In our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, we find St Paul discussing one of what we might call his favourite themes, which is his anthropology, his understanding of humanity, of what it means to be a human being. It would be very simple to say that St Paul has a dualistic understanding of human beings, that we’re made up of both a body and a spirit, which are often in conflict with one another. But that doesn’t really do justice to St Paul’s understanding of humanity, which is actually far more complicated than that.
For St Paul, human beings are very complicated creatures. We’re made up of a body, which is neither good nor evil and can be transformed and raised to life again after death, but our bodies are made of flesh which is evil and can’t. To simplify that, we might say that our bodies are about being in the world, whereas our flesh is about being of the world. We’re also made up of mind which allows us to contemplate and understand the ways of God, and of heart which motivates us to act in the way we do. Finally, we’re made up of soul, which is the essential and immortal part of human beings, and of spirit which is that part of us that can enter into relationship with God.
So, for St Paul, being human, and especially being human and a disciple of Christ, is a very complicated business. The inherent weakness and frailty of human beings as creatures of flesh and blood, constantly sets us against our inner self, our mind and heart, and our soul and spirit, so that, as St Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans:
‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.’
So, for St Paul, the real problem with being human, and a disciple of Christ, isn’t that we don’t know how to do what God wants us to do, nor that we don’t want to do it, it’s that the weakness and inherent sinfulness of our bodies of flesh and blood conspires against us to stop us being the good, Christian people we know we should be, and actually want to be.
But that leaves us with quite a problem doesn’t it, because in this morning’s reading St Paul warns us that,
‘… we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.’
But if we don’t do the good that we want to do, but only the evil we don’t want to do, that’s going to leave us with quite a lot to answer for isn’t it? So how can we deal with that problem?
Well, having set the problem, it seems St Paul also supplies the answer because, as he says in his Letter to the Romans,
‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’
And for St Paul, it is always Jesus who is the answer. His death frees us from sin, his resurrection is our promise of eternal life, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is the guarantor of these things. So, regardless of the evil our flesh might have compelled us to do whilst we’ve been inhabiting our earthly bodies, it’s always better to be with Christ than to be in our bodies. And so, as we read this morning, St Paul can say;
‘… we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.’
But of course, to be at home with the Lord in the way St Paul means it in our reading this morning, means to be with Christ in our heavenly home, and we might like to be at home with Christ before we get there. And the good news for us is that we can be. We can be at home with Christ, in a spiritual sense at least, by entering the kingdom of God and, as we know, God’s kingdom is not just in heaven, but anywhere and everywhere God’s will is done. But where we ought to be able to find the kingdom most easily, is in the Church because the Church is called to be an earthly manifestation of God’s kingdom, a place where the world and it’s ways are not done, and God’s will is.
We know that God’s will is that all people should be saved, and so we know that his kingdom is open to all people. And that accords perfectly with what Jesus says in this morning’s Gospel when he says the kingdom,
” … is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
And if that’s the way it is in the kingdom, that’s the way it should be in the Church too. So there should be no place in the Church for the ‘We don’t want their sort here’ attitude we sometimes find amongst Church people. We always have to bear in mind that if entry to the kingdom was based on merit, we’d all have a pretty hard time getting in, if we could get in at all. And it’s just as well for us that is the case because, as St Paul says, we don’t do the good we should do and want to do, but rather the evil we shouldn’t do and don’t want to do. So the Church too must be open to all. And if it’s not, then the Church in that place isn’t a manifestation of God’s kingdom, but rather a manifestation of the sinfulness of the flesh.
None of us can stand in judgement on other people because, like them, we’re made up of the same stuff; we all have the same weakness, our flesh that’s prone to sinfulness. And so, when someone wants to be at home with the Lord in the Church, we should be more concerned about making sure they can be, rather than about the kind of person they are. They might not be the kind of people we’d choose to have in the Church, but it’s not our Church, and so just because they’re not our cup of tea, doesn’t mean God isn’t calling them. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.
A few years ago, before I was ordained, a few of us from the parish church were out for a drink when a certain lady came over and asked if she could join us.
Now, this lady was a well-known character in the parish. She drank like a fish, swore like a trooper and in her younger days, so it was said, including by some members of her own family, she’d been a ‘lady of the night’. Nevertheless, as Christians should, we invited her to sit down with us, and as soon as she had, she started asking us about the Church and our faith. As the time went on, a few people made their excuses and left until, in the end, there were just two of us still sat with her. After chatting to us for quite some time, she asked where she could buy a Bible, we told her, and with that she left us. We thought that was the end of it. But the next Sunday, the lady was in church, in fact she was in church every Sunday after that. She was confirmed and she became a regular pilgrim to Walsingham with us. That lady didn’t come to church after any prompting by the Church, she approached us out of the blue. She was, I’m sure, typical of the kind of person whom some would say, aren’t wanted in the Church. But, because of how she came to the Church and what happened afterwards, how devoted she was, I don’t think there’s much doubt that God wanted her there and called her to be there.
I tell you that story because, in a sense, that lady’s story is our story too. We might not have committed the same sins that she had, but nevertheless, we are all sinners. That lady might not have been worthy to enter this earthly manifestation of the kingdom of God we call the Church by her own merits, but neither are we. We’re all here for no other reason than that by some means and for some reason, God called us to be here because he wants us to be here. And that is good news, for all of us. It’s good news because it means that, despite the weakness of our flesh, despite the fact that we do the evil we don’t want to do rather than the good we do want to do, we can be of good courage and full of confidence that we will one day be at home with the Lord in heaven. Because why would God call us, we creatures of weak, sinful flesh, and want us to be at home with the Lord in the Church, his kingdom on earth, if he isn’t also calling us and wants us to be at home with Lord in his heavenly kingdom?
Amen.
The Propers for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 2) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 