What does it really mean to have a soul? This sermon explores that question by contrasting the Greek philosophical idea of the soul—a separate, immortal thing trapped inside a decaying body—with the Hebrew concept of nephesh, a word that can mean soul, throat, body, life, or even a whole family. Rather than describing something distinct from the body, nephesh points to the whole of a person: body and spirit unified, not divided. Drawing on Genesis 2 and Matthew 16, along with Descartes, Nietzsche, and Aristotle, the sermon traces how this understanding shows up in Jesus's own teaching and in Paul's writings about resurrection.
The conclusion is that the soul isn't a ghost-like piece of us waiting to be released at death—it's the sacred wholeness of who we are, body and spirit together. That has real consequences for how we live: if God cares about the salvation of the whole person, not just some detachable spiritual part, then faith isn't just about prayer and belief. It's expressed through feeding the hungry, healing bodies, and caring for the vulnerable.
Borrowing from Richard Rohr's phrase that "the soul is God's I Am continued in me," the sermon ends on the idea that the soul is God's love continued in us—breathed into us at creation and meant to be lived out, not just held onto, as that love moves through us into the world.
