7-19-2020 Life and Death Matters
Rev. Jay Rowland
Romans 8:12-25
Last Sunday, during the Young Worshippers time I spoke about the difference between “living according to the flesh” and “living in the spirit” Paul talks about in the beginning of Romans 8. I pointed out that this difference is one of the themes that makes the Harry Potter books so engaging.
It’s also what makes our life in Christ so engaging, right?
So I’d like to pick up where I left off last week with you Young Worshippers. In the passage before us today, as Paul picks up right where he left off last week, boldly declaring,
“ … if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” (Romans 8:13)
For me, this verse evokes the famous scene in Genesis where God says to Adam and Eve, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16-17)
You may recall from this scene that some time later on, the crafty serpent comes along to offer a free interpretation to Adam & Eve; something along the lines of, Did that Old Fool really say you’ll die?! Oh c’mon--that’s so dramatic! Listen, You Won’t Die. I’ll show you-you’ll see you won’t die-go ahead, take a bite. You’ll still be alive. Oh and by the way, you’re welcome. (Genesis 3:4)
The thing is, it’s true: Adam and Eve did not die.
They changed. But they did not die. Not bodily anyway.
The way I see it, a vital part of them died that day. But not the whole. The part of them that died is the part that knows that God is The Source of abundance: abundant life, abundant joy, abundant health, abundant peace. Everything we crave and truly need to be whole.
The Scripture put it this way, “Their eyes were opened.” (Genesis 3:5)
In other words, they discovered you can DEFY GOD and you won’t die! You won’t fully live, either, but you won’t die. Not really. They also discovered that they could live without having to care about God, Creation or … even each other.
Cut to the serpent: “What? Was I wrong? Is that wrong? Hey, all I did was clarify terms. Don’t blame me for this mess! I didn’t force anybody to do anything they didn’t want to do.”
This is what plays out in my imagination when I hear Paul’s declaration “if you live according to the flesh, you will die.”
I hear the serpent perk up and say, “No you won’t.”
Paul: Yes you will.
Serpent: No you won’t.
So who’s right: Paul or the Serpent?
Well … both, right?.
When Adam and Eve defiantly eat of the fruit God bid them do not eat, what “died” in that moment was their reliance upon the vital interconnectedness of life: their unbroken communion with God, with Creation, with each other.
In Paul’s letters, "flesh" almost always signifies a power, call it sin if you like but in any case a significant force or impulse that resists the Spirit of God (*Mary Hinkle Shore) and as Paul says elsewhere, is “hostile to God.”
Whenever we live like we are somehow entitled to get whatever we want, when we want it, that’s living in a way that opposes the spirit of God and is hostile to God.
What that “looks like” as it plays out in everyday life is living in constant fear of losing what we have or not getting what we want. Paul calls that living in "bondage to decay" which is the exact opposite of living in the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Note this freedom is not freedom from the material world, but freedom within a restored creation; the freedom of being an embodied spirit made in the image and glory of God (cf. Genesis 1:27). (*Mary Hinkle Shore)
Earlier in Romans, Paul uses the words "son of God" and "child of God" to refer to Jesus. Here, it’s significant to note that Paul changes and applies these precise terms to refer to followers of Jesus,
... all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. (Romans 8:14-15)
Through the person of Jesus God “adopts” us as God’s own children. And just as children eventually receive an inheritance from their parents, we share as adopted children of God the freedom God offers and delivers through Jesus Christ. 1
And so, living according to the flesh is life driven by a power that enslaves us and keeps us from participating in God's glory. Living in the Spirit is life driven by the power that frees us from that enslavement through our adoption in Christ and identifies us as children of God.
To be children of God just as Christ is, is to experience both humiliation and exaltation. To be in Christ is to share in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection. In describing what it means to be children of God, Paul is *not* saying that anyone including Christ earns glory and freedom by suffering; rather, Paul notes that as children of God, our life is characterized by the same pattern that shaped Christ's life.
Theologian James Dunn puts it this way when he says that we are being saved not from creation but with creation: “The sonship [we] are privileged to share in some sense with Christ, [we] in turn share in some sense with creation." He continues, "The gift of the Spirit reclaims the believer for God and begins ... the tension between human belonging to God and human entrancement with the world of human control and success, the warfare between Spirit and flesh" (Word Biblical Commentary: Volume 38A, Romans 1-8, James D.G. Dunn, p.87)
Paul eventually broadens the scope of suffering to include anything intended to separate us from God's love (8:35-39). For now, the suffering Paul speaks of is that which comes from knowing what the world could be as we live in the world as it is. (*Mary Hinkle Shore)
The suffering we see and experience threatens our trust in God’s sustaining and creative Love. Right now it’s hard to “see” let alone trust God’s love when nearly all we see and experience lately is so much chaos and division and destruction. I’m not suggesting that we ignore all of that and pretend that we can find freedom and resolution by somehow learning to focus on living more according to the spirit.
No, that’s not how we live. And that’s not who we are. We are children of God because we follow Jesus who faced rather than fled from the painful realities and truths of life. I guess that’s what I’m driving at: We follow Jesus. Not vice-versa.
Even so, all of this going on right now is very very heavy. I feel it in my body. I feel it in my spirit. And I find myself just wanting everything to be other than it is right now. I want God to just make it all better right now. C’mon Jesus do something. But then I realize that’s not following Jesus or trusting Jesus. That’s me trying to lead Jesus.
In times of crisis and suffering, we can catch ourselves telling Jesus what to do, or how this is supposed to go. Chaos, uncertainty, and fear can provoke us into doing that, or provoke us into assuming that there is something we are supposed to be doing, or that we’re somehow supposed to overcome the anxiety that comes with all of this and somehow reconcile everything that’s happening with what we believe in our hearts about Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.
And so perhaps the key to living during all of this is finding ways to deepen our spiritual connection with God, with Creation, with one another. Finding and meeting God the Spirit in our breath, in meditation. I will share a link to my resource for guided meditation and talks that I find helpful in restoring my spiritual orientation (at the bottom). But what works for me may not work for you. Search for resources which can build up your spiritual orientation.
I do not mean to suggest that this will instantly or magically resolve any of the crises happening all around us or the anxiety churned up. But in my experience what this can and does do is create and nurture space within our oft-depleted spirits, space into which the Holy Spirit of God can do its necessary work in our spirits, moment-by-moment, day-by-day, as we live with these intense life and death matters, hand-in-hand with God in Christ, hand-in-hand with God’s glorious creation, hand-in-hand with one another. For that is what enables us to see in the midst of pandemic and everything else that causes anxiety, in spite of what our eyes tell us is happening, that the Kingdom of God is ever and always inching ever closer to us.
My go-to resource for guided meditations which helps me build up my spiritual orientation is Tara Brach. To see her website, copy and paste the following address into your web browser: https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/
Endnote(s):
* Indicates terminology which is the work of Mary Hinkle Shore in her Commentary on Romans 8:12-25. I found the following excerpt particularly interesting and insightful: (italicized emphases are mine)
1 “A cluster of words from the realm of family helps Paul describe the freedom that believers have in Christ and the relationships in which they now find themselves: sons, Abba, Father, children, adoption, heirs, joint heirs. The vocabulary describes relationships within a family and a household. Such language is not particularly common in Romans. Two times in the opening verses of the letter, Paul reminded his hearers of Jesus' identity as a child of God. He defined God's good news as "the gospel concerning his Son, who was... declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:3-4, NRSV). He refers to Jesus once more as Son in Romans 5:10.
“Then, in Romans 8 Paul uses the words for "son" and "child" to refer not to Jesus, but to his siblings who are led by the Spirit. As "flesh" had referred to a power that enslaves humans and keeps them from participating in God's glory, the Spirit is the power that frees and enlivens humans for a new identity as children of God.
“To describe what it means to be children of God, Paul employs a series of compound verbs built on the preposition syn-. We are joint heirs with Christ, suffering with him, and being glorified with him. Readers should not fret over the conditional syntax in verse 17. It is a simple condition in which "since" could be used as well as "if" (cf. the translation of the same Greek word at Romans 8:9). The idea is not that anyone (including Christ) earns glory by suffering; rather, as Paul seeks to describe what it means to be a joint heir with Christ, he notes that the joint heir's life is characterized by the same pattern that shaped Christ's life. To be connected to Christ is to know humiliation and exaltation. To be a joint heir with Christ is share in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection.
“In the remaining verses of the reading, Paul talks as forthrightly as possible about the suffering of humanity and creation as together we await the revealing of what we are in Christ, that is, children of God. As syn- compounds had described our connection to Christ, now they describe the mutual suffering of all creation: the whole creation, Paul says, groans together and suffers together, "and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22-23). http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=974
