The last Supper by Sieger Köder
– an excerpt from Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore, p.253-54…
Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain atteached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning. It isn’t a defensive and anxious holding onto certain objects of belief, because doubt, as its shadow, can be brought into a faith that is fully mature.
Imagine a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself, that doesn’t need to be proved or demonstrated, that is able to contain uncertainty. People sometimes put their trust in a spiritual leader and are terribly betrayed if that person then fails to live up to ideals. But a real trust of faith would be to decide whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because life and personality are never without shadow. The vulnerability that faith demands could be matched by an equal trust in oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal.
In soul faith there are always at least two figures – the “believer” and the “disbeliever”. Questioning thoughts, drifting away temporarily from commitments, constant change in one’s understanding of on’s faith – to the intellect these may appear to be weaknesses but to the soul they are the necessary and creative shadow which actually strengthens faith by filling it out and ridding it of its perfectionism. Both the angel of belief and the devil of doubt play constructive roles in a full-rounded faith. The third part of the trinity is life in the flesh lived with deep trust.
One of the liturgies that we use at the Seeds table picks up some similar themes so I want to stick it in here so they’re read together –
It would not have been God’s table
On their own, the bread and wine are nothing.
To become a foretaste and a promise
of love made real and a world made whole,
they need a story and a blessing
and a people who believe…
It would not have been God’s table
if they hadn’t all been gathered around it:
the betrayer and the friend
the power-hungry and the justice seeker
the faithful and the fickle.
When Jesus poured the wine, and the bread was broken;
when everyone could eat –
the outcast and the beloved
the arrogant and the gracious
the wrong-doer and the wrongly done by –
the table became a foretaste
of love made real
and of a world made whole.
Your company at the table, [guest],
will include the betrayer and the beloved
the wrong-doer and the wrongly done by.
It would not be God’s table without them.
And the promise is
that when you are together,
when you tell the story and give the blessing
when you break the bread and pour the wine
you will discover a foretaste
of love made real
and of a world made whole.
By Cheryl Lawrie, Uniting Church Australia
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