An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Flesh on the Mind

A sermon on Romans 8: 1-11 by Nathan Nettleton

As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, we inevitably come across some pretty heavy stuff. Romans is after all, Paul’s most detailed presentation of his theological views, and there’s some pretty meaty stuff.

What I want to address today is not entirely what Paul was addressing in the reading we heard, but it is a question that arises naturally from what he says, and I think it is a question that we need to grapple with if we are going to come to terms with what Paul is saying in much of this letter. The question is, why does Paul seem so down on the body, the flesh? In the reading we heard earlier, Paul tells us that those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh and to set the mind on the flesh is death. Another translation uses the phrase human nature instead of flesh, and yet another uses the term desires, but while that perhaps makes it clearer what Paul means by the term flesh, it doesn’t alter our question much. Why is Paul so negative about our flesh, our desires, our human nature?

The question is all the more pertinent when we realise that Christianity is perhaps the most body-affirming of the world’s major faiths. You could even say that it is the most materialistic of religions, in the sense that many religions spurn matter, seeking release from the material world and pure engagement with the things of spirit, but Christianity speaks constantly of the revelation of spirit in matter. God created human flesh and said it was good. God came to us in human flesh in the person of Jesus. God raised Jesus’ body from the dead and promises that we too will be resurrected, body and all. None of that sounds anti-body, anti-flesh, so why does Paul sound so negative about it?

Well various people have advanced theories about Paul himself in an attempt to explain it – things like perhaps he was unable to come to terms with his own sexuality and struggled constantly with feelings of shame and self-disgust about his body. Well there may be some merit in those sorts of explanations, and I’m certainly not going to dismiss them out of hand, but even if they were proven, I don’t think it would let us off having to grapple with what he says.

My own view is that the answer is found in the relationship between spirit and flesh. I don’t think Paul is actually as negative about our bodies and their desires as he sometimes appears, but he certainly comes out with guns blazing whenever we get the relationship between body and spirit wrong.

You see, matter and flesh were never created as ends in themselves. Rather they were created to be the means of our communion with God. This is the meaning of the word “sacrament” – that God, who is Spirit, becomes present to us through things of matter and flesh. The whole world, all that is matter and flesh, was created to be the means of one great cosmic Eucharist in which we experience perfect communion with our God. And in this great cosmic Eucharist all our bodily desires and all our sensory experiences – our eating and drinking, our touching and hugging, our appreciation of beauty and music, our dancing and our making love – were to be the means of our participation in the life of God, our communion with the divine. Flesh was not intended to be opposed to spirit, but rather to be the vehicle of spirit, the means of our entry into the life of the Spirit.

So what’s this got to do with Paul and his rather more negative statements on the flesh? Well I reckon that what Paul’s so angry about is that this vision has been trashed, that spirit and flesh have been set in opposition to each other. And particularly it is the way in which this has happened that makes him sound so anti-flesh. “To set the mind on the flesh is death.” That is exactly what has happened. The mind has been set on the flesh, stuck on flesh even. Instead of being the gateway to the divine, the means to communion with the Spirit, the flesh has been grasped for its own sake. The body, matter, flesh has been valued as an end in itself instead of as the means of communion with God. The garden of Eden story tells us of uninhibited communion with God being broken when someone looked at a fruit and saw it outside of the context of its relationship with God and with the goodness of all creation. Once things are valued just for themselves and not as bearers of God to us, they are actually stripped of their true value. We grasp at something as a thing of beauty and desire, but even as we do we devalue it, degrade it even.

If you don’t understand what I mean, just think about how you like to be treated by other people. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like their body being appreciated and valued, but not too many people like being valued only as a body. I love to be held by my wife because through my body she is telling me that she values the whole me. But if I was being held by someone who treated me just as a body, even if their touch was pleasurable I’d actually feel devalued by it, cheapened by it. We need to be loved as whole people, not as collections of valuable components.

So too with God. When we set our minds on the flesh and appreciate things only as things we devalue not only the things but the God who would reach out to us in those things. We leave God feeling used and cheapened. We help ourselves to God’s gifts but spurn the intimate and whole communion into which God would embrace us.

But the news is good, for despite the horrendous consequences of our setting spirit and flesh in opposition, there is now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. God has taken action to reconcile spirit and flesh and to reopen for us the means of intimate participation in the life and love of God. That’s why we gather at this table, to taste in the things of flesh the joy of heaven. As Paul says, “God raised Jesus from the dead to life. God’s Spirit now lives in you and God will raise you from death to life by his Spirit.” Thanks be to God.

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