Soul Knowledge
Rev. Jon Greene, Deacon
Grace Episcopal Church
February 2, 2020
The Feast of The Presentation of Our Lord
Malachi 3:1-4
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40
Psalm 84
May change bring hope, may hope bring love, may love bring change. Amen.
It was February of 2014, and I was scheduled to go on a weekend retreat for youth ministers.
But things were crazy at Tech kicking off a big project.
I was working 80+ hours a week; I couldn’t sleep, and I was distracted, grumpy and tired all the time.
So, I told my wife, Elise, that I wasn’t going to go on the retreat. I was going to hang around the house, knock out some chores and see if I couldn’t get my email under control.
She told me quite calmly that if I didn’t go on the retreat, there were several potential outcomes.
· I would work myself until I got sick,
· She would divorce me,
· She would murder me in my sleep, or
· Some combination of the three.
So I changed my mind and decided to go on the retreat.
And I’m so glad I did, it was an amazing weekend highlighted by a wonderful guest speaker that spent the entire day with us on Saturday.
It was the Bishop of North Carolina at the time…a guy by the name of Michael Curry, now our presiding bishop.
I knew something about Michael Curry after that day.
Of course, my head knew that he was smart and funny and an amazing teacher and preacher.
But my soul knew something else.
I knew that I was in the presence of someone holy…the real deal.
It wasn’t so much what he said or did, but his presence radiated something…the Holy Spirit.
He was filled with it…and I knew it.
I’ve had that feeling at other times, but never like I did when I first met Michael Curry.
I can only imagine how Simeon and Anna felt that day when they saw the Christ child in the temple.
Two country bumpkins show up in Jerusalem for the ritual presentation of their first borne son as an offering to God.
This ritual was practiced hundreds of times a year in the temple.
Mary and Joseph looked no different than hundreds of other poor, bedraggled, sleep deprived parents, bringing their newborn boy in for presentation.
Simeon probably paid no notice to them.
But there was something about that little baby boy.
He had brown skin, black hair and brown eyes just like all the other baby boys in Jerusalem.
But he was…different somehow.
He looked, sounded and smelled like every other newborn child.
There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of other folks in the temple who didn’t seem to notice anything about him.
It even seems even Mary and Joseph didn’t get it.
We are told they were amazed at what was being said about their baby boy.
I have to wonder why. Before Jesus was born, Luke tells us that the angel Gabriel visited Mary and said:
you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[1]
Then Mary visits her cousin, Elizabeth, who says to her:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?[2]
Then Mary breaks into the Magnificat.
So, Mary knew.
Yet, somehow…she forgot.
Simeon and Anna knew, but everyone else in the Temple, including Mary and Joseph were oblivious.
How did this happen? How could some know and some just miss the Christ in front of them?
That leads me to a question that cuts to my very heart.
I may have seen the Christ in Michael Curry, but when Christ appears to me, as a child, as one of you, as a student at Tech, as a police officer stopping me for speeding, or as a homeless man in Richmond asking me for change…
Do I recognize the Christ in them?
Do I know?
Do you?
Richard Rohr is an amazing theologian and mystic that you have heard both Kathy and I mention.[3]
Father Richard, suggests that there are two kinds of knowing.
The first, is what we are most comfortable with, it is that knowing that comes from our heads.
It is sometimes fact-based, sometimes not.
It is a useful, essential in fact, kind of knowing but it is limited and fallible.
The second kind of knowing that Father Richard posits, is more difficult, for me at least.
He refers to it as soul knowing.
It is the knowing that comes from encounter with the Divine.
Those encounters could be
· in a beautiful piece of music that Mason plays.
· In the Eucharist or another moment in our communal worship,
· In a gorgeous New River Valley sunrise,
· In holding a newborn baby,
· Or in prayer.
If we really want to recognize the Christ when they show up, we need this soul knowing, like Anna and Simeon had.
But how do we get it?
Perhaps we need to follow Anna and Simeon’s example.
Simeon was “righteous and devout”[4]
And Anna “never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.”[5]
Now, I’m not going to suggest we set up cots in the parish hall.
But I am going to look at my own life of devotion and prayer
And I urge you to do so as well.
How might this play out? Let me give you two ideas.
You all know that I’ve been spending less time here at Grace.
For the next couple of months I’ll be here about twice a month and then at Pearisburg and Pulaski the other two Sundays.
This is a real challenge for me. How am I supposed to do anything as a deacon?
I mean seriously, how do I conduct a ministry when I’m only seeing folks once or twice a month?
I shared this challenge with my spiritual advisor last week.
She observed that maybe my approach was wrong.
I was seeking to solve this challenge but putting things on my to-do list and then checking them off.
I was in my head.
Maybe I needed to focus on my heart…on soul knowledge.
Maybe I need to go deeper.
She suggested I start praying to God to teach me to be a Deacon of the Church in the New River Valley.
To listen for the answer.
To know (soul know).
And then act on that soul knowledge and seek to be the Deacon that God is calling me to be.
Pray, Listen, Know and then Act.
If I’m honest, my track record is that I act first, then pray that I haven’t messed anything up…there’s just no time to listen much less know.
But I’m recognizing that I need to Pray, Listen, Know and then Act.
I’m working on this approach, and I wonder if it doesn’t apply to Grace as well.
While I haven’t been here for a while, know that I try to keep up with what’s going on and that Grace Radford is constantly in my prayers.
I know we are facing serious budget challenges.
I have been there before (personally, professionally and at church), and I know that, in the past, when the budget crunch came, I would stare at the spreadsheet in front of me for hours on end.
Thinking of how I might cut expenses here or add a little revenue there.
That’s our natural tendency, isn’t it?
We think about how to add a few pledging units or save a few dollars on maintenance of the building.
We try to think our way out of problems.
Maybe the answer isn’t in the spreadsheet. Maybe it’s not in our heads.
Maybe we need to go deeper.
Maybe we need some soul knowledge.
Maybe we should be praying to God to teach us to be God’s Church in Radford.
Then maybe we should listen.
Know (soul know)
And then act, work to be that Church.
Certainly, we can’t just toss out our to do lists and spreadsheets.
They are necessary, but sometimes they just aren’t sufficient.
Sometimes we need to go deeper.
Sometimes we need to seek that soul knowledge.
The good news is that you have a group that is doing exactly that.
The Way of Love guiding group, led by Ann Walker, is seeking to Know, Soul-Know, what we are called to be.
Support them, pray for them, join them in their effort.
As they follow the example of Simeon and Anna.
To Pray. To Listen. To Know.
And then to act.
Amen!
[1] Luke 1:31-33
[2] Luke 1:42-45
[3] I highly recommend exploring Father Richard’s teaching. One of this books, for example, The Universal Christ or the website for the Center for Action and Contemplation https://cac.org/ are great places to start.
[4] Luke 2:25
[5] Luke 2:37