How is it with your soul? And how is it with ours? 

         How is your soul, as an individual? And how is our soul as a community and as a society, as a nation, as a world? And how do we know that in the state of our individual souls? 

         These questions are key to our spiritual lives and to the religious practices that sustain us.

         Prayer and worship are regular ways of checking in and being honest with ourselves and with each other and before God: How is it with my soul? And how is it with the soul of my people? And what do I need, what do we need, for it to be well with our souls? 

         What helps you to do this? To check in with the state of your soul?

         Maybe it’s a way of praying, or a practice of devotion or worship or ritual. Maybe it’s making art or making music or receiving art and music. Maybe it’s through relationship with people you trust to check in with and really be honest and vulnerable. Maybe it’s a way of moving your body in the world. Maybe it’s getting organized and mobilized with others for action. Maybe all these things, or more.  

         So many things can be for us acts of prayer in which we honor however it is with our soul and give that over to God, as we give ourselves over to God to be used for who God has created us to be for this moment, for these times, so that we may be servants tending to the wellness of our souls as individuals and as a society.

         “How is it with your soul? And with ours?”

         It can be easy to avoid asking this question – especially when, if we’re honest, the answer could be troubling. Maybe if we’re honest it is not be well with my soul, or it is not well with our people’s soul. And maybe we have some resistance to admitting it. 

But we also can avoid asking this question when the answer is the opposite, when it is in fact good with our souls, even amazing – if we feel joy, gratitude, wonder, awe, satisfaction. Sometimes then too we may want to avoid feeling the fullness of that goodness before God. The true expanse and spaciousness of our souls as it embraces all of this human experience can at times feel unbearable to a smallness of self that may be most comfortable to us. 

We may avoid tending to the wellness of our souls as a way of avoiding the great and courageous things to which God calls us in this beautiful and broken world.

We can have all kinds of strategies for staying numb to the state of our souls, and to its deepest urges. Our society gives us lots of ways we can stay on autopilot and put it on autopay. We’ve got all kinds of distractions and disconnections and dissociations at our fingertips, we’re surrounded by enormous economies pushing selfishness and addiction. 

You know what it is for you – the tool you use to avoid being in touch with the state of your soul, and its deepest urgings. We all do, if we’re honest with ourselves. And we know if we’re staying free of it, or not. 

Even if we do put the cost of disconnection on autopay, we still do pay. If we ignore for too long the urgings of our souls, we do suffer for it, and so does our world.

         Tears unshed sit like stagnant water until rot sets it. 

         Guilt clutched unconfessed gnaws at our bones. 

         Anger unattended smolders in bitter resentment, until it finds fuel for explosion.

         An unsettled conscience suppressed scratches at us from the inside.

         The voice of wisdom unheaded grates as regret when one wrong turn leads to another and another. 

         Wounds ignored fester and breeds infection.

         Injustice dismissively tossed to the wind reaps the whirlwind. 

         If we bock our ears from our call, 

if we put a leash on our visions, 

if we bind back our urgent prophetic energy, 

if we close our lips and stifle our unsung dreams, 

oh how our souls become like caged tigers pacing. 

         “Something like a burning fire, locked up in my bones,” says the Prophet Jeremiah:

         If I say, “I will no longer call God to mind, nor speak God’s name again,” then within me there is something like a burning fire locked up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and can bear it no longer.

         The Prophet Jeremiah of old was speaking about the condition of oppression. The authorities of his time were punishing him and forbidding him from sharing the urgent message God had put on his heart to speak to the crises of his time and expose the injustice and the soul sickness in his world. He was being forced to deny the truth of his soul. 

In how many ways has this been true for so many throughout history, and in our present time, and even perhaps among some in our gathering here.  

Jeremiah couldn’t bear it. 

And what he declares is – for the love of God, break through those barriers – do call God to mind, do speak God’s name again! 

Be honest to God and let God be honest to you about the state of your soul and what it needs for its wellness. And say it and do it, and keep at it.

The Apostle Paul centuries later was in prison himself for doing just that, in teaching the salvation of Christ, and preaching that Jesus, not Caesar, is king – that mighty emperors are not the rulers of our hearts or our universe, but it is the lead of our humble servant Christ that is ours to follow. 

It was from prison that Paul wrote the words we just heard about the importance of being honest to God about how it is with our souls. Plenty of people want to sell us quick fixes. But when we give our anxieties over to God, notice that Paul doesn’t promise a quick fix. He doesn’t say that all our dreams come true and our problems disappear. What he says is that the peace of Christ that surpasses understanding will surround our hearts and shield them. And Paul is clear that this will give us courage to faithfully face into the crises of our times. 

The good news that came with Christ is that God is with us in our human condition, in our beauty, in our brokenness, in our crises, to embody the unconditional love of our Creator. So, we need not have fear or shame about being truly honest with God and honest with ourselves about how it is with our souls, as individuals, as communities, as societies, and a global species among others in this more-than-human world. 

The truth is that our world needs it, and our world’s God needs us all to reconnect with our souls, reunite with our God, embody our souls’ needs and yearnings, so that we may each and all be activated as the embodied souls that we for the purpose set within each of us and all of us together to embody as Christ the promise of the realm of heaven on earth. 

How is it with your soul? And how is it with ours? Ah, beloved community, to what great and courageous and loving things are you called?

         For this I give thanks to God. 

         Thanks be to God. 

(Image: “Heart on Fire” by Ian Ransley, (CC BY 2.0))