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Foundry United Rev. |
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“Our Souls
Restored” Sunday, May 31, 2009 Pentecost Sunday |
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Acts 2: 1-21
Rev. |
When we
baptize a child, one of the things we are saying, although we don’t say it in
as many words, one of the things we are implicitly saying is that this child
is a soul. This child is more than its biology or psychology or sociology or
destiny. This is a God-given soul. When a
young person or older person steps to the front of the church to be
confirmed, one of the things they are saying implicitly, not in so many words,
but by the act itself, they are saying I am a soul. I am more than my
biology, more than my intellect, more than my emotions, more than my
relationships, more than my future vocation. I am a God-given soul. The
reason we put so much energy into confirmation here at Foundry is because for
someone to know that she or he is a soul is a big deal. If we know that we
are a soul, we will need to live our lives differently than if we are merely
a body or a mind or a heart or a job. We are
eternal. Philosophers
have argued throughout the millennia as to where the soul is located inside
of us. Where is the seat of the soul? There have been those who argued that
the mind is the seat of the soul. The mind is our doorway to eternity. The
ability to think is the image of God in us. Others
have believed that the heart is the seat of the soul. The ability to feel and
to have emotions and passion is our link to eternity. The
Israelites who wrote the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, had a
different idea. The
Hebrew word that we translate soul, is a variant of the Hebrew word for “breath.”
In the 23rd Psalm where it says “He restores my soul,” the Hebrew
word for soul is Nephesh (pronounced
neh'-fesh) which is a form of the word Naphash (pronounced naw-fash) which means “to breathe.” The
second creation account in Genesis 2 talks about God shaping the first human
being, out of the mud of the earth like a sculptor and then kneeling down to
breathe into the mud the breath of life. (Genesis 2: 7) The soul is God’s
breath in us. And because for the Israelites breath is life, the soul is life
itself. In the
Israelite way of thinking, we become souls when we draw our first breath. We
may share our mother’s soul until then, but when we take our first breath, we
become a soul. When we breathe our last breath, our breath returns to God. Birth
and death have become very private things in our society. I guess that is
good in many ways, but the downside is that it is rare for most of us to see
a baby born or an old person die. There
is something very powerful about the moment a baby breathes his or her first
breath. If you are in the room, you yourself stop breathing and just wait for
that first breath. Then you can start breathing again. It is a stunning
moment. Something changes when that baby breathes for himself or herself the
first time. It is a holy moment. And
there is something very powerful about the moment an old person breathes
their last breath and there is not another. You sort of sit there and wait
and suddenly there is not another. You don’t want to leave the body because
it is the body of someone you love, but the realization just comes to you
that when their breath has left them they are not there. As much as the body
reminds you of them, they are not there. That last breath is a holy moment. The
ancient Israelites believed the breath is the seat of the soul. And
breath is life itself. Life is the seat of the soul. So when
the 23rd Psalm says that the Lord, my shepherd, restores my soul,
in the Hebrew context, it is an affirmation of resurrection. The shepherd resurrects
my life. W.
Phillip Keller, who wrote the little devotional classic A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm, says that this
line of the 23rd Psalm reminds him of his experience as a sheep
rancher with sheep that became cast. One of the great concerns of a sheep
rancher, he says, is cast sheep. What
happens is that a sheep lies down in some little hollow or depression in the
ground. If it rolls into the hollow too much, especially if its wool is heavy
and matted and full of mud as wool gets, it may turn on its back far enough
that its feet can no longer touch the ground. Sheep can’t turn their legs
sideways. It can become impossible for the sheep to regain its footing. It
will kick and struggle for a while, but if a sheep is cast, it will do no
good, and they will get tired after a while and just lay there. . Then,
Keller says, gases will build up in the sheep’s stomach, this will cut off
blood circulation to the extremities of the body, especially the legs. The
sheep may lose its breath. If the weather is very hot, a cast sheep can die
in a day’s time. In cooler weather it may take a few days, Kellor says. The
only way, according to Kellor, for a cast sheep to be saved is for the shepherd
to rescue it. This is why a good shepherd checks on her sheep at least twice
a day. If the
shepherd discovers a cast sheep, Kellor says the shepherd has to roll the
sheep on its side and talk to it gently and calm it to relieve the pressure
on its stomach. Then the shepherd has to lift the sheep to its feet and rub
its legs to restore circulation again. This may take some time. Then the
shepherd has to make the sheep walk around even if the sheep doesn’t feel
like it. The shepherd has to keep watch over the sheep for some time because
often it will stumble and stagger and collapse again. And it has to be helped
up again, and talked to calmly and firmly, Kellor says, so that it will keep
trying to regain its feet. This is
the image that Keller, a sheep rancher, thinks of when Psalm 23 says the
shepherd “restores my soul.”[i] Life can put us on our back, especially in
tough times. And it can do it without much warning. One day life is fine
enough and the next day our funds are halved, or there is a pink slip in our office
mail box, or our house isn’t worth what we paid for it, or the test comes
back positive. It can knock the breath out of us. Ever
talk to someone who has to drag their portfolio around from one interview to
another, facing rejection time and time again, because the jobs just aren’t
there? Ever
know someone whose memory is going and their conversation that used to be so
quick and sharp has become halting as they try to remember what they want to
tell you but can’t and they really would just rather watch TV anymore? Ever
know someone who wanted to changed the world but somehow their idealism has just
gradually faded away, and they’ve became cynical and bitter because the hoped
for changes have been too few and too slow? Life
can deplete our souls, especially in tough times. I went
to a chiropractor years and years ago – I imagine 30 years ago. I was a
campus minister at the time and a peace activist and active in homeless
ministry and an adjunct faculty member and a parent. One day I had severe
back spasms, very painful. The chiropractor must have done good work because
the spasms have never come back. She gave me some exercises to do, which I
did. But she also said that I needed to learn how to breathe. I
thought that was a little kooky. “I know how to breathe,” I’d tell her. “No
you don’t,” she’d say. She
wanted me to lay on my back a half an hour every day and breathe. She’d ask
me every time I had an appointment if I’d been breathing. And I’d say, “I’m
too busy too breathe. I’ve got to house the homeless and prevent nuclear war
and teach classes and help students stop hating their parents. I don’t have
time to breathe.” Our
breath is the seat of our soul. I think Judaism has survived everything it
has survived because deep within Hebrew scripture is the commandment: “Keep
breathing. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.” Anne
Tyler, whose novels I love, entitled one of her novels Breathing Lessons. It won a Pulitzer. The main character is a
sort of irritating middle-aged woman Maggie. She is certainly irritating to
her husband Ira. Ira says about her:
"She thinks the people she loves are better than they really are,
and so then she starts changing things around to suit her view of them."
A reviewer says: “Though everyone criticizes her…Maggie's ability to see the
beauty and potential in others ultimately proves that she is the only one
fighting the resignation they all fear.”[ii]
I think Maggie is a symbol for God in Breathing
Lessons. God
restores our breath. God resurrects us. God gives us our lives back. In the
story of Pentecost, part of what happened on the day of the first Christian
Pentecost is that there was a great wind. In the Bible, the same word is
translated both breath and wind. So what the biblical text might have meant
to say is that there was the rush of a great breath…a violent breath. On
Pentecost God gives breath and life and soul back to a people who are cast.
This is our job as the church…to give the world its breath back when it is on
its back. As part
of my preparation for this morning’s sermon I downloaded to my iPod a copy of
Sam and Dave singing: “I’m a Soul Man.” I’ve been listening to it all week.
All week I’ve been walking around the church singing “I’m a soul man. Huh!” Sam
Moore and Dave Prater grew up singing in Black church choirs in the south, in
Georgia actually, and they, along with people like Roberta Franklin and Ray
Charles, took the energy and vitality and life of the music of the southern
Black church and took it into the night club and dance hall and onto the
radio waves and helped invent soul music. They took the breath and life and
joy they had learned in church and took it out into the world. During a tough
time, through their music they helped restore This is
the job of the church born on Pentecost: to allow the shepherd to get us off of
our backs and to get our circulation going again, to restore our souls, and
then to take it out into the world to restore the soul of all humanity. You
are a soul woman. You are a soul man. www.foundryumc.org |
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