Where Is Your Soul?

Good morning. I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome to the very first week of something Eric and I are calling The Comfortable Words — our weekly space to slow down for about fifteen minutes and allow the words and way of Jesus to comfort us, strengthen us, and reorient us to the care and keeping of Christ.

More about the phrase “The Comfortable Words” in just a moment.

First, let’s begin this morning by slowing down and doing a “location exercise.” And by that, I simply mean that we would all take a deep breath, and slow down your breathing.

Allow yourself to get quiet for the next few minutes. Put your phone or smart watch in another room. Find a comfy space. Invite your kids — if you have them — to practice the “slow as a snail” game, where they move as slow as a snail.

Set aside all that is stirring in your heart and buzzing in your brain, and draw an imaginary circle around your attention. You can always step back outside into the fray when we finish up.

A location exercise has to do with becoming aware of the spiritual geography that you’re surrounded by. Not this year, or this month. But today. Right now: where are you, emotionally, or relationally, or physically, or spiritually?

Sometimes the answer to where are we? is very simple. Perhaps you are driving in your car. You might be chopping vegetables for dinner, or maybe you’re feeling lonely listening to music, or you’re exhausted from work. Maybe you’re taking a walk or a jog, or standing in line at the BMV.

Those are straightforward answers to the question “where are you?”

But I’m asking another kind of where are you question. One that goes deeper, and that sounds a little bit more like: where’s your soul?

What does your spiritual geography look like at the moment?

If you were to look out, and describe the spiritual landscape that you see: what comes to mind?

Scripture gives us all sorts of different examples of spiritual landscapes.

Perhaps you slow down and have an experience of being in green pastures.

You feel calmed and quiet, like a weaned child.

Or maybe you feel like Elijah in the cave — hiding out from calamity, praying for escape, and desperate for the low whisper of God’s voice.

Sometimes our spiritual location actually feels mostly void, because we’re so out of touch with ourselves we can’t hardly imagine where we are.

One of my favorite ways to get familiar with my own spiritual location is through the Dr. Seuss book My Many Colored Days. It begins:

Some days are yellow. Some are blue. On different days I’m different too.

From My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss. Julia reads the poem in full in the audio version above. It is a small, beautiful book, and worth having on your shelf.

The poem moves through the colors — red days, brown days, gray days, purple days, black days — and lands, finally, on a mixed-up day, when you don’t know who or what you are, and it all turns out all right, and you go back to being you.

When we read the scripture, or the history of the church and the early Christians, what we find is that it has always been the case that followers of Jesus have found themselves in different spiritual geography. They have always had “many colored days.”

Sometimes it’s the desert. Sometimes it’s the mountain top.

Other days they’re lamenting at the feet of the crucified Christ, tears in their eyes, and confusion in their minds.

Sometimes they’re walking a dusty road called Emmaus, walking disappointed, with faces downcast.

Or sometimes the spiritual location of people in scripture is more like that of the children in the New Testament who found their way close to Jesus — sitting right up close to Jesus, and being embraced and blessed.

Sometimes our spiritual location spills out of the upper room into the streets, and our geography is filled with Pentecost fire and wind, only to be followed by a geography of persecution, or pain.

So just for a moment, if you’re able to, quiet yourself a little bit and get curious about your own spiritual location right now.

How would you describe where you are today?

What do you see? If you were to paint a painting of your spiritual geography, what would it look like?

What do you feel? What does it feel like to be where you are?

Hold that for a moment. We’ll come back to it.

---

Now I’d like to share about the phrase “The Comfortable Words,” for those of you not familiar.

We’ve been attending an Anglican worship service lately, which is quite different from where I’ve been the past decade, and in a very beautiful way. One of the things that I’ve loved there is a very brief and particular part of the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, when the priest reads what are called the comfortable words.

You may be familiar with the Book of Common Prayer. It’s called that because it was put together to make what had previously been an uncommon, unfamiliar Latin mass more accessible as part of the Reformation. The first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury was named Thomas Cranmer. Among other things, Cranmer put together a liturgy that would make sense to ordinary people, and he wrote it in ordinary language in order for it to be accessible to everyone. You may not know the name Thomas Cranmer, but you’ve likely heard phrases or prayers written by him.

Not only did Cranmer write this prayer book to be accessible in a common language, he also wrote it with a very pastoral purpose in mind: he compiled a liturgy that would bring comfort to those who found themselves afflicted — whether by their own sin, by the sins committed against them, or the simple and inescapable impacts of sin on our world.

So Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer, and into it he built a section of a liturgy called, literally, the comfortable words. These are a set of four scriptures, and they come after the common confession of sin and the priest’s words of absolution.

Cranmer’s word “comfortable” didn’t mean cozy or comfy. It comes from the Latin verb confortare, meaning “with strength” or “with fortitude.”

And I think his idea generally was this. In very uncomfortable moments — moments where we confess our sin, or we look at the sin around us, or perhaps we just feel stuck in the brokenness of this world, or where sometimes we even may worry whether God’s forgiveness could cover over us, which was a primary anxiety in the time around the Reformation — in moments where we howl and growl at every cloud, or feel slow, and low, low down, or when our spiritual geography feels void or deserted, or our faces are downcast:

We are met with the words of Jesus, which are able to bring comfort to us. They strengthen us. They give us fortitude to carry on.

We need the comfortable words of Christ because we live in very uncomfortable times.

And most things are able to comfort us for a short time at best. Some comforts have a longer half-life than others, but all of them run out eventually. Perhaps you’ve experienced the running out of an earthly comfort.

Christ alone is able to comfort us, and accompany us in our discomfort, in a way that is existentially true and meaningful.

The words of Christ give strength and fortitude not because they are sweet, or sentimental, or encouraging. They give comfort because they are true. Because He is true. He is the truest true that there is.

Each Sunday we’ll take a look at the comfortable words — for the purposes of this reflection, that means words spoken by Christ or about Him — and we’ll invite Him back, over and over again, to help us become aware of His presence with us.

He has not gone anywhere. He is, as the poet says, closer than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

But so often we start moving so fast that we lose sight of Him.

---

Here is how Thomas Cranmer wrote the liturgy in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him.

Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.

So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Hear also what Saint Paul saith:

This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Hear also what Saint John saith:

If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.

---

Let’s go back to the beginning as we end.

Where is your soul? How is your soul? What does your spiritual location look and feel like right now?

What is causing you to feel heavy laden?

What do you see, or feel, or experience, that is beyond your strength or capacity?

Where have other comforts run out? Have you been disappointed by anyone’s inability to comfort you lately?

Now hear the comfortable words of Christ himself:

Come unto me all who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.

Preachers often preach this text as having two sorts of discomforts: those we put on ourselves, and those others put on us.

What are you holding onto right now that is too heavy for you alone?

What has been put on you — a word of judgement, slander, or accusation — that is weighing you down?

Can you imagine yourself holding that heaviness in your hands? Can you imagine how tired your arms are from the carrying?

Now look up, and find Christ as he is with you. For he is always with you.

I’ll lead us in a prayer of exchange as we come to a close.

If you are comfortable, open your hands up before the Lord.

Extend all that you carry towards him — that which you have put on yourself, and that which others have forced on you. Take it off, and hold it out to Jesus.

Now attend to how tenderly he either takes it from you, or perhaps how he comes close and stands up under the weight of it with you.

Look at him, and tell him how you feel.

Look at him, and ask for His refreshing spirit.

If you are comfortable, place a hand over your heart, or make the sign of the cross, as I pray:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we ask your blessing upon us. Defend us from all evil, comfort us in our afflictions, and guide our feet into the way of peace. Fill us with your Holy Spirit, that we may walk before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.