“How is your soul?”  When was the last time anyone asked you that question?  It only happens to me about once each year when I complete my yearly “self-evaluation” in preparation for time with the District Superintendant.  “How is your soul?”  It seems just a little archaic, perhaps just too personal.

Personal is right.  Several years ago while serving another church up close to the Missouri River I went to visit a woman who, I had been told, had been an active and vital member of the church for many years.   Then one Sunday she just didn’t show up.  She distanced herself from the friends she’d made at the church and people were beginning to worry about her.  Some tried to breach the subject but she never gave an answer.  All this happened before the new pastor (me) arrived so after a time of getting to know those who were involved with worship and other church ministries, one of them asked me to visit her.

I knocked on the door and was invited in to a well kept living room.  I think she knew the why of my visit so without even asking she began to tell me about her father who had recently died.  Several years ago he’d received the diagnosis of lung cancer and in spite of every kind of treatment the Doctors could offer and the thousands of prayers offered for healing, he died.  She just could not understand why her prayers hadn’t been answered.  She was very angry with God.  She could not worship.  She had become one of the casualties of life’s unknowns.

She was not the first.  Life has a way of testing us in surprising ways.  I’ve discovered there are two ways we respond to those tests of our relationship with God.  We either move closer to God or we step away from God.  Maybe you know people who have done both.  Maybe you’re one of those who, for a time, wrestled with God until finally, you stepped back for a time.  Perhaps you’re still in that struggle and only the habits formed and friendships honored keep you coming here each week.  Please know you are not alone.  Today’s scriptures tell of two others who join you.

Jeremiah was God’s prophet sent to proclaim God’s Word to God’s Chosen people while they lived in The Land that God had promised them.  The problem was; those chosen people were not living the way God intended life to be lived.  Jeremiah told them so.  The leaders didn’t like it so they found various ways to punish Jeremiah for his message. 

Our reading today tells of a time when Jeremiah’s soul had had enough of God’s call to proclaim The Word to a stiff-necked people.

15-18You know where I am, God! Remember what I’m doing here!
   Take my side against my detractors.
Don’t stand back while they ruin me.
   Just look at the abuse I’m taking!
When your words showed up, I ate them—
   swallowed them whole. What a feast!
What delight I took in being yours,
   O God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
I never joined the party crowd
   in their laughter and their fun.
Led by you, I went off by myself.
   You’d filled me with indignation. Their sin had me seething.
But why, why this chronic pain,
   this ever worsening wound and no healing in sight?
You’re nothing, God, but a mirage,
   a lovely oasis in the distance—and then nothing! (Jeremiah 15:15-18 [MSG])

Did he really say that God was like a lovely oasis that never materialized?  The NRSV translates Jeremiah’s frustration, “Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” (Jeremiah 15:18b)  That sentence makes more sense to someone who grew up in a desert where dry creek beds where sometimes filled with rushing water during mountain rains but quickly become dry again.  Today we talk about those who talk good but have no real game.  That was Jeremiah’s complaint.  How did God reply?

  “Take back those words, and I’ll take you back.
   Then you’ll stand tall before me.
Use words truly and well. Don’t stoop to cheap whining.
   Then, but only then, you’ll speak for me.
Let your words change them.
   Don’t change your words to suit them.
I’ll turn you into a steel wall,
   a thick steel wall, impregnable.
They’ll attack you but won’t put a dent in you
   because I’m at your side, defending and delivering.”
         God’s Decree.
“I’ll deliver you from the grip of the wicked.
   I’ll get you out of the clutch of the ruthless.” (Jeremiah 15:19-21 [MSG])

Notice God did not turn his back to Jeremiah.  Instead I heard words of challenge, “Take that back Jeremiah.”  At first it sounds harsh but then, “and I’ll take you back.  Then you’ll stand tall before me.”  God restates his call of Jeremiah, reminding him that he is the one speaking truth and encouraging him to not change his words to suit what the others want to hear.  God promises protection and deliverance from the ruthless.   That is good news for those of us who sometimes wonder out loud about God’s promises.

Then there’s Matthew’s gospel.  Today we read the rest of what happened on the road to Caesarea Philippi. Last week we heard Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter was the first to say that Jesus was the Messiah (Christ) the Son of the Living God.  Jesus commended his answer, saying it was divine revelation and that it would be the rock upon which The Church would be built. 

21-22Then Jesus made it clear to his disciples that it was now necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, submit to an ordeal of suffering at the hands of the religious leaders, be killed, and then on the third day be raised up alive. Peter took him in hand, protesting, “Impossible, Master! That can never be!”

 23But Jesus didn’t swerve. “Peter, get out of my way. Satan, get lost. You have no idea how God works.” (Matthew 16:21-22 [MSG])

Did Jesus just call Peter Satan?  I can understand why Peter would not be particularly happy about Jesus’ understanding of the results of being the Messiah of God.  Even more his rebellion against his best friend’s suffering, death, and what is resurrection anyway?  Surely not!  How can that be? 

It is not only unanswered prayers that make us wonder if we’ve made the right choice.  Were you listening when I read Jesus’ teachings a moment ago?

“Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?

 27-28“Don’t be in such a hurry to go into business for yourself. Before you know it the Son of Man will arrive with all the splendor of his Father, accompanied by an army of angels. You’ll get everything you have coming to you, a personal gift. This isn’t pie in the sky by and by. Some of you standing here are going to see it take place, see the Son of Man in kingdom glory.” (Matthew 16:24-28 [MSG])

The one who named us “Methodist” understood his call to ministry in relation to a time of betrayal and suffering.  When John Wesley was a child the town’s people saved him from a second floor window of the burning parsonage where he lived with his father (a Church of England Priest), mother, brothers, and sisters.  They made a human ladder to reach him.  The only problem was that it was his father’s congregation that had set fire to the parsonage in the first place, trying to get him to move somewhere else. (Please don’t get any ideas.)  John later wrote of himself as a, “brand plucked from the fire” saved to do God’s work.

When he was a Fellow at Oxford he joined with the other Divinity Fellows as they shared preaching duties in the Chapel.  John, however, only preached two or three times before the leaders of the university banned him from the pulpit.  He spoke Good News that the powers didn’t want to hear and so they decided to take away his ability to preach.  Soon after he was led by his friend, George Whitefield, out of town to do that one thing that he thought most despicable.  He began to preach in the open fields to the miners and farmers and people who the Church of England were conveniently ignoring.  It was those poor folks that led the Great Awakening that reignited the true power of God’s Church in England and soon in the New World.

Speaking of the New World, John saw heard that there were not enough trained ordained clergy to take care of all those who were moving to the New World.  He asked his bishop to send more but it didn’t happen fast enough.  So Wesley decided that he would ordain some helpers and send them to America to baptize and offer Holy Communion to those who were not in optimum, or critical locations.

That’s our heritage as people called Methodist.  We are Christians who were forged in response to our response to difficult circumstances who chose to continue to let our lifelong bet on God’s love and grace to ride.

So…how’s your soul?  There is Good News!  No matter the state of your soul, you are a child of God who is claimed by God’s love and not our own works.  You are blessed to be a blessing even when we aren’t able to see the blessings that surround us.  But really…now how is your soul?

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