Romans 8:6-11

Lent 5 - Year A

Flesh - humanity apart from grace

Spirit - humanity connected through grace

Consider these a ratio. How is yours? How is that of those you associate with? How goes the world you experience? the world reported on the "news"?

Are you shooting for a happy 50-50 or something else? Religiously we are to aim for 100% heavenly spirit. If we actually made it to 100% flesh would we find Eden and creation. The genius of where we are is between an infinitely repeatable eden and an always unique heaven. These two represent health for one another. Enjoy your ratio of today and tomorrow.


http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 

 

Just as there is devouring and assisting, there is death and there is life and peace. We have choices about where we will focus. These choices are ever before us even when it feels like we have no choice in the matter.

One of the things we use as an excuse for the claim we had no choice is "original sin". More clearly that might be put as "original lack of perspective". Put even better we might say our most typical characteristic is an "imitative lack of perspective", noting the way in which we use every sales technique at our disposal in order to make our repetitive and imitative behavior seem to be important enough to be original.

It is important to radically define ourselves away from all the badness we could do to all the good you might create and share in. This is a shift from Sin to Grace. Paul puts it in terms of Flesh and Spirit but it has become all too easy for this to fall back into "original sin" or "imitative lack of perspective" perspectives. If we lived in his day his language may have made more sense. Another way to put this is to imagine a shift from Entitlement to Compassion.

Any way we try to cut this one it keeps coming back to a question of basic orientation. Do you sense a Spirit of Compassion available to you or do you experience the Flesh of Entitlement directing your time and energy expenditures? If it is not something within, do you see a clearer choice between the Mercy of G*D and the Judgment of G*D so that you might more consistently choose mercy?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 

 

The church in Rome might also hear that to set the mind on death is to focus on flesh and to set the mind on life and peace is spirit work. These things are not one-way orientations. If we take death as an advisor for what to pay attention to in life, we might name death a spiritual advisor. Likewise, life and peace find their context in death, what transforms it, redeems it, resurrects it.

And so Ezekiel's bones cry out as much as the spirit of the Lord. Lazarus' flesh cries out as much as do Martha and Mary and Jesus. Out of the depths comes a cry for new life and that is tied in with forgiveness.

The Lord needs to deal with forgiveness issues with those lying in the valley of dust. Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus have forgiveness issues with one another. Forgiveness is still a key element in our lives and deaths that desires resolution beyond every opportunity for resolution. A key question: how we are doing with our forgiving and receiving of forgiveness?

- - -

O so slow we are
to establish a relationship
on and in and through
forgiveness

justice calls for it
and justice grinds slow
but it does surface
even from the dead

forgiveness drives
a hard bargain
as steadfast love's
altar ego

it will not give up
until satisfied
slow or fast
eventually

leaving us a choice
cooperation early
prolonged resistance
but no choice

bones will rise
flesh will be unwrapped
death becomes spirit
peace becomes flesh

fear not O crier
from deep places
there is forgiveness
wait - hope - redeem

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

 

 

Peering behind the word "condemnation" is this interesting definition of its Hebrew root: "by one's good example to render another's wickedness the more evident and censurable."

This sets Jesus and like avatars as background against which we better see ourselves and open choices of how we are going to proceed. This sort of condemnation sets a more positive direction than that of a doing away with, an annihilating. This sort of condemnation helps look at an otherwise dualistic split of flesh and spirit - it keeps them related.

This sort of condemnation stops short Paul's description of sinful dead bodies versus righteous spirit living. When we move beyond that dichotomy we find the mortal connected with the immortal and any other either/or approach to life.

There is more than one way to arrive at relational unities rather than divisive dualities. For those in the Christian tradition these days it is important to listen to the last verse. From The Message: "When [G*D] lives and breathes in you (and [G*D] does, as surely as [G*D] did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With [G*D's] Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!"

Imagine G*D in you, you in G*D. If that doesn't enliven, I wonder what would.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/04/romans-81-11.html