A Reflection for XI Pentecost All
Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC
July 31, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
“And I Will Say To My Soul”
In Jesus' parable for today from Luke,
the Rich Man says: “And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid
up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You
fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.”
The writers of Jesus' gospels use a lot of
puns in Greek for their Greek-speaking audiences. We lose some of the tension
in the poetry when we translate it into English. There is a pun in these two
sentences, for the word for “Soul” and “Life” are the same word in Greek,
“Psukay”. In Hebrew understanding, one does not have a “soul”, one is a “soul”;
life and soul were indistinguishable. As Greek culture influenced the Jewish
faith in the three centuries before Jesus, there came to be a subtle
distinction between physical life of the body and spiritual life of the soul.
That distinction was to change even further in the popular imagination when
they came up with an idea of a preexisting soul. Think of a big bubblegum
machine in the sky, and when is a baby is conceived, a soul comes out of the
machine at random and stays with that person as a possession until death, and
then returns to heaven or hell.
Wilson's understanding of Soul is that
“Soul” is that part of each of us that has an awareness of a connection to the
Holy, the ground of our being, and to the spirit of the neighbor. Before we are
born, while we are swimming in the amniotic fluid of our mother, we are
absorbing that connection to the ground of all being and intimacy with another
of whom we are a part. Before we are born, we are aware of being connected,
sharing the DNA of stardust from the Big Bang and all of creation. At birth,
the baby continues the awareness of a power greater than oneself and learns how
to love others, and that loving connection is from before we are born and after
we are dead. When we live out of the soul of our life, we are held by, and hold
on to, the Holy, holding on to the good and working to redeem the evil. As
Hosea sings in today's Hebrew Testament lesson, “I took them up in my arms; but
they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
bent down to them and fed them.”
Hosea laments that the rulers of the
people, in their exploitation of the poor and their love of violence and their
own power, have refused to return to the one who created and loved them to do
the good and repair the evil. For them it was easier to live in luxury than to
work to help the poor and vulnerable. It was more convenient to surround
themselves with the oasis of luxury than it was to work on repairing the
breaches of trust and solidarity. They started off answering God's call, but
somehow just stopped working on it; creation starts off full of promise, but
the promises get traded away for baubles.
They harvested the good and distilled it into evil.
Before the climactic battle at Agincourt,
Shakespeare’s Henry V reflects on evil and good:
There is some
soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men
observingly distill it out.
For our bad
neighbor makes us early stirrers,
Which is both
healthful and good husbandry.
Besides, they
are our outward consciences
And preachers
to us all, admonishing
That we should
dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we
gather honey from the weed
And make a
moral of the devil himself.
Is it possible to repair the breeches,
to distill the evil, in order to come to the pure spirit for which it was
intended, “to gather honey from the weed and make a moral of the devil himself?”
Shakespeare believed so, and the entire message of the Gospel is to believe
that through Christ all is being redeemed.
The early church believed in the
creation of communities where people would gather together as soul friends,
brothers and sisters working on repairing the breeches in the larger society
and within themselves. The letter to the Colossians is an example of one
Christian speaking frankly to his soul mates living in another city. The writer
lists the evils, not to beat them up with guilt, but to help them to distill
the evil out of their lives so that honey may come out of the weed. The two
lists are not exhaustive, but they are examples of what happens when the soul
life is not part of everyday life. When a soul life is sent “out to lunch”, then
we tend to wander into ways of behavior that are outward and visible signs that
we are losing connection with God and neighbor. We are saying that we are the
definers of what is good for us and the heck with how it affects the community. We become even more narcissistic and it becomes
“all about me” as the center of the universe; other people are reduced to
objects, not souls but objects, to be used or discarded at my whim. In this
kind of world, life is reduced to what I call the Natchez Effect, so named
because of something that came up during a conversation between my grandfather
Igo and my brother and me. It was summer and my brother and I - I think I was
eight and he was nine - were spending time with my grandparents to give our
parents a break. My grandfather was
talking about a time when I had been especially selfish, and he was trying to
teach me that the world does not revolve around my whims and wants and that being
selfish rips your life apart. It was the ripping that brought to his mind a limerick
by Ogden Nash, and my grandfather taught it to me fifty one years ago.
There was a
young belle of old Natchez
Who ripped all her garments to patchez
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes
She drawled, When Ah itches, Ah scratches.
Who ripped all her garments to patchez
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes
She drawled, When Ah itches, Ah scratches.
My grandfather did not believe in
loading one down with guilt, but instead believed in distilling out the evil
and gathering honey out of weeds - especially in dealing with his beloved
grandson who had been acting like a weed.
The early church gathered in small
groups so they could eat and work together and get help to grow deeper
spiritual lives. The problem is that, as the church grew, they lost that touch
of being a community of soul work, a community of spiritual growth, and
replaced it with accredited speakers preaching at people about sin and correct
theology. Every reform group in the
church would attempt to get back to that model of community soul work, from
early Monasticism to St. Francis to the Methodists to modern day Cursillo to
mention a few. Wesley would gather with friends and his “Method” was to begin
with friends asking each other, “How is it with your soul?” Cursillo had as its
goal the creation of communities where small groups of people would gather
weekly and ask each other three questions: “What has been your moment closest
to Christ? How have you nourished your soul with study? And what has been your
action of faith?”
In today’s lesson, Jesus is asked to be
an arbitrator in a quarrel about an inheritance. Jesus refuses to make his ministry
about laws; he is not here to judge. He is, however, interested in how people
live their souls. He sees that the reason behind the question has to do with
greed rather than money. For Jesus, money is neither good nor bad, but how it
is treated is where evil comes in to play. He tells the story not about the
evils of capitalism or even about getting into heaven after death, but about
the danger of sending a soul out to lunch and no longer living a life in
connection with God and neighbor. The message I get from this story is that it
is today, whenever this day is, that my alive soul is required for daily living
on earth as it is in heaven.
My brothers and sisters, How goes it
with your soul?
I Will Say to My Soul…
By The Reverend Thomas E. Wilson
I don’t want
to be stopped!
I want to do
what I want!
Take a hike,
soul; eat, drink,
Be merry, but
leave me alone!
Drive far from
me all hopes
and memories
of all times of
being lifted
up to holy cheek,
of the gentle
touch of a lover,
the stooping
down to feed me,
the cry of a
neighbor’s joy,
the whisper of
love. All too
lovely to
remember while my
soul is out to
lunch which
I grasp as
faux freedom
before becomes
compulsive “I”
where
everything is about me.
But that blank
space, pauses
as my center shivers
oblivion,
living as if
without my soul.
Come back,
soul, love and lay
your goodness
into my heart
and your
holiness in my mind.
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