Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9, James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
The Pharisees were decent people. They had a program. They regarded the Roman occupation of Israel as the judgment of God. They believed that because of Israel’s impurity and sin, God was avoiding them, so that the Temple was empty of God’s glory and the throne was empty of David’s dynasty. They also believed that God would forgive them and return to Israel if all the people were scrupulously righteous.
So their strategy was to keep the Laws of Moses very strictly. Thus if the Law told Levites to wash their hands before a sacrifice, then all the Jews should wash their hands then they should wash before eating anything. Not just as good hygiene, but to get God to come back. If the Law said not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk, then never allow any meat and milk together in the kitchen at all. This program of overdone legalism was to win God’s favor, forgiveness, and return. But Jesus was not helping. That’s why they were against him. The felt he was keeping God away.
Jesus was saying that God already had come back—that is, in him—and that God was already forgiving sins, the sins of the sinners as much as the righteous. Jesus disputed the whole approach to their religious practices. Don’t get him wrong. It’s not that Jesus denied the value of good works and religious practices. His brother James, the author of our Epistle, certainly did not hear him to say that.
His point is that your religious practices and your good works are not where you connect with God. It’s in your souls where you connect with God. Your soul is what must be clean for God, no matter how clean your hands or how holy your practices.
You have a soul. You are a soul. Yes, you know yourself as a body, with a certain look and a certain height and weight, but you need to know yourself as a soul. Your soul is the most important thing about you. The business of your soul is the most important business that you have. You need to cultivate your soul. The cleaning and grooming of your soul, the care and feeding of your soul, the exercising of your soul, this is the most important thing you do each day.
When you get up in the morning, how long do you take to get ready? How much time do you need to make your breakfast, to shower, to groom yourself in front of the mirror, to get dressed? How much time do you give to your morning workout, or your visit to the gym? Such things are good, your body is a gift of God to you, so honor it and care for it and rejoice in it. It is meant someday to live forever before the face of God. But how much time do you give to the grooming and feeding of your soul?
The cultivation of your bodies has benefits discernible and immediate. You feel good when you eat and when you’re clean. When you look good you get compliments. But the payoff from the cultivation of your souls is never so discernible nor immediate. Your soul is something of a mystery, even for those who are most spiritual.
Indeed, the more you know your soul, the more mysterious it is. That’s from the very nature of the soul itself, it’s from the way it was designed by God. Your soul is designed for transcendence, it is designed to reach beyond the boundaries of sound and sight and sense, your soul is grounded in your body but it reaches beyond your mind. Because it traffics in transcendence it is mysterious.
Your soul is the leading organ of your body. The soul is the organ that gives the definition to our species. What the nose is for the dog, and what ears are for the bat, and eyes for the eagle, so the soul is the special organ given to our species for the distinct vocation of our species—we are the animals designed for spirituality, for transcendence, for the beyond.
Yes, the Bible sees our species as among the animals, it’s as plain as Noah’s Ark, and yet we have a special place and office among the animals. The Epistle of James says that we are a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures. We are those creatures that are dedicated to God, that are set aside for God, for special attention to God, for a special relationship to God.
In our culture today we see a reawakening to transcendence and a revival of spirituality. Yet so much of this spirituality is self-absorbed. It’s the soul turned in on itself. It’s all about self-empowerment and discovering one’s own divinity. This fashionable kind of spirituality is like looking in a mirror, to use the metaphor of James 1:24. You can look and look but when you look away you disappear. That’s because you cannot be at rest in your own self alone, you can only rest in God.
Why gaze in a mirror when you can look on your Beloved? Truest love is not the love of self but the love of someone other than yourself, someone who is always other than yourself.
Your soul belongs to you but it is not designed for yourself. You are designed for God. St. Augustine famously wrote, “Thou has made us for thyself, O God, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.” Your soul is lost and wandering until you find your true goal and your proper object. The proper purpose of your soul is your relationship with God.
Your soul is that organ of your body which directs your body to live for God. Your soul is meant to animate your body and calibrate your feelings and integrate your actions and motivate your mind. But your soul can only do this if your soul is directed beyond yourself. Your soul cannot be satisfied until it is satisfied with God.
God is your soul’s Beloved, and your soul is the Beloved of God. Your soul is the handmaiden of God. In the Bible, the soul is regarded as feminine, even the souls of men. This is a wonderful and healing metaphor, for men as well as women, in different ways. I want to be clear that it is metaphorical and not essential, because finally God has no sexuality, God is a Spirit, God is neither male nor female, so the femininity of our souls is finally a metaphor, but it is a metaphor which God has given as a gift to us.
It’s a great gift to feel your soul as a she, and to be able to identify with the Virgin Mary, and to sing with her, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.” You are a handmaiden who becomes a lover, you are the servant who becomes a Beloved, you are the Virgin who becomes a mother. “I am my beloved’s and my Beloved’s mine.”
I close with words from James: Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has power to save your souls. The saving of your souls he means is not just when you die, but for today. The word of God has power to keep your souls alive, and more, to give you abundant life. The word of God is the food of your soul.
And God desires to feed you. God loves you. God loves your soul. So it doesn’t depend on you, except that you open yourself to God. It is all gift. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a find of first fruits of his creatures.
Copyright © 2018, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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