Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Trinity, September 5, 2010
Contrary

“The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.”

HOW do you know that you’re approved, that you’ve done what was expected of you and you can feel acceptable? When can you say: “That’s good. It’s enough. I’ve done it. I’m finished,”? How can you tell? Our gage of what’s good enough, of what ‘finished’ means is probably a great distance from what God thinks, and therefore, from what is really true. But we’ve always had that sneaking feeling that it wasn’t so easy, that we really needed to do a lot more.
      So we make To Do Lists. They’re nice vertical sheets with tasks to perform, things to get done, and nice little boxes at the left of each item we can check when we’ve accomplished it and move on down the list to the next job. Sometimes we skip one, not now, too hard, no time for that, get back to it later when I feel more like it. Eventually, we get 90% of the list checked off and somebody hands us another list. It’s endless. If we think that To Do lists make it easy to know that we’re done for the day, the jobs just get added to and we’re on the short end of it again.
      People have remarked at the fact that the Golden Gate Bridge has its own painting company that paints… the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s their only job and they work at it every day, and when they’ve finally finished this two mile long landmark, it’s time to begin all over again. They even have a travelling platform under the roadway that moves them along from this part to the next. To some, that’s job security; to others, it’s a nightmare—I’m never done! Whatever I’ve accomplished comes undone and I have to do it again, over and over and over.
This is the problem with humanity’s approach to righteousness. If we think that God approves the man or woman with a list of accomplishments, we think we know what we’ve got to do. For the Jews, the Ten Commandments were not enough. It’s easy to check those off: haven’t murdered anyone, haven’t slept around, haven’t stolen anything… so we must add things, make it really difficult. You can only walk 1/8 of a mile on Saturday. You must have two whole sets of dishes. Our Lord’s people made To Do Lists you wouldn’t believe, and when they were all done checking the boxes, they’d sit and debate about it. What Christ said about all this shocked and angered them. Jesus said, “unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5:20 How do you exceed the righteousness of the list makers who have checked all their boxes? If that doesn’t work, how can anyone get into heaven?
      Lists of righteous acts and godly chores are our answer to getting right with God. Our answer is like that old tower in Babel. It was a great achievement, the world’s tallest building, a marvel to see. It was so impressive that people could believe heaven was at the top and God had to be pleased with us for building it and climbing its heights. Such a religion would never stop by itself; it answered our need for a great task to perform. Add a few statues up there, offer some sacrifices, say the magic words, and we can come down satisfied, and with every expectation that God must also be satisfied. That’s why He interrupted the project and confused the people’s language, shattering the unity of mankind.
      Making lists, doing our own thing for God is the religious side of what St. Paul calls the Flesh. We usually associate flesh with sinful pastimes. Like the billboard for a Nevada casino read: “Seven Deadly Sins: One Convenient Location.” But the flesh is more pervasive than that. Paul associates it also with the law that Jews followed in an attempt at perfection through keeping their lists. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” Romans 7:5-6 The new features in Christ’s self-revelation and His requirement for all humankind are faith and the Spirit. The gift of God’s Holy Spirit is not an accomplishment at all, not something we can check a box by and figure we’ve done the job. We’re talking a whole different paradigm here, a different game altogether.
      Paul continues: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death… fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Romans 8:1-4 Our value is not judged according to our many deeds accomplished to please what we think of as our God. Even in obediently following what He did in fact command, we may do it as a To Do List and miss the entire point of the law, losing whatever benefit it could have done us. And, being human, having physical nature, knowing both the glory and the limitation of our bones, our muscles, our minds and wills and nervous systems, it seems a cruel joke by God against us to create us with bodies and then condemn our bodies for what they can’t seem to help doing. But in reasoning so, we’re falling for To Do Lists again. Flesh doesn’t mean that.
      There are two Greek words used in the New Testament that are translated “flesh” in English. One word means simply a body, as in “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” as St. John refers to Christ’s Incarnation. Nothing unholy about that. But another word, Sarx, St. Paul borrows from its normal use to describe this other principle at work in us. It doesn’t mean the meat on our bones, though the word was used for animal meat, chili con carne, with meat, carnal. This Flesh, in St. Paul’s terminology, describes our lower nature, our unspiritual, unconverted nature. Thus, in today’s Epistle to the Galatians, he enjoins us to “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the urgings of the flesh. For the flesh urges against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” Gal 5:16-17 It sounds like a war within us, and you may feel such a war being waged: temptation on one hand, and God’s Spirit on the other, vying for your decision to resist sin, or fall into it. But if we think of this only as the see-saw of our making choices, we haven’t grasped the greater issue. We are still thinking of lists and deeds and check boxes, gages of righteousness according to a law.
    “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” v18 Paul’s words come ringing back to us. How is that? We can’t check the boxes? When Christians get hold of this idea, they often run to the other extreme: I’m free to do anything and it doesn’t count because I’m saved and the Spirit has made me new. Jesus did it all, and I can’t lose it, whatever I do. They’re still in the flesh, only dressed up in Christian, not Jewish, terminology. St. Paul’s next words would squelch that kind of lawlessness, “the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” v19-21 
      Why does St. Paul make such a list when he’s the chief proponent of living in the Spirit and not under law? Because these are not laws. They are evidence, and that’s different. Evidence that you and I are under God’s Spirit will render “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such,” says Paul, “there is no law.” v22-23 If we look at this list, we begin to get the picture. How do you make a checklist that includes love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness? How can I check “self-control?”  When can I tell that I’m done?
      Jesus found ten lepers crying out for their healing one day while passing through Samaria. His next words tested them and gave them a chance to escape their To Do Lists. “Go show yourselves to the priests.” This was to certify a healing they were yet to experienced, but in faith they turned away to seek out a priest to examine them. While obediently going, they all became aware that their lesions and rotted skin were healed, and they unwrapped their bandages to find perfect flesh, holy flesh, healed flesh. One man couldn’t go on, but turned around to find Jesus and thank Him. “Where are the nine?” Jesus asked, “There is only one of these, the Samaritan, who came back to give the glory to God. Thy faith has made you whole.” You see, the Jewish lepers were still in their lists, checking the boxes that said, “healed of leprosy, certified by the priest.” Now there is nothing wrong with doing just that, but what happened to them? Would the priests heal them by saying so? God just touched their wretched, rotting bodies and the Messiah they sought out was back where they asked for this healing, and instead of witnessing to the power of God and the One who healed them, they returned to lists and laws and their flesh. They may not have leprosy anymore, but they were still sick with the fleshy thinking that robs us of a real relationship with Almighty God.
      It is so contrary to our nature, especially to our fallen nature, to approach God on God’s terms, not our own. Yet, whose religion is it? We may say it’s His, because we worship Him here, and say the words that honor Him, and receive His Holy Communion, check the boxes, get through the service, sing the last hymn or cross ourselves at the blessing, and go home having done it. Bingo. Really: Bingo is a game that fits such an orientation: just fill in the right five boxes and win. What God is looking for is not five boxes in a row, or any number of good things done for credit, but a changed nature, the love, joy, peace and all that comes from opening ourselves up to Him to transform us, heal us, wash the fetid stink of our world off of us by the Spirit of God, and bask in His love of us. If we must be contrary, let us be contrary toward our flesh for once today, and let God be God in us. Let His Spirit so rule over your whole mind and heart that your changed nature is the evidence of what you have become.

PFH+