Blithe Spirit (Lent V)

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Blithe Spirit – Lent V

 

Romans 8:6-11

Life in the Spirit 

 

8:6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

 

8:7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law-- indeed, it cannot,

 

8:8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

 

8:9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

 

8:10 But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

 

8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

 

 

I hate to begin a message with a controversy, but here we are. What do we understand about the “Word of God”? Theologically, the Gospel of John says that JESUS is the Word of God, made flesh, and who “tented” among us human beings. Throughout the Bible, the “scriptures” referred to would have been the Torah and the writings of the Jewish faith, as nothing in what we know as the “New Testament” existed. One theological/biblical vein would be that we believers should learn what we could of biblical history and the journey of God’s people Israel through the pages of the Jewish texts (our “Old Testament”) and should take very seriously the testament that tells us of the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus Christ. Those who assembled and accepted the “canon” of the “New Testament” included a number of epistles (letters) of Paul and other early church leaders, as well as the witness of the Gospel writers and the “historical” book known as Acts. They also included a book of apocalyptic writings ascribed to John which we know as Revelation.

 

Another school of thought, and one that is pretty militant about it, is the “evangelical” school, that believes that the “Word of God” is the Bible as written, or at least as it was written down in the “original manuscripts,” none of which we have access to. By accepting “the Bible” as the “Word of God,” which was in some way “inspired” or “God-breathed,” this school believes in taking what it says literally. This concept has even become a kind of “litmus test” as to whether someone is a “true Christian” or now—“Do you believe the Bible is LITERALLY true?” If one is to answer “no” or qualifies their answer in some way, they are often judged to be a “nominal” Christian, or not a Christian at all. So, who is right?

 

As usual, the TRUTH is probably in the middle. It is hard to argue against the Christology that posits Jesus as the “Word made flesh,” and therefore God’s “final answer” to humanity. From my perspective, I DO believe in the “authority” of the written scriptures of the two testaments in our Bible, however, I believe that, while they are “God-breathed”—written by men and possibly women inspired by the Spirit of God—they are not dictum from God, Godself. These words are “filtered” through the human experience and told by people who either lived what they wrote, or were first-century witnesses of some sort, at least as far as the New Testament is concerned. I do not believe—and neither did the early church, or the church, going forward, as Christian history unfolded—that the Bible is the product of a kind of “automatic writing” wherein God “dictated” what God wanted to be written on the page, with little influence of the human writer. “Inspired” or “God-breathed” doesn’t mean DICTATED. It leaves much room for the actual writer’s testimony of what they saw or experienced, and may indeed include both the influence of the cultural history of the time in which they were writing, AND their own interpretation of what they believed. So why do I bring all of this up as we begin to examine this passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome?

 

Well, partly because Paul is a scholar AND an interpreter of scripture—a Pharisee—within his original Jewish tradition. It stands to reason that he would bring this “scholar’s eye” into his leadership and teaching in the life of the early church. Paul would not have taught the Torah as something to be blindly “obeyed,” but instead, God’s guidance for a people God wished to protect and to whom God wished to offer wisdom for how to incorporate their faith in life. Certainly, Paul was not expecting he was crafting “Christian Torah” as he wrote letters of comfort, guidance, and even chastisement, to branches of the early church. He seems free to state his opinions in his writings, even occasionally stating overtly, “I say, not the Lord…”, meaning he didn’t profess to be “speaking God’s word” directly. The problem with the evangelical view is that taking the Bible literally means ignoring both the magic of the wisdom and interpretation of the early church leaders like Paul, AND some of the history of their experience and context, which when included in “the Word,” may distort what we take FROM it. In short, there are things the early church was grappling with in their context that no longer should matter to us today, as our context and state of knowledge is totally different from the first century. Indeed, throughout the ages, Jewish scholars have interpreted, re-interpreted, and then re-RE-interpreted Torah for the people of Israel, as history and life changed, evolved, and as people became more knowledgeable. It is this ability to “re-interpret” that helps the Bible be a “living” book, not a summary of some sort of “golden tablets” God just delivered through writers in some kind of spirited trance. 

 

Today’s passage from Romans 8 is a perfect example of why we need to take a critical and contextual look at what we label “scripture.” Romans 8:6-11 is clearly and heavily influenced by Gnostic thought. The Gnostics were a philosophical “movement” in the early days of Christianity who believed that the “spirit” and the “flesh” of humanity could be and should be separate things. In a condensed and frankly overly-simplified understanding of Gnosticism, the Gnostics promoted building up and encouraging one’s spiritual life, while acknowledging the “lusts” and primitive hungers of “the flesh.” In short, the Gnostics believed one could be “pure in spirit” while indulging the “desires of the flesh,” and that this could be pursued simultaneously! In fact, it is my understanding that some Gnostic sects actually “celebrated” both by incorporating human sexual rituals in their “temple worship.” Gnostic ideas of this “separation” of spirit and flesh crept into the early church, and this passage in Romans shows that some form of it even “leaked” into our scriptures! Thankfully, we don’t see the truly prurient version of Gnosticism in the Bible, but the idea that “spirit” and “flesh” need to be kept separate, with one being the “desirable” one to be lifted up, while the other “denied” is clearly what we see in Romans 8:6-11. In caveman language, spirit GOOD, flesh BAD. But is this really true?

 

The Romans author starts off this pericope by the polemical statement that the “flesh” is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is “life and peace.” That’s blatantly Gnostic, friends. Did Paul get swept up in this? Or are we reading some words penned by an amanuensis recording his own “thoughts” of what he thinks Paul believes? Frankly, it’s hard to believe a Jewish Pharisee like Paul the Apostle would get swept up into Gnosticism, especially given in several other places in his epistles he speaks against it. If it is true that “those in the flesh” cannot please God, then we are all doomed, for I confess to being a creature in the flesh, and like it or not, so are you! Now, I have to ask you: do you think God would have created us as “fleshly” creatures if only the “mind of the Spirit” could please God? Would God have made such a deal out of sending the Son into the world—BORN into the world as a “fleshly” creature—to “tent” among human beings if the ultimate desire of God was that we would somehow be “transformed” totally into “Spirit-minded” beings? Why would God have created us as fleshly, sexual beings with senses like touch and taste, if God wanted only spiritual obedience? None of this makes sense, unless we respectfully “filter” the Gnosticism out of Romans 8:6-11. 

 

Indeed, the “incarnation”—God in Christ as the perfect fusion of flesh AND spirit—is the very fulcrum of the Christian faith. The most condemned heresies of the faith occur when you discount either the “fully human” or the “fully divine” attributes of Jesus Christ. Isn’t this, to a lesser degree, just what the author of this passage is doing but saying that the only way we can “please” God is to fully eschew our fleshly reality and desire to think only of “life in the Spirit” as the ultimate form of Christian worship? Thankfully, the passage doesn’t end after the Gnostic prologue of verses 6-8! Let’s go on…

 

 In verse 9, the author turns to Jesus, suggesting that if Christ “lives in us,” then Christ brings the Spirit into OUR spirit, taking up residence there, and connecting us—flesh AND spirit—to the divine. Later, the author writes that Christ “gives life to our mortal bodies” as well. Now we’re getting somewhere! Just as the Christian church has long affirmed both the total humanity and total divinity of Jesus Christ, so we, too, are both flesh AND spirit beings, with God’s own Spirit inhabiting, or “tenting” along with us. Taken this way, this passage that begins with a Gnostic underpinning, moves us to understand that we CAN’T separate flesh and spirit, as this is precisely how God “designed” us, affirming the “formula” by sending God’s own Son among us as the fullest incarnation of it. Jesus pleased God because he fully utilized the miracle of his human existence—including his flesh—while focusing his spirit on God’s Spirit, thus “awakening” the “third” part of the human experience. Remember how God is “three-in-one, one-in-three,” or what we label the Holy Trinity? So God made us beings of body, mind, and spirit. We best please and glorify God when we use ALL THREE in harmony to do and live the will of God for us, and this harmony is possible because of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, AND because God sent the “Spirit of Jesus” into the world to guide and empower both Christians and the Christian church. You think maybe this is what the Romans author is thinking here? I do. 

 

So, to review:

 

*The Romans author is NOT being seduced by the Gnostics, ultimately, but MAY be using their lingo to get their attention, similar to how the author of the Gospel of John uses the language of Greek philosophical thought in that amazing prolegomena in chapter one (i.e. the “logos”) to lure them in.

 

*The text is NOT telling us to ignore, eschew, or even “hate” our bodies, but to use them to please God, not just to satisfy our own desires and/or to break God’s law. There is a fine point here. God gave us these bodies, made us as sensual creatures capable of enjoying loving relationships, tasting of the fruit of the creation, and gave us the other senses to fully experience the magnificent world around us. 

 

*We should do this! However, without a healthy relationship with God and the guidance of the Spirit of God within, we will be in a constant battle against “the flesh,” as its temptations and excesses threaten to lead us astray from the aim of pleasing God, even as we enjoy life.

 

*”Life in the Spirit” is an act of Grace freely given by God in Christ Jesus. It is not meant to be a drudgery, nor is it meant to be abused by “going Gnostic” and trying to separate spirit from flesh and using this as a selfish shortcut to self-fulfillment.

 

*Righteousness is just “right living,” something made possible by both an ongoing act of the human will, coupled with the indwelling Holy Spirit. This right living is meant by God to be a joyful thing, and not a “war” between the worlds of flesh and spirit. 

 

*Never forget the most human thing Jesus did—he wept for Lazarus, when he heard of his death. Weeping—or any of the other uniquely “human” things such as ecstasy, fear, love and grief—are God’s emotional gifts to us “in the flesh.” They are not to be ignored, but celebrated, and never exploited to selfish ends. 

 

My wife the dietitian uses as her slogan in her field: “Eat less, move more, everything in moderation.” Based on today’s text, here’s one for us Christians: “Listen for the Spirit, live rightly, bless God and yourself!” And don’t forget to love your neighbor! Amen.