Romans 8:1-11
Proper 10 (15) - Year A
If there is "no condemnation" we are in a new story. The old story relied on Newtonian cause and effect. The new story incorporates the astrophysicist and the quantum mechanic. Their stories add in the expansion and generosity of creation as well as the mystery of uncertainty that spontaneously brings forth new bits and pieces not known before in the game of life.
Who else needs to have their voice added to the mix of no condemnation? Poets and prophets? Priests and novelists? What about bio-chemists and environmentalists? Laborers on the line and the poor? Who else will help us catch the new life of no condemnation by helping us break free from simply working harder that we might live healthier (living by the future of a beckoning new enterprise of G*D rather that an extension of the tyranny of habits based on an overly simplistic limitation to the dynamics of earth's surface without including the stars or the atoms)?
What ripples forth from "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Can you bring Paul's insight into common language for today?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html
If the seed of G*D is in Jesus it is in good soil. How wonderful. If the seed of G*D is in a bird or a briar patch or some dried out somewhere, it is still the seed of G*D. How wonderful.
I do believe the Spirit of G*D which raised Jesus dwells in me and you, whomever you might be. This spirit dwells whether I've been bad or good enough for Santa. This spirit dwells and gives life. How wonderful.
We can parse G*D out of lives or into. Your choice.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
Today brings this community the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. Now to a reflection on being set free from the law of sin and death.
Paul plays a lot with a resurrected Jesus. This was his experience. What is set aside here is not literal death. Death still occurs and we will recognize both temporary escapes from it and its eventual reality during the Relay for Life.
What is set aside is death as a limit. This includes the usual limits of life, as well, resources, energy, insight, etc. Paul sees new life being given to life and resurrected life being added to death. All the Flesh and Spirit stuff boils down to New Life being available today and tomorrow, both in our living and in our death.
Consider, for a moment that it is true that this seed of New Life has been planted within you already. It was cast forth while you were still flighty, distracted, hardened, or ready for it. Whatever your state it was sown and re-sown. Now it is time for it to be nourished and nurtured by you, intentionally, that it might burst into good fruit for the common good of those around you as well as yourself.
While not free from sin or death (whatever those metaphors mean) we are free to live beyond them, nonetheless.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
What would it be like to read Paul as a frustrated parablist who simply can't get past his juridical language base?
We need a midrash cyclotron that can speed Paul and Jesus to light speed and smash them into one another. Then we might see Spirit as seed and Flesh as seed. We might understand soil as Spirit and soil as Flesh. In so doing new sparks will fly off into our lives today and we would care less about any traps of our own or others devising and simply pay more attention to a joyful heritage of a good creation and universal salvation and simply incline our hearts to both short- and long-term good at the same time.
- - -
brother wrestler
heel grabber
stew chef
lineage stealer
flock grabber
G*D wrestler
go out
anguished loneliness
to accomplish
more than you purposed
to return
a brother's embrace
even here
instead of a thorn
a sound of singing
in the myrtle
an everlasting sign
none are cut off
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Yes, there is some of that unhelpful dualism between flesh and spirit present in this presentation. There is also an unhealthy confusion of G*D with Jesus.
Presuming, with Paul, for the moment, that Resurrection, new creation, is where "its" at, righteousness is associated less with our maintenance of it than with G*D's steadfast resurrectional, creation-based, love.
To cut out some of the underbrush of verses 10-11 – the Spirit is life because of righteousness; the Spirit of resurrection dwells in you and gives life.
Righteousness here is connected with G*D's resurrectional processes already at work, like yeast, within. Again the issues of steadfast love takes precedence over any fall away from that. Remember that G*D left Eden with Adam and Eve and journeys with us still and ever.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html
Hooray, Spirit-walkers! Boo, Flesh-walkers!
Aren't you glad that you are in this new family and not that odd old one?
This has been a strange week of dividing this part of the family from that part of the family. The early adapters get perks. But then they, in turn, become the old part that can't keep up with a living, moving, expanding G*D and are left standing on the outside or hardening, and further hardening, the rules to keep themselves perk-ful for at least their generation – the next will have to fend for themselves.
Is it not the case that if Christ is in you that your body becomes alive, regardless of its disability. A healing, if not a curing, goes on and a striving for meaning comes alive. In keeping with anonymous Christ-ians everywhere (who doesn't have Christ within?), it is time for our mortal bodies to come alive – to stop harming; to increase blessing; to deepen relationships. Until we get to a spiritual/religious "Esperanto" we are all anonymous others as well as honored members of our particular tradition.
The very dualism Paul writes about is the downfall of dualism and when we run out of our double, we run out of ourselves. This whole conversation is problematic and it is miraculous that what begins chapter 8 so divisively can end at a spot recognizable and affirmable by all.
= = = = = = =
Una (Reader) said...
Here's an advance copy of what I'm posting on Sunday's Child later this week: Paul to Y'all--
We English speakers read "You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit," and think "He's talking about me. He's making promises to me about my life." Well, so he is, but he's talking to the me that is part of us. The Greek pronoun translated as you is in the plural. Paul is talking to the Christian community. "Church, you're not in the flesh. Church, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Curch, God's breath gives you life."
Wesley (Blogger) said...
Una -
Thanks for the reminder about the plural aspect of all this. Even corporate bodies lose track of their connections. As this is written we are already splitting this sect of Judaism from that. All too soon the Christian branch will be in full anti-Semitism against other branches of Judaism.
May G*D's breath again give us life and life together.
Wesley
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
If everything that has come into being has done so through Jesus, aka. Christ, logos, how can there be any condemnation?
A spirit of life sets us free from condemning to death or being incapacitated by condemnation.
Any number of obsessions might delay arriving at behaving as though a spirit of life were important to us. These obsessions won't condemn us, just slow us down. They show up in all manner of legalisms, of cutting one another off, of focusing on the unimportant, of pleasing self through an artificial consistency.
In a recently concluded church trial we found that those trying to condemn had to reduce a life orientation to one physical part of the body - the genitalia. This lack of life spirit does not condemn them for attempting to condemn, but does slow down a whole process of G*D re-wrapping creation about G*D. Where once G*D condemned an archetypal Adam and Eve, slowing creation down, G*D is raising all creatures and creation back to life. Some are still stuck on condemnation, G*D’s and their’s, but since Christ is in all, all will be raised.
This is a good time to do a refrigerator chart. On a simple sheet of paper draw a line down the paper to provide two columns - a condemnation column and a raising from the dead column. Periodically jot down the number of times you thought, said, or acted in a manner characterized by one of these columns since your last review. After a couple of days, see if there is a pattern. Do your bio-rhythms affect the chart, the quality of your sleep, the healthiness of your diet, the meditation discipline you follow, the people you spend time with, etc. While the goal is to join a spirit of life in raising new life, the usual pattern is to gently move in that direction, with a step backward every now and then, but generally moving forward. Don’t give up.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/romans-81-11.html
A seed sown and eaten by a bird will go through that bird and become fertilizer for another seed at another location. Not a very efficient system, but consistent with profligate sowing.
How is this like Jesus’ teachings running through you?
Seed sown on rocky ground does a bit of growing before failing and yet that very failure is added to, seed by seed, until fertile soil overlays the rock. Not a very fast system, but consistent with a natural evolution of an environment as well well as natural life processes of an individual.
How is this like Jesus’ teachings slowly growing within until their evidence is unmistakable?
Seed sown amid tall and virile weeds has the toughest job of all. It is safe from predators gobbling it quickly and shaded from desiccation. These very mechanisms that might seem so ideal are eventually seen as unhealthy constraints. Cultures focused on safety from particular dangers bring their own death. Not only can’t birds sneak into a weedy patch, but the weeds block needed sun and suck up needed water with deeper and wider roots. The result is the same, though different. From too much sun to too little; from no water to water available but not accessible.
How is this like Jesus’ teachings that clarify the dangers of too many laws springing up?
These variant readings complicate Paul’s attempt to simplify relationships and thus do an injustice to the dynamism of Spirit. Christ simply sows and seeds even when the results seem so lacking. To measure things dualistically (...you are not in the flesh, you are in the spirit ... no Spirit, no connection....) is to miss the mystery of resurrection, the power of pentecost, and the joy of everyday everydayness where everything is interconnected, not separated out.
I suspect that what folks see as failed seeds tickles G*D’s fancy as a different scale is used—being sown vs. cultural success. Here abundance in the sowing is far more evocative than even a hundred fold increase of some portion of the planting. To set our minds on the things of fleshy seeds and how they serve even in dying is a process to raise Spirit and decrease privilege.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/07/romans-81-11.html