Romans 8,1-2 (10-11)

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