THE MIND OF CHRIST - A REFLECTION

 This reflection was written for the Sunday Devotion for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on September 27, 2020

Philippians 2:1-13

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God 

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave, 

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself 

and became obedient to the point of death-- 

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name 

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend, 

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

REFLECTION

+In the Name of Jesus Christ+

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” is the invocation to what many consider the earliest Christian hymn, Paul’s poetic portrayal of Jesus as the Christ in his joy-filled letter to the Philippians.

The term Christ is a Greek word meaning the “anointed one”and was used to translate the Jewish word Messiah (also meaning the “anointed”) in the Greek New Testament scriptures, but Christ means far more in Paul’s usage.  

In his exhortation to have the same mind as Christ Jesus, Paul shapes our understanding of “Christ Jesus" as a primordial creation; the created “form of God” through which all creation comes into being.  In his letter to the Colossians, Paul explains it this way, “He (Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” [Colossians 1:15-17]

Although a messiah was referred to as a “son” of God in the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras [2 Esdras 7:28-29 & 12:32] and in the Book of Daniel as a prince who would restore the temple [Daniel 9:25], there is no place in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament that suggests that anything or anyone could be the image of or an equivalent to God; much less, be the purpose or reason for creation to have occurred.  This comes to us as a purely intuitive revelation through Paul and was  clearly shared by other New Testament writers.  

What brought about Paul’s revelatory intuition is a matter of speculation, but it seems likely to have resulted from his visionary encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus; an experience that not only converted him but also transfigured him from Saul to Paul and, it would seem, transfigured his understanding of Jesus from a rebellious Galilean to the “LORD.” The experiences of Jesus as the resurrected Christ expanded the concept of Christ from the anointed to the anointing; as in, the creating force behind the entire cosmos. 

This understanding of Jesus Christ eventually found its way into the first chapter of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word… All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being…  And the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us…”    

Christ understood as the form of God shapes our understanding of the man Jesus, and the man Jesus shapes our understanding of God in the form of Christ.  As such, Jesus and Christ are inseparably connected.  This inseparability has profound applications and implications in understanding who we are because Jesus is one of us, and we too are made in the image (the form) of God. 

Jesus is our exemplar of who God intends us to be.  This interconnectivity between us and Jesus Christ led Paul to exhort us to access and possess the very the mind that was (is) in Christ Jesus for a purpose.

At the end of today’s lesson, Paul offers some interesting advice.  He writes, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  We rarely think about our salvation as something we could have any possible involvement in; much less, possessing the capability of working it out on our own.  

After all, isn’t that what Jesus did, when he died for us?  

The answer to that is a “Yes and… .”   

Yes, Jesus died for all and there is clearly more for us to do in this life.

God is at work in us just as God was at work in Jesus.  Salvation is not about entitling us to become some sort of redeemed couch potatoes.  Salvation involves a dynamic calling to continue the work of Christ Jesus in our lives. 

Christ is in us just as we are in Christ.

Having the mind of Christ is to possess the very thought pattern that knits us together into the Body of Christ.  To be true to this mindset is to be compassionate and loving to the extent of emptying ourselves, like Jesus, of any entitlement.   We should never take lightly being made in the image (in the form) of God but rather, like Christ, make room for others in our lives, live humbly, and be in the service of all creation.  

Above all, to have the mind of Christ Jesus is to recognize in all others their Christ-nature, as reflected in a greeting, “The Christ in me greets the Christ in you.” This greeting should bubble up in our hearts and minds in every encounter with God’s wondrous creation that surrounds us, shares life with us, and defines us.   

Namaste!

* * * * * * * * * * 

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE VALUE OF ONE - A REFLECTION

 This reflection was written for the Sunday Devotion for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on September 20, 2020

THE LESSON

Matthew 20:1-16 NIV

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.  He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.  He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.  About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The Gospel lesson is from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION  (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society  and used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.  All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

In an age where equal pay for equal work is one of many social justice concerns, this parable of Jesus can strike one as being out of step with the times. A day’s wage given to all, regardless if they worked all day or just an hour or two of that day doesn’t seem fair, and it is hard not to sympathize with those who worked all day and received the same pay as someone who slipped in at the last hour to do a minimal amount of work by comparison.  

Economists will tell us that equality is virtually unattainable in any economic system; that the closest we can get to a sense of equality in economics is simply trying to be fair. We live in a world were fairness is seemingly as good as it gets and, if we’re being truthful, it is often as good as we want it to get.  

In fact, we appear to have developed an economic culture that fears equality.  Equality sounds good until someone tries to apply that concept in a pragmatic manner to the economic and social concerns of this country.  Doing so is likely to get one labeled a socialist, a communist, or an anarchist.

Generally speaking, we struggle with equality because our lives are encumbered with a multitude of perceived differences. We can say all people are created equal  but from there, equality begins to quickly vanish and we end up settling for what is fair in our mind’s eye.  

In this parable, Jesus is using money to get our attention in order to portray how God sees everyone as one.

In order to explore the meanings that can be derived from this parable, we need to broaden out the minimalist metaphors Jesus employs.  For example, Jesus uses a single day to illustrate the entire history of human life.  The hours of that day represent the point at which people enter into life, the vineyard which represents the Kingdom of God on earth.  God, of course, is represented by the landowner.  

The point Jesus is making is that regardless of when people enter into the Life of God (another understanding for the Kingdom of God), they are valued just as any other people at any other time. Jesus thwarts our sense of fairness by establishing an equality based on each person having equal value.  Jesus underscores that we are not our own creations and therefore cannot properly determine our worth or the worth of others by what we do or how long we’ve been doing it.   Everything we believe we own and everything we believe we’re entitled to is nothing more than an illusion existing in our heads.  So Jesus draws us to the heart of the matter, to the center of all things, God.

When at the end of day the landowner is questioned by those who entered the vineyard at the start of the day regarding their receiving the same pay as those who came later in the day, the landowner (God) displays a sense of equanimity, a sense of calm and peace, to explain his equal treatment of all who came at his invitation to labor in his vineyard.  Since everything is God’s, God blesses as God sees fit, with a generous equivalency.  

The first laborers agreed to work for one denarius, and while it doesn’t strike them (and us) that giving the same amount to those who worked far less than they, the landowner is not depriving them of their expectation or his promise.  The landowner is simply being generous.

Jesus literally rebukes our sense of fairness. Not only does the landowner pay everyone the same wage, but he pays those who came last first and those who were first on the job last.  By worldly standards this is not fair, but it demonstrates being valued equally.  

God treats us equally.  In God’s economic formula, all life has a value equal to one, as symbolized by the value of a day’s labor being a single denarius.  This is the labor agreement we have with God in Christ; that we become one with each other as God is one with us is.

With that said, what should be our takeaway from this parable?

What comes to my mind is the word value. 

Do we value each other in equal terms or do we simply employ the concept of economic fairness when it comes to the value we place on another person’s life and  all life on this planet?  

When some politicians and economists present the welfare of our economy as a mitigating factor to offset the loss of life during this pandemic, the question of what we value becomes front and center.  

When close to two hundred thousands lives (millions worldwide) can be written off as an unfortunate byproduct in order to justify  keeping world economies running during a pandemic, shouldn’t we question such systems that treat human life as an expendable commodity?   Shouldn’t we question why such economies do not fundamentally place the value of life on this planet as the standard upon which our economies are based rather than the soulless engines that generate monetary profit for profit’s sake?

Likewise, when we choose to deny the known human causes of climate change  that threaten all our lives by the politicians we elect and through our complicity with a corporate mentality that encourages unfettered consumerism, something is disturbingly amiss in our calculus of values.  

St. Thomas Aquinas surmised that when we to choose to be willfully ignorant  about something we ought to know “for a purpose” (i.e monetary profit), we are committing a mortal (soul-damaging) sin. [Summa, I-II, q. 76, a. 1, a. 3]

When our nation’s economic and social policies fail to recognize the equivalency of one as expressed in our nation’s motto, “E. Pluribus Unum” (out of many one), the soul of this nation is being damaged.

When we base the value of life upon who came first, who came last, and where one comes from, we diminish the value and worth of our lives and begin to act like entitled bullies pushing our weight around a school playground   When we defer to fairness as being as good as it gets in determining the value of others, we lose the equivalent oneness that is inherent in our being one in God, one with God, and one with all creation.

* * * * * * * * * * 

Loving and generous God, we thank you for all the blessing you shower on us daily.  Open our eyes to see the value of one.  Open our hearts to embrace the equivalent value you have given all life on this planet.  Help us to live the life you have given us as a labor of love and compassion for all, so that at the end of the day we may be one with you.  Amen.

* * * * * * * * * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE SHADOWY SIDE OF COMPASSION - A REFLECTION

 This is my reflection from the Sunday devotion that was developed for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, S.D.

Matthew 18:21-35 - MSG*

Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?”

Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.

The kingdom of God is like a king who decided to square accounts with his servants. As he got under way, one servant was brought before him who had run up a debt of a hundred thousand dollars. He couldn’t pay up, so the king ordered the man, along with his wife, children, and goods, to be auctioned off at the slave market.

The poor wretch threw himself at the king’s feet and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ Touched by his plea, the king let him off, erasing the debt.

“The servant was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him ten dollars. He seized him by the throat and demanded, ‘Pay up. Now!’

“The poor wretch threw himself down and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ But he wouldn’t do it. He had him arrested and put in jail until the debt was paid. When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king.

“The king summoned the man and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt when you begged me for mercy. Shouldn’t you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?’ The king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire debt. And that’s exactly what my Father in heaven is going to do to each one of you who doesn’t forgive unconditionally anyone who asks for mercy.”

* The Message, copyright (c) 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene Peterson, used by permission of NavPress.  All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

REFLECTION

                   God be in my head, and in my understanding;

                   God be in my eyes, and in my looking;

                   God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;

                   God be in my heart, and my thinking;

                   God be at my end, and at my departing.

(Sarum Primer 1514)

God is in us.  We take God wherever we go, whether we like to or not and whether we are consciously aware of God’s presence in our lives or not.  We cannot get rid of God.  How God’s compassion and love is played out in our lives is matter of how compassion and love is played out in the lives we lead. The experience of God’s compassion and love in our lives is directly related to how we love and treat our neighbor. 

The parable of the unforgiving servant reveals a shadowy side to God’s compassion and love; in that, God goes where we go.  God shadows us.  God interacts with how we act.  

So the question this parable offers us today is, “Where are we taking God in our lives?”  

In this parable, Jesus underscores compassion as a necessary component in loving one’s neighbor and, by extension, loving God.  Jesus clearly wants us to understand that compassion, in the form of forgiveness, is not something owed us but rather flows from God’s grace that brought everything into being. There are strong psychological and spiritual applications that can be derived from this parable.  As such, it is important for us to see the servant as an archetypal figure for the human tendency towards selfishness and being unaware of one’s connection to something greater than one’s self.  The king in this parable represents God, our creator to whom we belong and whose will is being carried out in our lives

* * * * * * * * * *

In Jesus’ day a servant was not an independent hired hand.  A servant for all practical purposes was considered a member of the household he or she served; in this case, a king.  In essence, such a servant owed his livelihood, his life, and that of his wife and children to the king.  The king could do whatever the king wished to do to him, including killing him and his family without trial, because the king’s word was law and no one would have batted an eye should something like that had occurred in the culture and times in which Jesus told this story. 

In this parable, we see that the king has no interest in taking his servant’s life because of his malfeasance.  The servant’s life has value, as do the lives of his wife and children. The king is not necessarily vengeful as he is pragmatic in trying to recoup his loss. So the king considers having the servant and his family sold as slaves in a slave market to offset some of the monetary loss caused by the servant’s foolishness. 

The servant, understanding the precarious situation he is in, pleas for mercy from the king; promising to pay back what is owed the king. The king is indeed merciful. In fact, the king goes beyond mercy.  The king is compassionate.  

The king does not desire the punishment of his servant but rather considers the potential his servant has; in that, the servant can learn from the error of his ways and straighten himself out.  As such, the king decides to forgive the servant’s malfeasance and the entire debt the servant owes; keeping his servant and the servant’s family under his roof.  

It is an extravagant gesture on the part of the king, and in that gesture, we understand the depth of God’s compassion towards the burdens we place on ourselves.  

The servant, however, has no appreciation for the extravagant compassion and grace of the king.  He learns nothing because he believes he got away with his dereliction.  It is likely the servant sees such a forgiving, compassionate act as proceeding from a weak will; therefore, the servant sees no need to amend his ways because he feels free to pursue his own desires and devices.  

In a matter of minutes, the servant forgets the huge debt that was forgiven.  And no sooner than he feels that he escaped being sold into slavery, he finds himself enslaved by his selfish ways.  

When this servant comes across someone who owed him a significantly smaller debt, instead of showing the compassion the king had shown him, he mocks it by demanding payment and resorting to physical violence. When the person who owed the servant a small amount pleas for mercy, the servant shows him none and delivers him to a jailer to take vengeance on him.

When the king is made aware of his servant’s vengeful and ruthless treatment of others, he is brought before the king.  Once again he pleas for mercy, but this time the compassionate king goes to where he knows his servant’s heart is.  In his compassion, the king allows his servant to experience his own ruthless vengeance, and the servant finds himself living in the hell he caused others until he fully grasps the compounded weight caused by his dereliction to be compassionate.  

This is the shadowy side of God’s compassion, allowing us to taste the bitterness of our dereliction to love and be compassionate. God is present wherever we are.   God is with us even in the moments of dereliction and in having us taste the bitterness of our actions or lack thereof. 

This shadowy side of compassion is strictly God’s domain, not ours.  Only God knows the hearts, the minds, and secrets of all.  We do not know our own hearts and minds at times; much less, the hearts and minds of others, which underscores our need to be forgiving of others so that we can fully experience being forgiven by God.   

This brings us to Peter’s question at the beginning of today’s Gospel lesson, “How may times should we forgive a person?”    

When Peter suggested forgiving someone seven times, he no doubt thought he was being very generous and was probably thinking (like most of us) that any reasonable person can only be expected to forgive up to a certain point, at which point, one is entitled to put the hammer down.   Jesus counters that thinking by saying we should forgive“seventy times seven.” 

The point Jesus is making is that we should never give up on forgiveness or on being forgiving.  Forgiveness is born of compassion that understands the suffering and burdens brought about by our actions or the lack of them.  Without forgiveness we remain imprisoned by the weight of our wrongdoing to others. Without being forgiving, we attempt to keep others imprisoned by the wrongs they have done to us. 

This is why Jesus taught us to pray that God forgives us our wrongdoing as we forgive those who wrong us.  To be unforgiving in this life can eventually lead one to feel unforgiven by life itself.  To feel unforgiven has a tremendous impact on one’s life just a being forgiven does.  This is readily observable in ourselves as was demonstrated in the parable of the unforgiving servant who could not experience the feeling of forgiveness because he lacked the will and desire to be forgiving. 

God’s compassionate and loving will is being played out in our lives because we are the products of that will. This is why Jesus also taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven;” so that God’s will is manifest in us and through us, as we are carried along by the flow of that loving and compassionate will to be where God is and, like God, to be full of compassion and mercy.

Amen.

* * * * * * * * * * * 

Until next time, stay faithful  

 

AGAPE AND NEFESH - A REFLECTION

This is the reflection I offered in the Sunday Devotions for Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, SD on September 6, 2020

THE LESSON

Romans 13:8-14

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

REFLECTION

+In the Name of our life-giving, loving God+

Building on last Sunday’s message of taking up our crosses (our true selves) in order to follow Jesus, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans.  The first line of today’s lesson requires us to ponder its breadth and depth: 

 “Owe no one anything, expect to love one another.”  

At first glance this sounds easy enough.  In fact, it can sound rather cheap until one starts to consider what this statement is premised on.  

Love is tricky word; in that, the English language only has one word - love - for all the forms of love we experience; whereas, the ancient Greeks had seven, possibly more.  Most are familiar with the first three types; as love born out of deep regard and respect for the other (agape) which Christians frequently associate with the love of God, as brotherly or the love one has for one’s friends (philia), and as intimate or mystical love (eros).  We are less likely to be familiar with the other Greek forms of love; such as, playful or socializing love (ludos), patient or tolerant love (pragma), healthy self-love (philautia), affectionate or family love (storge), and jealous and/or obsessive love (mania).  These are all helpful terms that have use in psychology and in charting the uncertain terrain of love in human relationships.  

Paul, being a Jew living in a Hellenistic world, would have been familiar with these various forms and applications of love in the age and world he lived in.  Paul was particular about Greek word he used to describe the type of love referenced in today’s lesson; a verb form of agape.  Why I am drawing attention to the specificity in his use of agape-love is that he applies it not only to how we should love God but also to how we should love others and ourselves. 

Merely treating agape as God’s love, the love of God, or as one’s love for God misses the depth of its meaning.  In order to love God in the sense of agape, one must love what God loves; as having deep regard and respect for all creation which is born of God’s love.

In order to love what God loves means extending an agape-love to our true selves.  According to Paul, agape is rooted in the healthy treatment of one’s self (philautia). The love of self (philautia)should not be misconstrued as narcissism which is falling in love with one’s illusionary (if not delusional) self-made image; as in, treating one’s image of self as the only “other” worthy of such attention. Narcissism has no connection with agape or philautia.  Narcissism is mania, a jealous obsession with one’s self.  

 

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is more than a pious platitude that has a nice ring to it.  It is the essential foundation upon which agape is built, and it is as old as religion itself.  Anything that deviates or detracts from the deep regard and respect of agape becomes selfish or sinful.

Paul starts us out with referencing the commandments; not committing adultery, not committing murder, not stealing, and so on.  Do no harm is the first rule of medicine and it is the primary principle behind agape. Beyond not doing harm, agape proceeds from a deep respect and regard for one’s self as an expression of God’s creative love which, in turn, enables us to have a deep respect and regard for all of God’s individual creations which God, likewise, loves with deep regard and respect.

Yes - God has deep respect and deep regard for all that God created; including you and me.  In agape we encounter the full interconnectedness of LOVE as BEING, which is summed up in the statement “God is LOVE” - a love that permeates the entire cosmos.  Such love is mind-boggling.

At the end of today’s reading, Paul says, “Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.  Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  In last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, Jesus implied that as the Messiah he would fight for the soul of humanity at the expense of his own flesh and blood.  In that broad term, “the soul of humanity,” resides your soul and mine.  Paul’s instruction to put on Christ means to take on Jesus’s redemptive fight for the soul of humanity in our lives; to let it shine in the darkness of this world as protective amor of light.  

Like the word love, the word soul is tricky.  It is often construed to mean one’s spirit or ghost that will continue beyond the death of one’s physical body.  The soul, however, is more than that.  The soul is a combination of both our physical and spiritual natures. In essence the soul is totality of who we really are; body, mind, and spirit.  We can bare our souls to each other by what we do and say to each other.  Our souls, however, are never closed to God who knows the inner-most thoughts and desires of our hearts and minds.

Although Paul’s epistle is written in Greek, his mind was Jewish; thus attuned to Judaic concepts; such as, the soul. To discuss this understanding of the soul, one has to turn to Hebrew Scriptures and the Hebrew language.  The word for soul in Hebrew is nefesh.  Nefesh is a complex word meaning breath, life, and soul.   To define it in English one must understand the context in which it is used, as is true when translating anything from biblical Hebrew into another language.  The concept of the soul is first identified in Genesis 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground (adama), and breathed (neshamah) into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (nefesh).” 

The soul (nefesh) is a merism; something that combines two disparate parts in the same context;  in this case, the physical matter by which the first human was formed from the ground (adama) and the energizing breath of God breathed (neshamah) into the physical human form creating the first human as a living soul or nefesh.  In other words, the soul is not a separate entity apart from our physical existence, but rather forms an interdependent alive-ness involving both matter and the energizing breath of God.  Our first intake of breath takes on life (taking in the breath of God) and our first exhaling of that breath is giving it to others and an offering of thanks to God.  “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord” is the final declaration of the Psalms. [Psalm 150:6]

In taking on life, Paul reminds us that what we do to ourselves physically and spiritually impacts our souls.  In particular, Paul exhorts us to not give into the desires of the flesh.  In Hebrew, the desires or appetites of the flesh are connected to nefesh, the soul.  This would also include our thoughts that proceed from such appetites and desires.  

Nefesh or neshamah, being related to the concept of breathing out, calls to mind what Jesus said, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles.” [Matt. 15:8]  In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes, “Let no evil talk come out of our mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” [Ephesians 4:29]  Our souls (imprinted with God’s image) have the capacity to participate in God’s kenotic creativity; to give of one’s self in order to be life-giving to others.  As such, love of oneself is linked to the care we give others; what we breathe on them.  We can either build up or we can destroy with our breath.  If we build up others, we find ourselves built up. If we tear down others, we find ourselves diminished.

I cannot help but think about the importance of wearing masks in this time of Covid-19 and the connection between protecting others as vital to protecting ourselves and those nearest to us; to be cautious with what is carried on our breath.  There are so many opportunities during this pandemic to instill in ourselves and in our children the connection between the care of others and the care of ourselves.  

I find it disheartening that some feel it is a “right” not to wear a mask without considering the responsibility we have to protect each other.  Such disregard is nothing short of being selfish; nothing short of being sinful.  No one has a right to put others at risk. Equally disturbing is that some parents are resisting the requirements schools are making for children to wear masks at school because of the fear of the “psychological damage” that could result. This is a prime time to instill in children the importance of taking care of and being responsible for the well-being of others. This pandemic offers a real life and a real time opportunity to experience what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself. 

The need for a mask to protect others from what comes out of our mouths conveys a much deeper meaning.  Perhaps we should always wear a mask to remind us of the need to be cautious about what comes out of our mouths; such as, the viral verbal pandemics caused by what we say to each other and what we say about each other.   Ultimately what we do and say impacts our souls.  Life is a gift of God, a trust that imbues us with an agape type responsibility to take care of the soul given to us and the soul given to others.  Only when such agape-love is offered to ourselves and others is it offered to God.

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”  

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Giver of life and love, grant that we may truly know ourselves as creations of your love so that we may truly love in us what you have made us to be. Strengthen our souls to resist all harmful desires. Help us to be mindful of what comes out of our mouths that we may breathe life-giving love to our neighbors and to all creation.  All this we ask in the Name of Jesus, the lover of our souls.  Amen.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm