And I will Say to My Soul

A Reflection for XI Pentecost                                                All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC

July 31, 2016                                                               Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Hosea 11:1-11              Psalm 107:1-9, 43            Colossians 3:1-11           Luke 12:13-21

“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.

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.

When Asking Gift From Friend

A Reflection and Poem for X Pentecost           All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC July 24, 2016                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector 

Hosea 1:2-10            Psalm 85     Colossians 2:6-15         Luke 11:1-13 

When Asking Gift From Friend 

Every Sunday we have a couple people who come up out of the congregation, take communion, and pick up an oil stock before going to the back of the sanctuary to meet with people coming back from communion who wish to ask for Prayers of Healing. The oil is used to anoint the person for whom or by whom the prayers are requested. When we do a baptism, we take an oil stock and anoint the person being baptized, as we did last week at the 8:30 service.  The celebrant places his or her hand on the person and dips a finger into the oil stock, making the sign of the cross on the forehead saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The oil is the outward and visible sign of spiritual and invisible grace.  I have used an oil stock when I am designating a person for a special ministry, and sometimes I get carried away.  I remember one person observing that her hands felt like a french fry after I anointed her hands for ministry. 

In the more Anglo Catholic Episcopal parishes and in the Roman Catholic tradition, there are three kinds of oil used. They are all olive oil but one has balsam added to it, and they are used for three different purposes. During Holy Week when the Bishop blesses the oils, he will use three different prayers. There is Oil for the Infirm (sometimes marked as OI) which is used for healing the sick. The next is OS for Oil Sanctorum which is used for baptisms and exorcisms to give strength to follow the promises made. The last one is Sacred Chrism (SC), the one which has balsam added and is used for the setting apart for special ministry like ordinations and the like. However, in most Episcopal Churches, the Chrism is used for all three - healing, strength, and being set apart. Our Bishop in Holy Week blesses the Chrism which we use for whatever we need. 

Once upon a time I thought the difference between the oils really mattered, but as the years progressed, I realized that it was what was behind the anointing that was important and less the content of the oil stock. I believe God’s Holy Spirit is in the space between two or three people whenever, or not, we acknowledge that fact of creation that the breath of God, which brought forth all life, is still breathing in and through us. 

It is the intimacy of the breathing together with God that allows us to ask from God. Jesus alludes to that intimacy when he teaches his disciples how to pray. He tells them there is already an intimate relationship when he starts off with the intimate use of the word which we claim as our Father, not a stranger but someone whose image we carry in our very DNA. They, and we, are invited to proclaim “Hallowed by Your Name”, as an acknowledgement that the nature of God is the source of all anointing power. We ask that we be made aware of our own holiness in our relationship with God; asking that “God’s Kingdom come” is to ask that God come within us and make God’s home within us.  

Asking for “Daily Bread” is a metaphor which means that the presence of God is not only when we do religious activities, but in the mundane action of daily living. Think of the story that Jesus is telling about how much the man in it is asking of his neighbor. In Biblical time, bread was estimated to be 50 percent of people’s diet. Each morning a member of the household would have to work three hours to grind the barley or grain into flour enough to last for lunch in the field, evening supper, and for breakfast at dawn the next morning. Then the whole process of preparing daily bread would begin again. Whenever the grain is ground into the powder of flour, the germ is crushed, exposing it to oxygen, and the oxidized fatty acids of the germ start to become rancid quickly.  In biblical times, unpreserved flour could not be kept for any long period of time, so it was a daily process to have daily bread. That flour would be added to oil (interesting how we keep coming back to oil) and water, then a fire would be built to make an oven hot and so the bread could be cooked. Think of how much the man in the story was asking. He asked his friend for three loaves of bread; it would be his friend’s and family’s breakfast before they started off to work the next day. If the family was to have their own breakfast at dawn the next morning, they would have to get up out of bed and start grinding the grain. A great deal of time and labor was being asked, and the metaphor is used to say that because God is our friend and not a stranger, it is a gift within the context of the relationship. Jesus will say later on in the last supper that he is the bread that God gives to us. 

The bread is meant to give us strength to forgive, as we ask that we be forgiven as we forgive. We have been anointed to set people free, canceling the debts that others have rung up to us, and we will no longer have to live with anger and resentment with a fellow child of God.  

But forgiveness is hard and trust is difficult, so we ask deliverance from the times of trial when we have a hard time forgiving, a hard time trusting, a hard time living into our anointing, a hard time living into what the writer of the letter to the Colossians, which we continue this week, says that they are doing. The way they, the Colossians, and we, are able to forgive is to realize how much they, and we, have been forgiven, how much they, and we, have been brought back to a blessed life with the fullness of the divinity of God. The Risen Christ lives within them, and us. Their, and our, time of trial is learning how to trust in God and not all sorts of other religious paraphernalia superstitiously borrowed from other cults. The writer prays for them, and us, to have the strength which God so freely provides. 

  

The book of Hosea, which we begin today, shows how our anointing can bring us to times of trial. Hosea is an anointed prophet who finds himself drawn to a woman named Gomer, and he takes his marriage as part of his anointed ministry. There is a problem because Gomer’s behavior and unfaithfulness make her a person who requires a lot of loving to even come close to forgiving. But Hosea shows in his life how much God loves and, because of that, Hosea is able to live through the times of trial when he wanted to cast Gomer away, as an enacted metaphor as  God wanting to cast Israel away, but doesn’t. Hosea and God give compassion and forgiveness rather than revenge. Hosea hears God saying that God will claim them all, and us, as children of the Living God, no matter what they, and we, have done. 

When Asking Gift From Friend (poem) 

When had a dream or at least felt like one, 

where was asking friend for a blessing 

anointing work, healing, and strength  

Friend says “Sure, piece of cake! Now  

be anointed with the blessed holy oils. 

When lifted head up to receive oil touch 

or smudge on forehead crown with a  

first drop. Then two, and another, then 

shy rivulet flowing on head, warm, clean 

luxury, which bubbles to unquiet brook, 

brook evolve to a river, rising to monsoon. 

When called to stop; only wanted small blessing, 

almost a “blessing-ette”. If flow continue 

lives have to change. Oil kinds are three: 

of compassion, strength,  as one sets aside. 

When stripping masks hid behind, now could 

all see imperfections. Eyes do change as  

vision seeing all covered with blessings. 

ears hearing only thrice healing oil song. 

When tongue long acclimated to lashing mode 

now forms out shiny barbless, soft words, 

as teeth used to biting could rip no longer. 

When chrism laden, drenched hands greased so 

that could no longer be able to hold onto 

to grudges and, slights that now slip away 

the wish to grasp and clutch, all could do  

was to open hands to slide the overflow 

oil of healing with a caress onto another of 

the pilgrims sliding on thrice barrelled gift. 

When once covered with triune oil it is hard to 

stomp and crush an enemy; for each attempt 

empties any semblance of balance to land a 

good kick without coming out worse for it. 

When covered with oil is feeling like a French Fry  

on plate of fish and chips ordered up to feed  

seeming joyless, hopeless deeper love hunger  

O Friend coveringly anoint us all with grace!