Flesh & Spirit
“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16
A prominent element of the religious culture in which I grew up in the 60s and 70s was the ‘testimony’: people telling us how they had been ‘saved’; how they had come to faith.
They were amazingly varied and many of them very moving, and some quite remarkable: Peter in front of his TV in Australia; Mary in her wheelchair in the orphanage chapel; Kevin in a memorable restaurant called Fudpuckers.
But there was a genre, usually recounted by burnt out looking thirty-somethings (I see a number of you here this morning), which ran along the lines: “There was no sin and debauchery to which I had not sunk (sometimes they went on to add “and then at the age of five...”).
Yet others would give you a tantalising glimpse of the sins and broad hints of the debauchery of their misspent youth. And I would often sit and complain to God that I’d become a Christian far to early to get a good crack at debauchery.
Today’s epistle from Paul’s difficult letter to the Galatians, contains this list, which even as a child you would mentally tick off as we ran the gamut of the sins of the flesh. [I was never sure what ‘lasciviousness’ was, but by the very sound of it, I’d committed it...]
Paul’s teaching on ‘the flesh’, or rather a misinterpretation of it, gave rise to a number of heresies in the early church.
These heresies were both to do with the person of Christ, and also to do with our attitude to the human body and to sex in particular: docetism, modal monarchianism, ascetic gnosticism, antinomianism - the names remain in the minds of all theological students long after the contents of the heresies have been forgotten.
The Scriptures, and Paul himself, use the word ‘flesh’ to convey a variety of meanings. Here’s half a dozen of them:
1 - Meat - Ps 78:27 “He rained flesh also upon them as dust...”Or if you don’t like the biblical imagery of the fall in the garden of Eden, then you can follow Richard Dawkins and his ‘Selfish Gene’: we’re born that way - we’re part of nature, red in tooth and claw.
2 -The Body - the usually meaning of the Greek word ‘sarx’ (sarcasm - the rending of the flesh) - and of the equivalent Hebrew word for flesh.
3 - A Person - Gen 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
4 - People - human race - Isa 40:5 “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...”
5 - Frail human nature contrasted with God’s power - Mark 14:38 “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (You remember how the Russian translator struggled with this idiom and translated “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” by “The vodka is OK but the meat is terrible.”)
6 - Fallen and perverse human nature - “the lust of the flesh”.
Or indeed if you look into your own soul, you know that it is easier to be selfish and self-centred than to be generous and altruistic - that takes effort.
This 6th meaning is what Paul has in mind in here in Galatians and he goes on to amplify it.
His hit list of fallen human nature covers three dominant areas of our lives: sexuality, spirituality and society.
1 Sexuality - fornication, impurity, licentiousness
- the pursuit of sex as an end in itself, regardless of the feelings, responsibilities and respect we owe to each other - and to society. And to society - Christianity is essentially a communal faith where individual freedoms are moderated by social responsibility.
This is very difficult to work out in our divided society where there are very varied sexual mores. And of course some would argue that what we do in the bedroom is nothing to do with wider society. This was the late Abp Runcie’s view expressed in his candid biography.
In our understanding of human relationships, intimacy and sexuality, we must certainly hear scripture; and we must certainly pay heed to the tradition of the Church; but we must also listen to wider human society - and I don’t just mean its liberalising clamour, nor its sometimes reactionary response to embarrassed confusion.
We have to recognise that in the last four thousand years, guided by God, much has changed in this area, and much, inevitably, has yet to change. It is only the underlying principles of Christian behaviour which remain constant.
2 Spirituality - on Paul’s list, idolatry & sorcery
- the need for human kind to worship and the danger of worshipping ‘other gods’ of our own making. For example:
- the cult of self - the body beautiful and self-gratification - fuelled by theEach of us has our own personal idols which claim our devotion, may sap our energy and ultimately lead to disintegration and enslavement.
- the cult of money - the love of which is the root of all evil
- consumerism - shopping mall temples - Tesco ergo sum - retail therapy
- the cult of ‘my church’ - pride, intolerance and lack of Christian charity
- the cult of others - worshipping the lover, the spouse, the children
3 Society - enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing
- the ills which fragment community life and lead to distrust, social isolation, pain and anguish.
So Paul’s ‘lust of the flesh’ is not to be confused simply with desire and the enjoyment of our bodily appetites. It is not primarily to do with what the President of the US did with a young assistant; or with what King David did with a beautiful married woman.
It is about why they did it; whether they abused their charisma to achieve it; and what they did subsequently - privately and publicly. These are the lusts of the flesh.
So what is the Apostle’s solution to this civil war within us - the backcloth of so much human history, literature and art; the backcloth of our war-riven century; the backcloth of our own experience of the messiness of life.
It is to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit; to be what you are in Christ.
It is to have that attitude which was in Christ Jesus. Paul lists the fruit of this Spirit of Christ in relation to God, Others and Self.
God - love, joy, peace - these should be our characteristics.
Others - patience, kindness, generosity. I come across too many people in our churches who think a balanced personality means you have a chip on both shoulders.
Self - faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
We crucify the flesh: we make those moment by moment decisions to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit rather than to follow our demanding animal self - the lust of the flesh - the selfish gene. And we need not only the help of God’s Spirit, but of his Word and Sacraments, and of his people, and of the best of his world.
At it’s very simplest level, it is like the young boy standing by the apple barrel outside the grocer’s: “Are you trying to steal one of my apples?” “No sir, I’m trying not to.”
Paul uses two verbs in this passage to describe the process: being led by the Spirit and walking in the Spirit. The one is primarily passive. The other is active.
To be led by the Spirit is to follow our inner desire for holiness: to pursue the good and the beautiful.
St Mary’s is rightly known for the beauty of its music and liturgy. But this is can become idolatrous unless it is also known as a place of worship and prayer. The Spirit leads us to God.
Then Paul talks of actively walking in the Spirit - ‘keeping in step’ with the Spirit - running with the Spirit.
Two men are running away from a grizzly bear that is gaining on them. One man stops and starts putting on running shoes. The other one says “it’s no use, we’ll never outrun the bear.” “As he finishes tying the laces he says “I know. But I’ve only got to outrun you...”
Paul uses the competitive metaphor of the runner to talk of the disciplines of the spiritual life. These have been the mainstay of authentic Christianity down through the centuries, and they have nurtured the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - in the lives those who like us, try to follow Christ.
So we must put ourselves in places where we can be led by the Spirit, and not by our selfish desires. And as we do that we will continue to train ourselves through the spiritual disciplines so that we can walk in the Spirit. Then we will know increasing growth in holiness and re-orietning of our desires and attitudes.
“Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Gal 5:16
