Wearing Your Soul on the Outside

Susan Boyle’s “fifteen minutes of fame” has arrived and so far, she’s seems to be taking it in stride. Boyle is the woman who stunned audiences worldwide (thanks to You-Tube and the Internet) when she melted hearts with her moving rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” (from the Broadway musical Les Misérables) on the British version of American Idol called Britain’s Got Talent. Not what we’ve come to expect from these “idol-maker” shows (which really function more as a barometer of our culture’s vapidity and bankruptcy than anything else), Boyle is a rather frumpy, plain-looking, unassuming 40-something who calmly proceeded to waste the audience (including the ruthless Simon Cowell) with her jaw-dropping voice and poignant passion with which she interpreted a lyric seemingly written with her in mind.

Watching her, it reminded me of something C. S. Lewis said. Somewhere in his writings (Letters to Malcolm, I think it was), Lewis observes that one of the chief differences between this life and the next is that in the former we wear most of our souls on the inside, but in the latter most of our souls we will wear on the outside. "At present," he says, "we tend to think of the soul as somehow 'inside' the body. But the glorified body of the resurrection as I conceive it – the sensuous life raised from its death – will be inside the soul. As God is not in space but space is in God….”

What he meant by that, among other things, is that here and now, depending as we do on empirical data with which to draw our conclusions and to make our decisions, we tend to be shallow and superficial in our judgments. Beauty is, as they say, “skin deep.” And yet we’ve all known those persons who were beautiful on the outside and hideous on the inside. I am reminded of the story that the Broadway diva, Elaine Stritch, tells. She was in a hotel in a city where her company was performing, and the maid came in to tidy up the room while she was getting ready to go out on the town for dinner. Sitting in front of the dressing table finishing her hair, she looked the picture of beauty. The maid, watching her, commented: “You certainly do have it all on the outside.” Stritch, taken aback by that word "outside," replied: “I’ve got it on the inside too.” To which the plucky maid, not to be outdone, said: “Yeah, but I bet it took ya longer.” Indeed.

In another place, Lewis suggests a haunting image for the business we call “life” and the values which guide us through it. He says that most of the things we take the most pride in are not really due to our effort of merit at all – our appearance, our talents, our “personality,” etc. Rather, he suggests, these kinds of “externalities” are merely due to our digestion. “Some people have good digestion; some don’t,” he quips. In any case, those are not the things that God is interested in. Rather, He’s more interested in what we’re becoming on the inside, what Lewis calls our “central selves.” He means by that the part of me that decides and chooses. The part of me that most people see, my “outside,” is not really the part of me that God is interested in because it’s so fleeting, transient, ephemeral. Rather, it’s the inside, the “me” I’m becoming as a result of the choices I make and decisions I make that most interests God. “Every time you make a choice,” Lewis says, “you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.”

I often describe that to audiences as a sculpting process. Think of yourself as a large, amorphous lump of shapeless clay. Every time you make a decision or a choice, it is as though you’ve taken a sculpting tool and made a tiny indention in the clay. Now, think of the thousands, millions of little decisions and choices you’ve made over your lifetime – to tell a lie; to do something cruel; to commit a random act of kindness simply because you could; to do the right thing when it was easier and safer to do the wrong thing – and with each decision your “shapeless clay” is starting to take shape. Indeed, over a lifetime, that formless, shapeless clay is becoming something – either a beautiful creature fit for heaven to be enjoyed forever, or a horrible, hideous monster to be endured forever. And notice, on the outside, you still look the same…for now. Someday, as we all know, that “outside” will fall off, fall away, and then, the souls we’ve been wearing on the inside, we’ll have to wear on the outside. With typical British understatement, Lewis quips: “There will be surprises.”

I don’t know Susan Boyle, and it’s not up to me to judge the quality of her soul in any case. But listening to that voice, I can’t help but wonder what she’ll look like when she’s wearing her soul on the outside.

The End That Isn't

Some years ago I was pastoring my first church in southern Indiana. In that church was a couple, Homer and Aileen, who in many ways served as surrogate parents for Cheryl and me. We were young, inexperienced, and a long way from home, and Homer and Aileen took us in almost literally as if we were their own children. When we got sick, Aileen fixed soup and brought it over to us. When my old car finally gave out, it was Homer who went with me to pick out a new one. When we moved into the parsonage of the First Baptist Church of Austin, Indiana, we moved from a small apartment in the seminary complex known as Seminary Village. When we moved our stuff into the large, brick ranch style pastorium it swallowed our meager belongings like hors d’oeuvres and cavernously gaped for more. Homer went with us to the furniture store and personally signed a note for us to buy furniture for the house. When Cheryl became pregnant with Justin, Homer and Aileen joked to everyone in the church that they were going to be grandparents. I didn’t laugh.

But on a cold, gray November morning in a coffee shop at Baptist Hospital in Louisville all our lives changed forever. For weeks Homer had been complaining about stomach pain, thought it was an ulcer. He’d been a decorated war hero in World War 2, spent 14 months in a Nazi prison, and the poor food rations and horrible physical punishment he’d suffered had taken its inevitable toll on him. Off and on through the years he’d had recurring complications from his imprisonment, and so none of us was much surprised when the doctor told us he’d have to have surgery for an ulcerated stomach.

But when the doctor approached us in the surgical waiting room, I could tell from his expression that it wasn’t an ulcer. I don’t know that any of us heard much after the “c-word.” Aileen managed a question: “How bad is it?”
“It’s bad I’m afraid, real bad.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” she asked.
He said: “Very little, I’m afraid.”
Then she said: “Thank you, doctor, I know you did your best.”

We’d been sitting in the coffee shop trying to make sense of the strange, numbing words we’d just heard. I was her pastor; I was supposed to say something pious and faithful, but I didn’t feel very pious right then, and I needed some faith too!

Then Aileen reached across the table, as if she sensed my faith faltering, and looked at me and spoke the most courageous words I think I’ve ever heard. “Wayne,” she said, “we’ll draw no conclusions about this ‘til God is finished with it.”

Though I don’t know for sure, I think Mark would have understood that. That’s the way he ends his Gospel (Mark 16:8) - the end that isn’t. I first noticed it way back in the late 70’s when I was writing my doctoral dissertation titled “Fear in the Gospel of Mark.” Mark concludes his Gospel at the Empty Tomb not with a resurrection appearance as the other Gospels do, or with jubilant joy or even profound faith – “My Lord and my God!” No. He ends his Gospel with failure and fear – “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” It’s the ending that isn’t.

And the question is, “Why?” Why does Mark end his Gospel this way? Scholars have tried to answer that for years. “Maybe the original ending was lost,” they said. “Maybe something happened to him before he could finish it,” they said. Or perhaps, as I argue in my dissertation, he ended it exactly as he intended, with a non-ending. Maybe it was Mark’s way of saying that the Story that is Gospel is never really “over,” that we too are “characters” in God’s Great Story with a scene to play and lines to read. Maybe it’s Mark’s way of reminding us that with this God, “it ain’t over ‘til God says it’s over.”

I know that for most of us, much of the time, life looks like an endless parade of endings – the pink slip, the ominous diagnosis, the cavernous cemetery crypt. But Mark reminds us Who we’re dealing with…that with this God it ain’t over ‘til He says so. And even then…. We Christians have a word for that – Easter.

We buried Homer on Easter Sunday that year. I took Mark 16:1-8 as my text and Aileen’s words as my theme…and my hope: “I’ll draw no conclusions about this ‘til God is finished with it.” And with this God, Who has a habit of bringing dead things to life again, who can say when it’s really over?

And so, an Easter word for you. Don’t leave the game early, not with a God in the game for Whom “come backs” and “bring backs” are His specialty.

Happy Easter.

Holy Hands

I’ve always believed that ministers were held to a higher ethical standard than others, even other Christians. Part of my stubborn belief in biblical authority, I suppose. It was James who said: “Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers, knowing that you will receive a greater judgment” (my translation). I figure I’ve done enough to tick off the Almighty; I don’t want to exacerbate my situation on Judgment Day with ministerial misconduct.

Mostly, it’s because I had holy hands laid on me on a Sunday night long ago (1972) in a little church in South Florida. They filed by, put their hands on my shoulders, and whispered words in my ear that haunt me and harass me and help me remember both who and Whose I am. In the Catholic Church, candidates for both the diaconate and priesthood prostrate themselves (lie face down before the altar) at ordination during the litany of the saints. It has primary meanings of total submission to God, unworthiness for the office, and utter dependence on God to keep one's vows inviolate. Baptists think prostration is something you have removed when it gets diseased. Too bad. We could probably learn a lot both about the ministry and ourselves with our mugs in the muck.

I’m not saying I’m perfect, mind you. I’m not. Ask Cheryl. She’ll say: “How much time you got?” I am saying that I’ve always tried to conduct myself with integrity so as not to bring dishonor to my vocation and shame to my colleagues. As a result, I’ve made some decisions through the years that were not politically correct or professionally expedient but which were necessitated by integrity, if you still believe in that kind of thing. I do. I told the truth once when everybody else around me at an institution where I worked was either lying or ducking for cover; and when it became clear that self-interest trumped integrity, I resigned and left. I’ve never regretted that decision, but I have to confess to a profound disappointment in the fact that many of those ducking and lying had had, like me, holy hands laid on them at some point in their lives.

I know it sounds so “last year” actually to believe that ordination means something; that when we take vows and make promises we are expected to keep them. I know in this day of “convenient truths” and “relative ethics,” even for ministers, the notion of being called and “set apart” to a life “worthy of the calling with which you were called” seems passé and arcane. But then I remember the holy hands, and I cannot put on and take off my integrity like a winter jacket on a summer day just because somebody turned the page on the calendar.

That’s why, I guess, I’m still surprised (I hope I always will be) when a student studying for ministry cheats or lies or sacrifices their integrity on the altar of a passing grade. I still recall the student who telephoned me one day to tell me that he would have to miss my midterm due to his grandmother’s sudden, life-threatening illness. He hoped, he went on to say, that, given the extenuating circumstances, he wouldn’t be penalized. I assured him that he wouldn’t. A week or so later, I passed him in the hall and asked, “How’s your grandmother?” He looked confused. I said: “She was sick; near death I recall.” He flushed and managed an embarrassed: “Uh…she’s better now. Thanks for asking.” As I walked away reflecting on the exchange, I was more disappointed…hurt really…than angry, and I couldn’t help thinking: “I wonder if the people at the church where he’s pastor, who laid holy hands on him, knew he was capable of this?”

More than anything else, that’s what keeps my darker side in check and my integrity intact. I can’t escape them. I don't remember their names anymore; I can't see their faces any longer; but I still feel the weight of their hands on my shoulders. Dear God I pray I always do.