A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

June 2019

I have been mulling for some time about Jesus spiritual life. I do so as someone who tries to take my own spiritual life seriously, and who often finds himself in conversation with others about theirs. My assumption is that Jesus’ spiritual life must have been much like ours.

Thus I assume that Jesus of Nazareth must have had the equivalent of a spiritual director: someone who encouraged and nurtured his faith in God, and from whom he learnt much about the Jewish scriptures and traditions. It seems likely that this would have taken place as a member of a group of young men who met regularly together as part of their training as young Jews.  I assume that at least some of the first disciples whom he called in Galilee were probably part of that group, and who had already seen him as their leader. Hence the ease with which they left everything to follow him when he called them to do so.  [See ‘Did Jesus have a spiritual director?’]

I notice that Jesus rarely began his teaching of his disciples or the crowds who gathered to hear him, by quoting Scripture. He did so the few times he preached in the synagogue, but hardly ever otherwise. Instead he told stories and gave spiritual teaching. Now where did he get those stories and that wisdom from? Some of the stories have scriptural echoes, others seem to have been drawn from his observations of everyday life.  But I think that good spiritual teachers, ones who speak with authority as Jesus clearly did, speak primarily not from what they’ve read, or learnt from somebody else, but from their own experience. They speak from an inner knowing that only comes from their own experience of God.  Much of Jesus wisdom and insight would have come from his own experience.  [See ‘The Spirituality of Jesus’.]

I remember, many years ago, reading a novel about Jesus life before he embarked on his public ministry. The writer suggested that the story of the Good Samaritan began its life as something that happened to Jesus himself. He was beaten up & robbed on the road to Jerusalem, and was rescued by a foreigner, someone he’d been taught to view as an enemy, rather than by those he’d thought would be his friends. This experience affected him deeply, and changed his view of who were his friends, who indeed were God’s friends. Subsequently he found that non-Jews were often more receptive to his teaching than fellow Jews were, and he went out of his way to be alongside people whom his community saw as outsiders.  This new way of seeing the world had its origins not primarily in traditional teaching but in his own personal experience of life.

There is a second story that Jesus told that sounds similar. It’s the story of the Prodigal Son. I suspect that this too may come from Jesus’ personal experience. I have a hunch that maybe he ran away from home as a young man, not only to escape from his family, but also maybe from God?  Why else would he also talk about the story of Jonah, who fled from God’s call to preach to Nineveh? Did Jesus  feel a call to preach to the Jews and wanted to avoid it?  It might explain why Jesus went to John for a baptism of repentance? Why else did Jesus feel the need to repent, of what?  Interestingly the words spoken to the Jesus at his baptism could well have been the words that the father said to his prodigal son.

I wonder if Jesus fled from both his earthly and heavenly Father and was overwhelmed when he found himself loved and accepted by both in such similar fashion.  Maybe that’s in part why he addresses God as Father, and taught his followers to do likewise?  And if Jesus saw the story of Jonah as a model, it might explain why he expected the people of Jerusalem to repent at his preaching as the people of Nineveh did at Jonah’s preaching, and why he felt that God had abandoned him when they didn’t.