A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2020
Acts 6:1-7, 1 Pt 2:4-9, Jn 14:1-12
Reach inside yourself for a moment.
No, not metaphorically or metaphysically.
Open your mouth, reach in, and pull out your soul.
Can’t do it? How about through your nose or ears?
Your bellybutton, maybe?
No?
No, you can’t pull out your soul, because your soul is an integral part of you, woven into the very fabric of who you are, of who we all are. Every cell, every molecule, every atom within each of us is connected to our souls.
And just as every cell within us must be fed, so too the soul.
In today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the earliest Christians faced a challenge that we continue to face today. How do you care for the soul while nourishing the body?
Can you ignore one to concentrate on the other? Can you live as soul only? As body only?
No.
But people did, people do tend to get lost in one realm sometimes, get lost in only one facet of life. Only soul. Only mind. Only body. Sometimes we lose all track of time, of place.
We lose balance.
It’s understandable that the early Christians might have focused entirely on Christ’s teachings, at the expense of almost everything else. The disciples had, at most, three years of learning the Way of Jesus Christ, and they had to learn it on the fly. It wasn’t a case that Jesus was making it up as he went along. He was teaching it all for the first time, and his followers wanted to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Because, of course, there would be a test. They had to take good notes. There were no texts, not until they wrote them.
Once they took their notes, and once Jesus was no longer their everyday rabbi in their midst, ready to answer their multitude of questions, the Apostles felt they had to compare the notes and analyze them. This Way, this Truth, this new Life in the Lord was — is — heady stuff, and as the entire Book of Acts makes clear, the way they would pass the test was to pass on the knowledge of Jesus and his Way to the Father.
No small task. It still isn’t.
So, on one hand, you can’t blame them for hunkering down and studying, pondering deeply what Jesus taught them, at the possible expense of their humanly needs. And for putting together a team of disciples whose job would be to serve the people on a day-to-day basis.
Incidentally, the Church points to this passage and this recollection as the founding of the diaconate, those who serve. St. Stephen is honored as the first deacon, and as a martyr stoned to death for his faith.
Also incidentally, but significantly (no, those are not mutually exclusive), the situation the deacons were called to deal with is described as widows not getting their share in the daily distribution. At that time, Christians shared most of their earthly possessions in common, including food and drink, and some of them even lived communally. In our world of income inequality and serious concerns about what the post-COVID “normal” will look like, there’s value in considering their communal example.
But … back to the soul.
There’s nothing in this passage, or in related passages, for that matter, that does suggest the Apostles ignored their bodies while debating the Good News. It’s easy to imagine this scruffy band of brothers — and, yes, they were scruffy — having angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments, or the equivalent, while reclining at table. Perhaps they debated as they were re-creating the Last Supper, doing it in remembrance of Jesus, as he commanded all of us to.
Spiritual and earthly at the same time.
And yet, when we think of our own spirituality, we might as well be reaching down our throats to yank out our souls.
Why did fully integrating metaphysical and physical make sense then but not so much these days?
For starters, rather than making time for prayer, we pray when we have time. Which, as overscheduled, overstressed Americans, we don’t have. Even now, even as so many of us are home, there’s just no time. We’re working from home, home-schooling, playing cruise director, or God forbid having to look for a job or having to wait in hours-long lines at the food bank.
And we’re angry and frustrated and scared and lonely and YouTube Mass just isn’t cutting it anymore. And where is God in all of this mess, anyway? Why isn’t God answering my prayers, dammit?
Whew. And Sigh.
Our souls are hangry, and right now it’s up to us to ease that. Our souls are us, just as our shaggy hair and comfort-food bellies are us. We’re fully integrated, body and soul, and we can’t ignore a single facet of our being.
We can’t ignore God. God isn’t ignoring us.
When we’re lonely, we have God to talk with. Our relationship with the Almighty, however we each characterize it, need the same kind of attention that any loving relationship does. That all loving relationships do. The “Coffee with Jesus” comic strip nails it: We should have coffee with our Savior every morning. What a way to start the day.
If we’re working, we can make work a prayer, the way St. Benedict taught. “Ora et labora,” as they say in Latin.
If we’re looking for work, then that can be a prayer too, with an extra layer of “please help” prayer for good measure.
When we make time for prayer, when we feed our souls, we’re restoring balance to our lives by hitting the brakes, if only for a moment. By steering ourselves back into the center lane of The Way. By controlling what we can, and leaving the rest to God.
By embracing who we are: body and soul, soul and body, one unified being as long as we live.
