Good
Shepherd/Baptism Sunday
God’s
Chicken Soup for the Soul – Rev. David Mundy
Psalm
23
John 10:1-10
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Chicken
soup. Chicken Soup for the . . . Soul. By now most of us will have seen
this book title. Even if you have never delved into a Chicken Soup for the
Soul volume, you may have a fair idea that it will contain stories and
anecdotes that are inspirational and spiritual and meant to give you a lift for
the day.
Actually
there are many different titles in what has become a very successful series of
books – talk about a winning recipe. There are now scores of these books in 54
languages, having sold more than 100 million copes which would buy a lot of
chicken soup. The titles include:
Chicken
Soup for the Teenage Soul (14 titles in the series)
Chicken
Soup for the Couple’s Soul
Chicken
Soup for the Expectant Mother’s Soul
Chicken
Soup for the Canadian Soul (soup’s good, eh?)
Chicken
Soup for the NASCAR Soul:
Inspirational Stories of Courage
Speed & Overcoming Adversity
The
New Yorker magazine always has lots of clever cartoons and one was of a
book cover for Chicken Soup for the Bowl, if I remember correctly, an
inspired idea actually.
The
common elements of all these books are the uplifting “chicken soup,” that
nourishing, comforting broth of stories, along with human soul which isn’t
quite as easy to describe.
We
don’t hear much about the soul anymore, do we? Some of the more fundamentalist
preachers may caution us that our souls are in mortal danger if we don’t turn
to Christ, but this language of dire warning isn’t used much these days.
Still,
for thousands of years there has been a conviction that there is some essence,
some unseen yet very real element personhood which we call the soul. Some would
argue that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is that humans
have souls and animals don’t, although there is a veterinarian in the
congregation and a lot of pet owners who would undoubtedly disagree.
Those
of us who have been present with individuals as they have died are aware of a
departure of that essence, although it is difficult to define. At the beginning
of the twentieth century a scientist set out to prove that the human soul
actually has mass and that the body weighs less – 21 grams less – immediately
after death, when the soul has departed. He wasn’t successful or convincing in
his research, other than to provide the title for a movie called Twenty-one
Grams starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. While it’s unlikely that anyone will
ever be able to quantify the human soul, that essential self in relationship to
and with others, including God, has spiritual weight.
On
this Good Shepherd Sunday we listened to a couple of passages of scripture that
remind us that we are the sheep of God’s pasture and of Christ’s corral,
lovingly watched and tended. We have all
seen the images of Christ, the Good Shepherd, and without a doubt the
best-known of all the psalms is the one which begins, The Lord is my
shepherd. This psalm is given the title “a psalm of David” and while
scholars generally agree that no more than a handful of the 150 psalms could
have been written by the most famous king of
There
is a series of phrases which many of us know by heart, including “he
restores my soul,” God not only prepares the table for us, God cooks up the
chicken soup for our souls, so we can be nourished and restored.
There
is an excellent little book on the twenty-third psalm by Rabbi Harold Kushner
whose more famous volume is When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
Kushner offers many insights from a Jewish perspective including the prayer
recited by traditional Jews every morning which emphasized the soul:
The
soul you have given me, o God, is pure.
You
fashioned it, You breathed it into me,
You
keep body and soul together.
One
day you will take it from me,
only
to restore it to me in the time to come.
So
long as I have my soul, I must acknowledge You as my god
and
the God of my ancestors, The God of all souls.
Praised
are You O Lord who restores the soul to a lifeless body.
How
does God actually go about restoring our souls without being physically
present?
God
revives our souls when we come together to be the church. You might expect a
minister to say this, but we choose to pause from the active schedules most of
us maintain to remind ourselves that we are God’s children and the sheep of
God’s pasture. Perhaps you’re thinking that you are actually here for your
children or this is just the habit that has developed through the years for
Sunday morning. Of course church-going is a habit! Scripture tells us that even
God formed the good habit of sabbath soul restoration at the end of the work of
creation. We don’t have a bumper sticker which says St. Paul’s United Church
– Restoring Souls Since 1834, but perhaps we should. “Soul work” is what we
are about as Christ’s people and when we come together for worship we are
tending our eternal souls.
God
nourishes our souls in creation. I say this with some trepidation because I
don’t want to send you all racing to your cottages! There is some very earthy
imagery in the psalm which speaks to us of critters and wild places and waters.
We often feel an intimacy with God the creator when we are connected with the
created world. The hymn How Great Thou Art has a verse about forest glades and birds and
mountain grandeur, followed by the chorus “then sings my soul my Saviour God
to Thee, how Great Thou Art.”
Of
course life isn’t all about peace and tranquility. In fact, we must often
attempt to live in the midst of turmoil. The twenty-third psalm is realistic
that at times God will heals our souls
in the midst of our moments of crisis. Those crises may be physically
life-threatening illnesses or even result in death but the shadow of the valley
can take on a different form. The crises can be those of meaning and purpose.
Life becomes rather so overwhelming or confusing that we lose our compass
bearings and our sense of which way is forward.
A
few weeks ago I had a lengthy conversation with the author of a book called Loss
of Soul. Kelly Walker is a former Dominican priest who shared that at the
age of forty while driving on the
For
Kelly Walker it meant leaving the Dominican order and beginning the challenging
work of establishing a new identity where the grace of God he had preached
about could actually be lived. In his book he encourages people to believe that
no matter how wounded they are, their souls can be mended and they can begin
again. Perhaps his book should be called Soul Restoration.
So
all of us, teenagers who choose baptism, young mothers and fathers who are
doing the balancing act of busy lives, singles and couples of all ages, have
souls which can be nourished and tended. In a world of more than six billion
people each one of us is unique and loved by God. As we said together during
the baptism “In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are
not alone.”
When
we realize that our souls are tended and restored and loved we are able to
respond to the needs of others. Perhaps we don’t feel equipped to provide for
the souls of others or we may feel overwhelmed in care-giving, yet we draw on a
strength that is greater than our own.
God can and does work through us, one relationship at a time.
Rabbi
Kushner encourages us to trust that what we do by way of soul care of others
matters and that we will be given the strength we need to carry on:
When
our souls are on the verge of giving in to compassion fatigue, when we know
what the right thing to do is, but we
are tired of being charitable and helpful, that is when we need God to restore
our souls, to replenish our ability to act like human beings, to understand
that what is asked of us is not to make the world perfect but to make one
person’s life better.
One
last thought this morning. Our other passage for the day tells us that Jesus is
the Good Shepherd and that those who follow him form the flock which knows his
voice. Jesus warns against the robbers and thieves who may run amok amongst the
sheep. There are many “soul thieves” in our time, the distractions and demands
which deplete us, but Christ has come that we may have abundant, overflowing
life.
Sometimes
when I meet people for the first time who wonder what I do for a living I tell
them that I am in the abundant life business. If I tell them that I am a
When
we listen for Christ’s voice in the din and demands of our culture we will find
our way into that abundant life. The table is already set for us and we can
smell God’s chicken soup which will nourish our souls. Amen.