Prelude in Fm J.S. Bach (1685-1750) [PIANO]
This week’s Gospel contains the enigmatic and impossible “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel’s sake will save it.” (Mark 8:35)
Like “Zen masters” everywhere, Jesus is superb at blowing up our thinking with impossible sayings. The proverbial whack with a two-by-four. This is a passage where I think the Greek is especially helpful. At least it has been to me. Mind you, I’m not interested — mostly because I don’t think it’s possible — to reduce a saying like this to One Meaning. But if I can open the aperture of the imagination a little, I think that’s the best that can be hoped for. After all, I don’t think the Spiritual Path is about having the right concepts in your head anyway!
First of all, the word translated here as ‘life’ is PSYCHĒ — yes, the same one that is frequently translated ‘soul’. What could it possibly mean to ‘lose your soul?’
But wait, it gets worse! The Greek word for “save” is more or less like our English word, but “lose” is APOLLUMI: “to destroy, to ruin, lose.” Sure, “lose” works, but it’s more than just casually losing something — “drat, I lost my car keys.” No, it’s much more forceful than that — more like deliberately throwing something away.
So we’re left with something like “whoever throws away his soul for my sake…” What?!?!?
Let’s consider the word ‘soul’, which in English has an enormous set of connotations that only partially overlap with the enormous set of connotations of PSYCHĒ in Ancient Greek. On top of that, the Jews had their own ideas about ‘soul’ (NEPHESH). So it’s not so easy to pin down precisely what Jesus has in mind here.
But as I’ve studied and meditated on the word PSYCHĒ as it’s used in the Bible (the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint — the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek done around 300 BCE), to me there seems to be a common element. Namely, ‘consciousness.’ For example, in these sources, animals have PSYCHĒs but plants do not.
Meanwhile, Paul says “Now the soulish person is not receiving those things which are of the spirit…” (I Cor 2:14). The word ‘soulish’ here is PSYCHIKOS, sometimes translated as ‘the natural person’ or such like, but it’s the adjective form of PSYCHĒ. In other words, methinks that if one is too self-obsessed, then one is being ‘soulish’ in a negative sense. Too much of a good thing, so to speak.
With that in mind, I wonder if Jesus means something like: we have to throw away our self-obsession. That if we ‘soulishly’ cling to our self-importance, we’ll destroy/lose our souls. But if we throw away our self-importance, for Jesus’ and the gospel’s sake, then we’ll be OK.
That certainly aligns with His other teachings.
Just my $0.02!
Last week’s prelude was a wild volcano of a prelude — just the thing for Lent 1. So, to clear the palette, this morning’s piece is quiet, reflective and poignant. The many moods of Lent!