Buy local

I had friends in Montreal who came to our church.  They were on a quest.  They understood their lives were incomplete and wanted to find something more.  One day at their home we were talking and they asked about spiritual and religious traditions other than Christianity because they had the impression that there seemed to be more spiritual experience in those traditions.  My response was that there is and has always been a deep mystical thread in Christian faith.  “Then why does not one ever talk about it?” they asked.  Why indeed.

Christianity, popularly understood, is about morality (and judging others who don’t live up) and about trying harder to be good people – more loving, less angry, more concerned about the poor, less selfish.  All good things to be sure.  But where is the actual spiritual part?  I can be an atheist and try harder to be a good person, more loving, less angry, etc., etc.

Jesus died to bring us into relationship with God.  And by relationship I mean mystical union.  That’s the spiritual part. How did Jesus say it in his prayer to the Father? – “I in them and you in me.” (John 17:23)  God in Jesus and Jesus in us.  That is the union - God, who is Spirit, in us.  That’s big spirituality.  Infinite, in fact.  Through the work of Christ on the cross, we are ushered into a mystical unity with God himself.  That is the point.  And if God dwells within us, if we will permit him, we cannot help but become better people – holy people, to be more accurate.

Why should we as Christians need to turn to other spiritualities to find what we are looking for?  Why do we seek for spiritual peace in yoga when the mystical union with God in Christ is our inheritance?  God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is in us, one with us.  That is a mystical reality and a mystical experience.  We shop elsewhere thinking that we can only find spiritual experience in other places.  What do I say Christians looking for this?  Buy local.

This hymn, whose words date back to at least the 16^th century and possibly earlier talk about this sense of God in us.  And it is not intended as a metaphor but a reality – God in us.

God be in my head

And in my understanding

God be in mine eyes

And in my looking

God be in mouth

And in my speaking

God be in my heart

And in my thinking

God be at mine end

And at my departing.