Earlier this month, near Sedona, Arizona, a group of more than 50 people assembled for a so-called “spiritual” retreat in the hope of finding a “new vision” for their lives. There is nothing remarkable about that fact. What is remarkable is that they were led into a sweat lodge ceremony, a ritual taken from the pages of Native American religion, and in the process, three of the participants died, overcome by the heat. The leader of the group is, understandably, facing some pressure. Apparently, he is another in the long line of New Age gurus who promise people that they can find riches, power, happiness, and all sorts of other goodies, by virtue of the spiritual exercises and programs they prescribe. This particular event that turned lethal was designed to make people into “Spiritual Warriors.” I would wager that at least three folks did not get what they were looking for.

For what were they looking? For that matter, what is anyone hoping to find when they set out on a path toward spiritual experience, or spiritual power, or, to use the popular term now, just “spirituality?” In today’s pop culture, such “spirituality” is supposed to be a good thing, just don’t try to define it too closely or understand it too deeply. In the last few years I’ve had more than one person tell me they are most definitely “spiritual” but definitely not “religious.” They are always trying to explain to me why they are not active in a church. I am not poking fun at these people or at their attempts to experience something spiritual. On the contrary, spirituality is a very serious matter, deadly serious, in fact. And so we had better be very careful and clear about spirituality.

Among the innumerable versions and variations of spirituality that exist in the world today there is the Christian proclamation that all true spiritual knowledge is wrapped up in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. We have been reviewing just where that assertion comes from and what it actually means in daily practice. We have seen that there is evidence all around us that there is a Being who is outside the normal realm of human experience, a Being whom we believe has made himself known in the history of the Jewish people, beginning with Abraham. We have seen that this Being—God—loves us and is intent on blessing us, so much so that he came to us in the form of a man, to rescue us from our lostness and to set us on a path that would lead us to recover our true nature and true happiness, a place that we have called the intersection of heaven and earth. Last week, we looked at the fact that even though Jesus is no longer walking the earth, still he is present with us in the manifestation of his Spirit—the Holy Spirit—which is also the Spirit of the Living God. As the Jews believed that God’s Spirit was especially present in the Temple in Jerusalem, when Jesus left his followers, they began to understand that God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, was present in a new way, in the hearts of those who believe Jesus. Christians are, therefore, the living Temple of God in the world. And there you have a piece of the foundational Christian belief about this business called “spirituality.” God is Spirit. God has created us as spiritual beings. Our life is successful—or not—to the extent that our spirits and God’s Spirit are in contact with each other. That point of contact was best made real in the person of Jesus. Those who know Jesus and follow Jesus are the ones who learn how to have God’s Spirit and their own spirits joined together, in their own hearts and lives. Christian spirituality is all about being in a relationship with the real God through God’s Son, Jesus.

What I have just proclaimed needs further explanation. But I promise that you don’t have to sweat profusely in order to understand it! True spirituality is not about getting in touch with yourself, or having mind-bending experiences, or binding your essence to Mother Earth. True spirituality is about having a relationship with the Creator, who is himself spiritual. From the very beginning, the Creator God has sought out his creatures in order to offer them this relationship. That is what Ezekiel is all about. The passage we read a moment ago is representative of one of the major messages of the Old Testament, which is that God wants to be in a relationship with his people in order to give them the best life they can have. The problem is that God’s people turn away from him and try to go it on their own. And so God has to keep coming after us. In Ezekiel’s day, the people of Israel had separated themselves so far from God—from the truly spiritual life—that they had gotten themselves conquered and destroyed by foreign armies. Many of them had been deported to Babylon. Their connection with their God would seem to have been completely severed, and yet, God had never left them. Their terrible suffering would actually lead them to seek God out again, to repent, to come back to the source of their life and blessing. And in that process they would experience a profound renewal. God would bring them back to their homeland and would give them a new spirit, a heart of flesh and not stone, so that they could once again fulfill their created design and live the truly human life, which is a life in perfect relationship to God.

For the Jewish people of whom Ezekiel was one, a relationship with God was about worshiping God in his Temple, obeying God’s commands and laws, hearing God’s word, and being filled with God’s wisdom. When Jesus came on the scene, a few of the Jews began to see that God was presenting them with a brand new way of relating to him, a way of an entirely different order and magnitude. The old way of relating to God was easy to twist into something legalistic and stifling and not at all capable of keeping people in relationship with the Creator. The old way did not deal adequately with human sin, and it was not very effective in teaching people how to live authentically human lives as God meant them to be lived. But Jesus was different. That is what Paul was trying to say to the Christian folks in Rome. God’s Spirit was in Jesus because Jesus was God, and that is what made it possible for Jesus to conquer the penalty of sin, which is death. God’s Spirit was in Jesus because Jesus was God, and that is what made it possible for Jesus to live a genuine human life as God designed it, a life of perfect love and peace and power. Another way to say it is that in Jesus, God accomplished for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves. That accomplishment was about the union of a human creature with its divine creator, opening a window into a new realm of possibility for the rest of humanity. And so, for those who accept Jesus, who believe Jesus, who follow Jesus, who turn over the control of their lives to Jesus, the Spirit of God comes to be with them and in them as well. For those who take Jesus as their Savior and Lord, the window is open for us to start down the pathway that leads to the place where heaven and earth are one in our own souls and lives. It is a pathway whose destination is on the other side of death, but down which we can move a long, long way on this good earth. Who would not want to get as close to God as possible as soon as possible? That is what we all want and need in this life, and that is why a true understanding and practice of authentic spirituality is so vital. So let’s look even more closely at what the spiritual life is all about.

Christians have always proclaimed and still do proclaim that the most authentic and real spiritual life is wrapped up in a relationship with Jesus. We enter a relationship with Jesus when we take that first step of trusting that he is the Son of God and then turn our lives over to him. That is what it means to be “in Christ” and to have the Spirit of God dwell in us. Like all relationships, a relationship with Christ through the Spirit can and must grow. And so here are some of the other aspects of Christian spirituality that you must know and practice in order to keep your relationship with God growing and powerful in your life.

A relationship with Jesus takes you to that place where you can repent of your sin, accept forgiveness, and be renewed in order to continue living your life. So much of the content of other forms of human “spirituality” are about conquering guilt and moving away from your past. Christian spirituality answers that problem. Christian spirituality teaches us that God’s limitless love invites us to be honest about who we are, confident that God will love us anyway, and also aware that God will love us so much that he will not let us remain in the pathetic and disastrous condition that we so often find ourselves.

A relationship with Jesus takes you to that place where you can actually begin to learn Godly ways of thinking and of doing. Again, so many other “spiritualities” try to teach a person how to be a successful person. The motivation is admirable. Christian spirituality asserts that God has shown us in Jesus and then described for us in the word of scripture what makes for a successful person. It begins with the twin command to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Christian spirituality is about retraining the mind to learn God’s thoughts and retraining the actions of our lives in order to love other people. Loving others takes many forms, but especially the form of serving others and meeting their needs.

A relationship with Jesus takes you to that place where you can have successful relationships with other people, especially in the family of the church, and in those relationships you will find many opportunities for repentance, forgiveness, renewal, and learning the godly way of living. Christian spirituality is profoundly communal, that is to say, it cannot happen without the company of others who are on the same journey. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. When Ezekiel spoke God’s word it was all about what God was doing for the whole people of Israel, not just for individual souls. When Jesus came to be with us the first thing he did was start a group. Spiritual life has a very earthy quality to it as we learn from each other, as we serve each other, as we encourage each other, in the business of following Jesus.

A relationship with Jesus takes you to that place where you discover that God is determined to remake and renew you as a person in the totality of your being so that you can live an authentic human life. Some “spiritualities” teach that there is a difference between your bodily life and your spiritual life. Some teach that so-called “spiritual” things are of a higher order or a different category than “earthly” or “bodily” things. But true spirituality, Christian spirituality, teaches that everything we are is touched by spiritual nature and concern. How you conduct business, how you relate to your spouse, how you treat your body, how you spend your time and money, in short, how and why and to what purpose you do anything and everything, is of spiritual concern. Spirituality is not just about prayer time or just about the health of your soul. Spirituality is about all of your time and all of you—body, mind, heart, and soul. For the Christian, there is nothing that is not spiritual!

The last thing I want to say today is that a relationship with Jesus has a definite order to it. It begins with what God does for us in Jesus, and it continues as we respond to God. The order, the timing of it, is important, because in the final analysis, our spirituality depends on the gift of God’s Spirit. We do not generate our own spirituality. God generates it first, by creating us as spiritual creatures, and by offering us a way back from the unspiritual place where we take ourselves when we decide to try life without God. This does not mean that we are not responsible for our own spirituality. God offers, we must accept. God gives the means for spiritual life, but we must use those means. Some of those means I have spoken of, things like repentance, forgiveness, learning God’s word and wisdom, and spending time with God’s people. All of these work to give us truly spiritual life, however, because God chooses to be in them and to work through them. And so, to be truly spiritual, we must always be asking God to be with us. Christian spirituality throws itself always on the mercy and the love of God, and, thank God, God is always there for us.

Paul counseled us that, “to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” There is the challenge, I suppose. It is so easy to become distracted, or to become enamored with things other than the Spirit of the Living God. It is no accident, I think, that we have come to this juncture on our journey on that Sunday in which we celebrate the great Reformation of the church that happened 500 years ago. In that period of Christian history, it seems that the vast majority of Jesus’ followers had lost their way. We had forgotten about the fundamental things of true spirituality, or we had just outright ignored them. But God would not let his church forever remain in the darkness of spiritual ignorance and decay. People did not know God’s word in scripture. They were more concerned about wealth and power than about serving others. They had lost any sense of God’s grace that saves and instead they had reverted to the futile notion that we have to earn God’s love. But God’s Spirit moved in the souls of a few brave men and women who began to set their minds on things of the Spirit, and who cried out to God for spiritual renewal. God gave it. And they took it.

We still celebrate that period of reform, because it teaches us a timeless truth about our own lives of faith. We always need to be renewed and reformed. We always need to seek out the guidance and power of God’s Spirit. We always need to open ourselves to the teaching and correcting of God’s Word. We always need to ask for that life of spirit that only God can give. Thank God that he always does. Thank God that he offers us the truly spiritual life, as we follow his Son, in the company of his people, through the power and presence of his very own Spirit.

Amen.