Göttinger Predigten im Internet
hg. von Ulrich Nembach und Johannes Neukirch

Whit Sunday 2002
Romans 8,1-2 (10-11), Eberhard Harbsmeier (Danmark)
Translated by Barbara Theriault

(-> www.online-predigten.de)


Dear parishioners,

I'd like to begin today with a word that plays a big role in connection with the Pentecost. Because it might perhaps be seen as an embarrassing one, this word is sometimes ignored when selecting texts for Whit Sunday. During this time of the year, there's usually much talk about the Spirit who gives life. But, the eighth chapter of St Paul's letter to the Romans also deals with the opposite of the Spirit and the spiritual, that is the "flesh." In order to understand what St Paul means by the law of the Spirit that sets free, it might be useful to first reflect on the "flesh", a term that might appear old-fashioned but is of tremendous importance to St Paul. What does St Paul mean by "flesh"?

If a butcher's shop doesn't come straight to mind when thinking of "meat" and "flesh," most people today probably associate these words with sexuality or, at least, human bodies. There is indeed a long tradition in the Christian church according to which the "flesh" is despised and perceived in terms of human bodies and sexuality.

This is a tradition which is actually older than Christianity. According to this tradition, one must free oneself from the flesh-from its bodily and, more specifically, sexual dimension-for the relation to the flesh, the body, alienates us. A popular song tells us "The thoughts are free" [Die Gedanken sind frei]. Freedom is freedom from the body.

There can be no doubt about it: St Paul, the apostle, knew this fear, the fear of his own body and sexuality. He knew the experience through which one's body, the flesh, becomes unfamiliar, as it were something unappetizing surrounding him. In this sense, human bodies become something unfamiliar, not something that is part of us but something that one must control-as if it were a threat.

Some people may maintain that the Christian tradition and St Paul's hostility to the body is something which belongs to the past. In the meantime, theologians and the church have discovered the body. As a consequence, it appears almost choking to differentiate, as St Paul does, between the flesh and the spirit. When one still maintains the contrast, one means something completely different. The flesh is then not associated with its bodily dimension but with such things as egoism, self-interest, and the like. For many people, the flesh becomes something spiritual. We often don't want to be seen as people who are either hostile to the body or sexuality.

Nevertheless, I'd like today to use the word flesh in its more literal sense, in its bodily dimension. St Paul warns us not to become the slaves of our body and sexuality. Human beings are more than their bodies; they are also Spirit for we do not need-because we are afraid of being accused of hostility towards our body--to deny that human beings are more than their bodies.

We live at a time in which the body is truly elevated to a cult. Perhaps St Paul's word according to which people who "live by the standard of the flesh" are thereby the slaves of their body is once again very modern. "To live by the standard of the flesh" is not the direct and positive joy of the body, but to become the slave of one's body. The use of the body, the play, the joy related to the body is actually something quite positive that then becomes a cult to the body, a torture. This is not something healthy; it is a cult to the body, something which doesn't make us alive, but sick. This is self-torture. For example, this can lead us to a real fear of old age. What is actually something good and healthy degenerates into a fitness obsession, into the law of sin and death as St Paul would put it.

What's wrong with this fitness obsession? How is it possible that one's body becomes an alienating idol? What's wrong is not the fact that one enjoys being fit. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: one wants to control one's body instead of enjoying one's health. Sport and the joy of practicing it degenerate into an obsession.

And this not only true for the flesh and/or the body as such. This is also also true for life in general. If one wants to control, to possess life, instead of living it, one becomes life's slave. In her moving book about her East Prussian homeland, the now deceased Marion countess Dönhoff coined the phrase according to which one must be able to love something, without wanting to possess it. This thought contains a lot of truth. It applies to the homeland: no one "possesses" a country as though no one other one had the right to live there. The homeland is part of us, but we do not "possess" it. This is also true for our body: we do not "possess" it, we "are" our body. And this is also true for life in general: who wants to possess it, shall lose it.

For St Paul, what is related to the flesh alienates us: wanting to possess, to control something instead of living. This applies to the relationship we have to our body when the desire to feel well becomes a fitness obsession. And this applies to our life in general as well. The law of the flesh, of sin and death is to control life instead of living it.

In contrast, the apostle stresses the law of the Spirit that gives life.
As in the case of the flesh, we must also understand the Spirit literally. In this sense, it means so much as breath and life. A body without spirit, i.e. without breath, is a dead body. A life without spirit is no real life. It is no coincidence that we celebrate the Pentecost, the celebration of the Spirit, in the spring, the season when nature awakens. For some, this literal understanding of the Spirit as life and vitality might appear too earthly, that is not pious or religious enough. But I believe it's nevertheless a good thing to examine and take seriously this literal understanding for there is no life without breath. Without Spirit we would be dead. The Spirit gives life because He is the life.

In his letter to the Romans, St Paul speaks of the Spirit as life. This is what the letter to the Romans is all about: what's life, what's death? What makes us alive? What kills? What is the law of sin and death and what is the law of life?

The Spirit is not hostile to the body; He is, literally and metaphorically, life. For this reason, we confer different meanings to the word:
Spirit is culture - in contrast to nature.
Spirit is future - in contrast to the past.
Spirit is movement - in contrast to standstill.
Spirit is openness - in contrast to the self-sufficiency.
Spirit is atmosphere - in contrast to the emptiness.
Spirit is passion - in contrast to indifference.
Spirit is peace - in contrast to violence.

One could continue this enumeration almost endlessly. The meaning of the word Spirit is as broad as life itself.

St Paul doesn't only speak of the Spirit of life in general. He speaks of the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, the Spirit who comes from our belief in the Father and the Son. I think it'd be a misunderstanding to play the Spirit of God against all what we understand and associate with the word Spirit. The Spirit of God is no another Spirit but the Spirit that makes us alive and Christ is life.

Being spiritual is therefore not to be estranged to life. On the contrary, being spiritual means: to live life instead of wanting to possess and control it. Not the "religious," but the bodily dimension of human beings is alienating. Not the Spirit, but the flesh is adverse to nature.

I grew up with a theology in which one strictly distinguished the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, and all that is otherwise called spirit-from the spirit to use of metaphors drawn from nature or the spring was a taboo, it was decried as false romanticism decried.

I think that such a "unnatural" theology has survived today. In fact, it is unbelief. We do not believe anymore in the presence of God in every living thing. Such a way of thinking has survived-though not the celebration of Pentecost with its association of nature and Spirit. For this reason, I would like to conclude with a romantic Pentecost song, the most popular one in Denmark, by the Danish romantic N.F.S. Grundtvig because it tells us about the Spirit through metaphors related to the world of nature and not in some dry theological terminology. Even though the English translation does not entirely render the spirit of the original Danish song, it nevertheless gives a feeling of the strength of Grundtvig's language:

In all its splendor now the sun shines
Above the mercy-seat the life light,
Now is our Whitsun lily come.
Now there is summer pure and soft,
Now more than angel songs foretell
A golden harvest in His name

In summer evening's short sweet coolness
The nightingale sings in the forest,
And all the Lord chose once to make,
May slumber sweet and softly wake,
May sweetly dream of paradise
And waken to our Savior's praise.

(N.F.S. Grundtvig. Tradition and Renewal, ed. by Christian Thodberg and Anders Pontoppidan Thyssen, Copenhagen 1983, p. 188)

Rektor Professor Eberhard Harbsmeier
Teologisk Pædagogisk Center Løgumkloster
Præstehøjskolen - Folkekirkens Pædagogiske Institut
Kirkeallé 2, DK-6240 Løgumkloster
Telefon: 74 74 32 13 - Direkte: 73 74 58 81
Telefax: 74 74 50 13
E-mail: ebh@km.dk

Translated by Barbara Theriault
E-Mail: barbara.theriault@UMontreal.CA

 


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