Soul’s Food

There is a sort of joke that Evan Garner, the rector here at St. John’s, has been telling since I started working here over three years ago: Jesus gives out horrible farming advice. This seems an especially important point when serving with a congregation full of agricultural wizards. Case in point, this Sunday’s Gospel lesson in which Jesus denies a farmer with a great yield the opportunity to store more of his grains by building bigger barns. However, what Jesus lacks in real world farming techniques he makes up for in wise ways of living into the Kingdom of God.

In the Parable of the Rich Fool, a man whose land produced abundantly, contemplates ripping down his old silos to manufacture greater ones. The dilemma for Jesus does not consist in this potentially wise investment, but rather in the reasoning behind it. As the man weighs his options he says to his soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” We might be quick to latch onto this as a critique of the good life, and soon outlaw anything that involves relaxing, eating, drinking, or being merry; however, the Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina group that meets here at St. John’s on Thursday mornings found more troubling the man’s belief that he could feed his own soul.

Soul food often refers to a type of delicious home cooked cuisine that is sometimes tied to the South. This food and the fellowship that can surround any instance of preparing and sharing a meal together does in fact feed one’s soul; however, the rich fool goes a step further believing that he could in some way provide sustenance for his own spirit for many years without relying upon his servants, his community, and most notably God. This is the default sin that lies within each and every one of us: I can do this on my own!

Regardless of who we are, from where we come, or what we do we all struggle with the temptation to put ourselves ahead of God and others—to put ourselves in the place of God. We may not do this by telling ourselves we have nothing to worry about for years, but some kind of greed awaits each one of us. The silos that this rich fool could build would dangerously silo him off from the rest of the world. We might instead think, “I do not need someone who would vote for _______. The world would be better off without that person.” We might question, “How can someone support black (or blue) lives matter? The world would be better off without that person.” We could even say, “I do not need to go to church, pray, study Scripture, sit in silence, tithe, or _______, for I already did that last year.” To all of these God says, “You fool! This very [moment] your life is being demanded of you.”

I am certain that we need God and we need each other more than we have in my entire lifetime. The world feels as though it is ripping at the seams. We are at each other’s throats over very important issues. However, the more we silo ourselves off thinking, “Soul, you are set for many years,” the more our souls become malnourished like withering flowers without light or water. For our souls to be fed we must turn away from the notion that we are alright on our own without friend, family, neighbor, and God’s presence in them. We must bust open our barns to share the resources of time, talent, and treasure with one another. We must say to each other, “Will you help to feed my soul, for it is richer living a life with one another than one disconnected?” We need more soul food in our lives, and to enjoy it we must eat with one another.