Western culture often proposes that what matters most about spirituality is discovering a secret inner core—the ‘real me’—rather than the need to know and be known at the deepest levels by the Creator God.

Christianity speaks to this broken signpost because the Gospel does not point to an ‘inner me’—whoever I am supposed to be on the inside. Rather, we see John signposting something completely different: it is all about the gift of God’s presence.

Indeed, the foundation of Christian spirituality builds from Israel’s uniquely ordered way of life and worship of YHWH who dwelled in their midst, first in the tabernacle and then in the Temple. John’s Gospel retrieves these Jewish themes and brings them into startling reality with the proximity of Israel’s God and the reality of his personal presence in Jesus. Indeed, the good news announces that God’s desire for his very life and breath to reside with and within individual human beings has now arrived. 

Christian spirituality, therefore, emanates from Jesus’ personal presence and his coming to live physically amongst his people during his public ministry. Yet, Johannine spirituality emphasizes the continuing presence of the risen, ascended, and very much alive Lord Jesus, who is to be believed, worshipped, trusted, obeyed, and followed at this very moment. John’s Gospel bears witness to the human longing for spiritual connection and God’s response, which calls us to actively participate with him in a new and genuinely human way of life and as ‘little temples’ where the One God truly dwells presently at the intersection of heaven and earth. 

One of the most vivid illustrations of the intimate relationship between Jesus and his followers is that of the vine and the branches. The Temple in Jerusalem contained a carved vine, which we now see as a foreshadow of the intimate closeness with the Father through the Son worked out by the abiding presence of the Spirit. We acknowledge Jesus himself is at the very heart of Christian spirituality, which signals Jesus is the true Temple and that his followers are to be ‘Temple-people’ too. The living God now makes his home not just with his people, but also in his people. We are the branches that extend out into God’s good world, energized by the Holy Spirit, and have become life carriers of God’s powerful, rescuing, healing and transforming love that is renewing the whole world.  

The foundation of Christian spirituality is grounded in the presence of Jesus by his Spirit that enables his followers to come to life in the new creation. Now, by his very breath that infuses his followers, the Jesus-shaped spirituality is a vivid expression of the reality of God’s energizing power and abiding love. Through the followers of Jesus, empowered by his Spirit to believe, worship, trust, obey, and follow him, renewed humans serve as genuine God-reflecting signposts of a whole new reality and way of life that is, in fact, deeply spiritual. In John’s Gospel we find the answers to the longings for spiritual experiences that point to something more and to the presence of the divine.

Questions to consider: 

What is the meaning of spirituality according to John’s Gospel? How does the image of Christian spirituality depicted by the vine and the branches differ from contemporary culture’s notion of what it means to be a ‘spiritual person’? 

Living it out: 

Observe examples of spirituality in your contemporary culture or context. Identify how Christian spirituality differs and how it also responds to the yearning for mystery or ‘something more’ that others are looking for.