"The Way of All Flesh"
March 9, 2008: Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A
Roger Adams, moderator
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org
Scripture:
"May God take these words
and make from them a holy word for us today."
Scripture readings:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.
He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord."
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 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, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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.
But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead
because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in
you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal
bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
"Friends, God is still
speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond.
Amen."
Prayer:
Would you please join me in
a moment of prayer: Gracious God, grant that the words I speak
may convey your Word and that our hearts may be open to hearing
your truth. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Sermon:
A fundamentalist minister, a progressive minister, and an atheist walk into a ... funeral home. There laid out is Ernest Overton, a prominent businessman and philanthropist, who has died at the age of 47 in the crash of his corporate jet.
The atheist looks at him and says: "Poor guy. He certainly was unlucky. But we all have to go sometime."
The fundamentalist responds: "No, there was no luck about it. His early death was God's punishment for his sins."
The progressive puts in: "I don't believe God singled him out for punishment. He was a decent person. Besides, everyone sins, so why don't we all die early?"
The fundamentalist is outraged: "Hah! You're agreeing with that atheist! You think Overton was just unlucky. Everything is accidental. So death, and life, have no meaning, no purpose!
The atheist smirks: "Good, you're catching on."
And
the progressive: ???????????????
What would the progressive
Christian say to that? What would you say? Does life
have any purpose? This ancient question has grown in urgency,
for thoughtful people of faith, ever since the Enlightenment began recasting
reason as a foe of religion. And in our own day there is new fire
to the debate due to the success of science, particularly the recent
advances in evolution-oriented studies in the social sciences.
As Christians we are challenged: Can we believe in a purpose?
Honestly?
After all, Homo sapiens
evolved through the cold logic of natural selection. And much
of who we are as individuals comes from the chance selection of our
particular genes and the happenstance of our experiences. In all
that randomness, where's the meaning? What's the purpose?
I'm going to suggest that
Paul points to an answer: "To set the mind on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." That is,
although "the flesh," our physical, human life, is a miraculous
gift, it is not enough to give life purpose. Rather, God's Spirit
of love is our guide to purposeful life; God's Spirit is the breath
that makes our dead bones come truly alive.
Paul's talk about "flesh"
can be hard to digest, however. Think of this morning's reading
from Romans. My first reaction, when I hear a passage like that,
is that Paul must have picked out a few words — "flesh," "spirit,"
"righteousness," "death," not to mention "God" and "Christ"
— and tossed them into a blender. My eyes start to glaze over
and my brain asks for a coffee break. Another common reaction
is "Oh, no. Not the flesh thing again. Don't tell me
I'm supposed to feel guilty about sex." OK, I won't
tell you that. Guilt feelings are not Paul's goal here.
Flesh, the body, including sex, is not inherently bad; in fact, bodies
are parts of God's creation, and God saw all of creation as good.
Moreover, our earthly existence
includes much more than just the messy stuff of bones, muscles, and
body fluids. To start, there's no Cartesian split between mind
and body — our minds are parts of our bodies — so we need to we
understand "flesh" in a very broad way. When we hear Paul
use that word in today's reading, we should translate it in our minds
as "everything about human nature," that is, all parts of us, all
aspects of our nature as living, human beings. And that "all"
includes some pretty amazing stuff.
Think about this: we
are animals, specifically, primates. Over the course of some 2
billion years we evolved from a few simple chemicals that were able
to make copies of themselves on to four-limbed creatures of stunning
complexity — with bodies comprised of billions of cells working together,
including brains with trillions of synapses. At these synapses
bits of information get passed from one nerve cell to another, as neurotransmitters
— molecules with names such as dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine,
and gamma-aminobutyric acid — are released by the sending cell and
drift across a tiny space to find receptors on the receiving cell —
receptors being places where the molecules in the cell wall have just
the right shape to fit snugly with the neurotransmitter molecules.
When the neurotransmitter attaches to the receptor, an electrical signal
shoots down the length of the receiving cell and starts activating the
release of more neurotransmitters at synapses at the downstream end.
And this is a vastly simplified description of the process.
Somehow out of all that neuronal
interplay, self-awareness emerges, along with language, and mathematics,
and technology, and rules for getting along peacefully. And also
along with lust, and fear, and anger, and greed, but also parental sacrifice,
appreciation for beauty, and love for one's neighbors. All the
drives and emotions and abilities and vulnerabilities that we humans
share — they are all parts of the gift. They are all part of
"flesh."
By the way, this is not an
argument for Intelligent Design. This overwhelming intricacy was
the result of the natural properties of matter and the workings of evolution.
But it is an argument for awe and gratitude. Human life is no
less miraculous for having come about through evolution. We certainly
didn't create ourselves. Our existence, and the existence of
everyone and everything else, is a gift, a present we each were given
at birth. Like trust funds set up for us.
So here's the puzzle:
All of this flesh, this human nature, is God's good gift to us, yet
Paul says that setting one's mind on it is death. It's not
just that bodies die. Of course physical death is the inevitable
end of each person's physical life. More than that, Paul is
telling us that if we set our minds on "the flesh" we will be dead
even before our bodies die, because we will be passing up life that
truly is life, the life that God offers and calls us to, a life of abundance,
depth, and purpose.
Ironically, Paul and the atheist
would agree on the initial premise: they would agree that all the scientific
knowledge we have about how our bodies and minds work still doesn't
show us a purpose for our being on earth. Setting our minds on
the flesh is incapable of giving a purpose to life.
But then the atheist and Paul
would part ways. The atheist would say that flesh, human nature,
does not give us a purpose for life because there is no purpose,
while Paul, along with other Christians, would conclude that since human
nature and human achievements, including science, are unable to reveal
the purpose, we must turn to another source: God's revelation.
The atheist might counter that we don't need another source, because what we humans have built into us, namely our inborn moral sense, is enough of a guide for living. And the atheist could point to some pretty impressive findings, by anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, that people everywhere have the same basic components of moral learning and moral reactions. For example, Alan Fiske has compiled persuasive evidence that in all cultures people use the same four basic models to understand and structure social relations. The four models he calls Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing, and every social relation can be described in terms of one or more of these paradigms. It's worth taking a minute to expand on this.
Psychologists have found that
people have an innate facility for learning the specific social norms
by which a culture spells out the expectations for participants in each
sort of relation. Moreover, people, universally, have similar
emotional reactions to violations of their culture's norms:
shame and guilt on the part of the violator, and anger, outrage, and/or
disgust on the part of the victims and any third parties who hear of
the events.
Such findings are crucial to
the atheist's argument. To the atheist, these evolved moral
mechanisms are enough. They are sufficient to guide us in how
to treat others and how to live life. And in any case, the atheist
would say, it's all we have. (So stop agonizing and get on with
living.)
But a Christian isn't ready
to give up on the quest for the "something more" that will give
purpose to life. The Christian sees that the inborn moral sense,
as useful and hopeful as it is, is not adequate by itself.
Why? First, one person's moral sense often differs from another's
when it comes down to specific issues and cases — say war or universal
health care or immigration. And one culture's social norms often
differ from another culture's norms when they get to the details of
to whom norms apply and what circumstances allow or require exceptions.
Some cultures say it's OK to kill in order to punish a murderer; other
cultures say it is necessary to kill an adulterous woman. And
internally, a person's own norms and principles may conflict one with
another. For example, many of us are torn, wanting to uphold both
the value of a woman's control over her own body and the value of
preserving the potential for life represented by a human embryo.
We need something beyond ourselves in order to resolve these differences.
Without something beyond ourselves, we have no basis for choosing among
the many different paths recommended to us, whether by our families,
by our workplaces, by advertisers, or by politicians, to name just a
few of the advice-givers in our lives. We need outside help to
find the purpose for our lives.
Second, the inborn moral sense
is not enough because, although human life is good, not all of what
we choose to do with life is good. We have free will; we can choose
to put our gifts to evil use. And at times, inevitably, we do
so choose. Over and over, in big ways and small, corporately and
individually, by commission and omission, we all contribute to the evil
in the world. As Paul wrote just a little further on in the 8th
chapter of Romans [8: 22b-23a], "For
there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God." We
acknowledge this sad fact about ourselves every Sunday in the Prayer
of Confession — and when we add Post-Its to the box. In short,
we all need forgiveness and we all need to be called back to the path
of purpose. We can't do it on our own.
Here, naturally, and thankfully,
is where the Spirit comes in. God provides the help; God shows
the direction; God gives us a guide to purposeful life. As you
know already, the difference between God's way and way of the world,
or the way of flesh, is a recurrent theme in the Bible. You can
think of examples. One of my favorites is Deuteronomy 30:19: "I call heaven and earth
to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose
life so that you
and your descendants may live."
We are fortunate that God not
only reminds us that there is a better way, but also describes it for
us. God has revealed the way through prophets in many times and
places. It is the way of justice, compassion, peace, and service
— in a word, the way of love. As Christians we see the way most
fully exemplified in Christ: in his teachings, in the faithfulness
and depth of his love for the world, not daunted even by the prospect
of a shameful execution, and in the demonstration through him that God's
love is stronger than death. God's Spirit and Christ's Spirit
is the Spirit of Love — that is our guide to a life of purpose.
We can't prove scientifically that God's Spirit exists, but we do experience it:
We don't fully understand
that Spirit, but we trust it, and we are committed to the path on which
it leads us.
So a progressive Christian
— or a conservative Christian — does have an answer to the atheist.
The Christian can say: "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but
to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." Life does
have a purpose. The purpose comes from God's Spirit of love,
which offers each of us — no matter who we are, no matter where we
are on life's journey — offers each of us forgiveness and the opportunity
for purposeful, joyful, unlimited, real life. God's Spirit of
love is with us and in us, and it is stronger than death. Thanks
be to God.
Now, if you've heard the word of God preached here this morning, remember to give all honor to our one God, who brought us into being, who in Christ showed us the nature of love, and who supports us always. Amen.