Awake My Soul Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 15 July 2018

The scripture/song mashup continues this week, and we start with a reading from the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew (6:1-6, 16-21). The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of somewhat unconnected bits of teaching that Jesus shares with his disciples early in his ministry. It is part of shaping and forming who and how they are to be in the world. Listen for a word from God.

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That scripture reading usually gets read on Ash Wednesday every year. I think the idea is to make us think not so much about what we will do to mark the Lenten season but about how we will be as we mark it. When Jesus speaks about giving alms, and praying, and fasting, he doesn’t say, “You ought to give alms. You ought to pray. You ought to fast.” He says, “Whenever you give alms,” and “Whenever you pray,” and “Whenever you fast...” He assumes those are things folks are going to do. What he’s concerned with is how they do it, basically saying that if you do it to be seen and noticed then you’re not doing it so much for the right reasons. The shape and form of what you do matters.

His next teaching ends with, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And while I definitely think Jesus is talking about storing up actual treasures - giving a warning against the accumulation of stuff and money that we can so easily fall prey to - as I read it this week alongside the part about the alms and the praying and the fasting it made me wonder a little differently. I began to think of the intangible treasures we can seek and set our hearts on - the “earthly kudos” we can get for doing good things or being good people. How do beware of being virtuous for the sake of social reward? How do we take care that when we go to the rally, share the petition, give the money, or publicize our opinion that we are doing it for the right reasons and not for the public praise or the photo-op? How do we do it with a desire to serve God and care for God’s people with love and not just to spite others, to get in with a certain crowd, or to make ourselves feel better?

Our song this week is one we have sung in church a number of times before - “Awake My Soul” by Mumford and Sons. As you hear it, listen for an echo of that last line of our scripture today about our treasure and our hearts.

[Song1]

Did you hear it, the echo? “Where you invest your love, you invest your life.” “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The band’s lead man, Marcus Mumford, is a preacher’s kid,2 and his songs seem profoundly influenced by Christianity though he’s moved away from the church and wouldn’t call himself a Christian anymore. In an interview in Rolling Stone Magazine Marcus said, “I don’t really

1 Song with lyrics can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBaauZ0nji0 2 Mumford is the son of the founders of the Vineyard Church in the . like that word [Christian]...I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don’t really like. I have my personal views about the person of Jesus and who he was. Like, you ask a Muslim and they’ll say, ‘Jesus was awesome’ – they’re not Christians, but they still love Jesus. I’ve kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity.”3

Oooooh, and I hear that. I can understand the desire for separation and the hesitancy. Christianity and religion and church structures can be frustrating. Jesus told people how to do things (like with giving alms, prayer, and fasting), but somehow when the church has done that, it hasn’t always been quite so helpful as Jesus was. It has often caused a lot of pain and harm. Christians and “the church” can be fickle of heart and woozy of eyes - shaping and forming folks in ways that can cause them to stumble - and yet I find that I can’t quite quit this way of seeking God. I don’t think church and Christianity are better than everything else, but I have found them helpful. I have found them hope-full, grounding, and I am grateful for the ways they have pushed me to keep my soul awake.

Because it would be a lot easier to let your soul sleep a while, you know?

If our souls were asleep, then we wouldn’t have to pay attention to the troubles of the world. If our souls were asleep, we wouldn’t have to pay attention to the troubles of our own lives. And there are a lot of days that feels particularly attractive. So we look for ways to quiet our souls, to put them to sleep instead of waking them up.

In her book Carry On Warrior, Glennon Melton talks about her history with alcohol and drugs, bulimia and bad love - woozy eyes and fickle hearts, stumbling, stumbling. Because she had, as she puts it, a relatively magical childhood, she also carried around an extra layer of guilt because she felt like she was “all jacked up” and didn’t even have a good excuse for it. Until she determined that she wasn’t actually “all jacked up.” Instead she was born with “an extra dose of sensitivity to love and pain.” She was born with a soul that was so awake it was paying attention to everything, and she didn’t know how to handle that. She “didn’t want to walk through the battlefield of life naked,” so starting at age ten she made, in her words, her own little world called addiction and hid there for decades. Glennon’s awakening came on the bathroom floor on Mother’s Day of 2002 as she held a positive pregnancy test in her hand. For the first time, she said, she wanted more than to be numb.4

Glennon wound up with a following because she went onto the internet and said true things about herself: about her fickle heart, her woozy eyes, the times she had done things for show or put her treasure in the wrong places. She didn’t really mean to do it at first; it was kind of an accident. One day, in 2008, while her son was down for a nap, she saw a “25 things about me” list on Facebook, and without really reading anyone else’s list she wrote her own and posted it. Then she read her friends’ lists.

Here was Glennon’s #5: I am a recovering alcoholic and bulimic. 7 years sober…so in many ways I’m actually 7 years old. Sometimes I miss excess booze and food, in the same indescribable way you can miss someone who abused you and repeatedly left you for dead.

3 From an article by Brian Hiatt in Rolling Stone Magazine entitled “Mumford and Sons: Rattle and Strum,” published on March 28, 2013 and accessed on July 11, 2018. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mumford- sons-rattle-and-strum-78883/#ixzz3XWyfvpax 4 You can read more about Glennon and her reflections in her book Carry On Warrior:Thoughts on Life Unarmed (Simon and Schuster, 2013) and on her website, Momastery. https://momastery.com/blog/about-glennon/ And here was her best friend’s #5: My favorite game is Bunco!

She basically panicked, turned off the computer, and vowed to never, ever turn it on again for the rest of her entire life. But of course she did turn it on, and what she found was an inbox full of notes from friends and acquaintances who were thanking her for “putting it all out there.”5 It was then that she decided that her shape and form in the world would be more public.

On the surface she flaunted Jesus’ advice to his disciples, offering prayers in the form of blog posts on our internet equivalent of the street corner. She did it expressly to be seen, but she did not do it to get any earthly kudos (she didn’t foresee those). She did it in order to connect with others, to be a teller of her truth, a person who lived with her soul awake, and invited others to do so as well. She did it as a statement of faith - as someone who trusted in the goodness of God and the goodness of her own self as God’s creation. With the confidence that her treasure and her heart were best stored with God, she finally allowed herself to show her weaknesses instead of trying to hide them away.

I don’t think Glennon’s motives were/are always pure. I’m not sure that’s even possible. But the beauty of being grounded in a religious tradition is the chance to use it as a check on the shape and form of what we do - to consider how we are doing what we are doing. In Christianity we can turn to scriptures like the one in Matthew - this week or last week - to check ourselves.

 Whenever we look at our calendars and our bank statements, we can take note of where we are investing our treasured time and money and figure out if that is where we really want to put our hearts.  Whenever we put ourselves “out there” - sharing our opinions on social media or at dinner with friends - we can reflect on whether we are doing it to serve the least of these or to get praise and reward.  Whenever we keep quiet and listen, we can ask ourselves if our silence is meant to make space for others and to learn or just to avoid conflict.

Those are questions we can ask over and over again and which can never be answered completely on our own. In conversation with God and with folks we trust we can allow ourselves to be shaped and formed in ways that don’t seek to get us notice, but do seek God in ways that might be noticeable. By reading scripture, listening prayerfully, joining with others to do a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, we can stir our souls and keep them from sleeping. We can ground ourselves in something bigger than we are so that the shock of being awake doesn’t harm us.

And as we awaken, whenever we feel things deeply and express ourselves truthfully we can do so knowing that we are not perfect - we come from dust and to dust we shall return - but that even when we stumble on things we don’t know, we were made to meet our maker. May we each say, “Awake My Soul!”

5 This recollection comes from a blog post by Glennon that can be found here: https://momastery.com/blog/2014/07/03/throwback-thursday-begin-again/ Awake My Soul Mumford & Sons

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes I struggle to find any truth in your lies And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know My weakness I feel I must finally show

Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall Lend me your eyes I can change what you see But your soul you must keep, totally free Har har, har har, har har, har har

Awake my soul, awake my soul Awake my soul

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes I struggle to find any truth in your lies And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know My weakness I feel I must finally show Har har, har har, har har, har har

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die Where you invest your love, you invest your life In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die And where you invest your love, you invest your life

Awake my soul, awake my soul Awake my soul For you were made to meet your maker Awake my soul, awake my soul Awake my soul For you were made to meet your maker You were made to meet your maker

Songwriters: Benjamin Walter David Lovett / Edward James Milton Dwane / Marcus Oliver Johnstone Mumford / Winston Aubrey Aladar Marshall Awake My Soul lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group