How many of you know the name Horatio Gates Spafford? Spafford was born in 1828 in New York. Spafford moved to Chicago in 1856 and worked as a lawyer. He invested in numerous properties in the city that made him a fairly rich man. In 1861, he married Anna Lawson and they had five children: four girls and a boy. In 1870, tragedy struck their family when their son, Horatio Jr. died from scarlet fever. And a year later, in 1971, much of the city, including many of Spafford’s properties were destroyed in the great Chicago fire. As if that weren’t enough tragedy, in 1873, the Spaffords made plans for a vacation in England. Some business delayed Horatio, but Anna and the girls embarked on a ship across the Atlantic. On their trip, the steamship they were on was struck by another vessel and sunk. Anna alone survived. She famously sent her husband a telegram when she arrived in Wales that read, “Saved alone.” 

Horatio got on the next boat to England and, it is speculated that, shortly after passing the very spot where his daughters perished, he penned the great hymn, “It is Well with My Soul.” You can hear his pain behind the lyrics of the hymn. The first verse says, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrow like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’” These powerful lyrics speak to Spafford’s pain alongside the incredible peace of God that dwells with us.

When Jesus replies to the scribe asking him what the greatest commandment in the law is, Jesus responds, quoting the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, telling them to love God and love their neighbor. And part of that command to love God tells us that we are to love God with our souls. There is that word that Horatio Spafford also used: soul. Both of the passages we read this morning also talk about the soul, though neither are translated that way in the NRSV. In Matthew 16, it says, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The word translated here as life is the same as the word translated as soul in Jesus’ statement, “Love the Lord your God with…all your soul.” In Psalm 139, the line translated as, “Wonderful are your works; that I know very well,” directly translates, in the Greek Septuagint and the original Hebrew, as, “Wonderful are your works that my soul knows very well.”

This word, soul, is psuche in Greek, the word from which we get our words psyche and psychology and psychic. When you think about those words and how we use them today, what might you think psuche would mean? Let’s consider this for a moment. Psychology is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the scientific study of the way the human mind works and how it influences behaviour.” And someone who is psychic, the Cambridge Dictionary says, is someone having a special mental ability, for example so that you are able to know what will happen in the future or know what people are thinking.” The way we use psuche in its anglicized form would make you think it relates more to the mind than the soul. But psuche is more than the mind or the soul. Our psuche is really the thing within us that makes us us. It is what makes us who we are. It encompasses our thoughts, our desires, our emotions, our unique personality traits. Without our psuche, our bodies may still be alive, but we would cease to be us.

Matthew tells us that those who wish to save their psuche will lose it. But those who lose their psuche for the sake of Jesus will find it. What does it mean to lose our psuche for the sake of Jesus? Perhaps to understand that, we need to look at the other option presented by Jesus. What does it mean that those who wish to save their psuche will lose it? If our psuche is the thing that makes us who we are, then what might it mean for us to wish to save that part of us? I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in May of 1999, but I had no plans for what to do after that. I spent the following summer on the maintenance crew at my college while I contemplated my next steps. At the end of the summer, I was no closer to figuring it out. All I could think about was how much I loved college and how I didn’t really want to leave all of that behind. In truth, I liked who I was when I was in college and I didn’t want to leave that. I wanted to save that part of me. I was so intent on saving it that I re-enrolled for another semester. I convinced myself that I was doing it to finish my computer science degree that I was only four classes from finishing, but really I just wanted to hold onto college Jeff. So I took out a significant amount of student loans, got assigned to a dorm room with three freshman, and reveled in the salvation of college Jeff. But I quickly learned that in seeking to save that part of me, I had actually lost who I was.

“Those who want to save their life [their psuche] will lose it.” In seeking to save college Jeff, I lost who I truly was. So then the other option Jesus offers is to lose one’s life for Jesus’ sake and thus find it. If we hold on tightly to who we are, we will cease to truly be who we are. But if we lose ourselves in Jesus, if we allow our psyches to be captured up into the psuche of the divine, then we will discover ourselves in a deeper way. Horatio Spafford suffered immense pain, yet the words he penned speak of a releasing of himself to the power and peace of God. “Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, ‘Even so, it is well with my soul.’” Spafford could have fallen into deep sorrow over what he’d lost, he could have pined for the Horatio that he was before these tragedies struck. I certainly would not blame him for wanting to do that. But instead, he lifted all of that pain up to God and allowed the peace of God to swallow up all of his psuche.

I think the question I am left with at this point is, “How do we lose our lives, our psyches, for the sake of Jesus?” If we take the NRSV translation at face value and see the charge to lose our lives, we might think that martyrdom is necessary or at least desired. But if we look at that meaning of psuche as being about all of who we are, then losing that for the sake of Jesus would look more like Jesus’ call to love God with our psuches. And I think we do that by being the best version of ourselves that we can be, by living as God created us to live. I will never forget something the professor for our Old Testament class at seminary said. I think we were talking about everything that has life and breath praising the Lord or a similar passage from the Old Testament. And the teacher said, “I believe that my dog praises God simply by being a dog.”

We, too, praise God by being who we were created to be. And according to Jesus, the thing we were created to be the most is people who love God with their hearts, their minds, their psuches, and their strength and who love their neighbors as themselves. In doing that, we will not only find ourselves, but we may help others find themselves. The author of Psalm 139 writes, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” When we’ve managed to lose our way, due to the tragedies of life or due to the poor choices we make or due to a buildup of trauma from a life lived amidst people who inflict pain on others, we can find ourselves again in the embrace of God. The Psalmist adds, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works…” that my soul, my psuche, my nephesh, my truest self knows so well. We love God with our psuches because God created us for goodness and made us who we are. We love God with our psuches because that is where we find peace and love for ourselves. We love God with our psuches because God knows us better than we know ourselves and in God we find our truest selves.

So let us dwell with our psuches for a while. And let us lift them up to the Lord. And in doing so, may we find that peace of God that surpasses understanding. May we find our truest selves and find the courage to live as we were created to live. May we love God with all that we are, knowing that God loves us in return. And may we share love with our neighbors in such a way that they are able to find their true psuches as well. And may we find that it is well with our souls. Amen!