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The Rev. Frank
Logue
The Struggle Within In case anyone arrived at church this morning with the misplaced notion that Christians have their acts together, that we are perfect persons, practically strumming harps on clouds, our second reading should have done away with that silly notion. Marian read a portion of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. I emphasize the “saint” in Saint Paul, for this isn’t even some backslidden disreputable person we are talking about, but the guy who wrote a quarter of the New Testament. Paul is honest about the struggle taking place within him. As this is only a part of a longer letter, I’ll help you catch up to where Paul is. He is writing about how the Law of Moses fits into the picture with Christianity. Perhaps this is why we read the 10 Commandments alongside this passage from Romans. Anyway, Paul has been making the case that the Jewish Law served the faithful well as they awaited and prepared for the Messiah. The Law of Moses taught them to understand God’s will and so to see what sin is—sin being those things which separate us from God. Paul told the Romans earlier in this same chapter, “We are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” For Paul, the life of the Spirit he found through Jesus perfected the law and so supersedes it. But before we get to feel spiritually superior to those bound to the written law, Paul makes it clear that there is still a struggle. Paul writes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” This is the war within Paul and within each of us. It is not a battle to determine what is right, though that can be part of our struggle. The battle Paul describes is to do what is right even once you know the right thing to do. The fight can be over something small, like not lying to avoid the more painful truth. Or something worse like not cheating to cover up a lack of studying. It can be the battle over big things, such as the daily victory of not taking a drink after coming to terms with alcoholism or drug addiction and getting into recovery. No matter where that struggle occurs for you, you know the battle. You may war within yourself about drugs or alcohol or gambling. Or maybe it is about sex or money. Perhaps the struggle is more about your own pride and vain desires for fame, or an overblown need for the admiration of others. What we are talking about is Sin. Sin with a capital “S” too. Sure Paul is writing about the struggles we face in not sinning, which involves sins with the “s” in lower case. But there is also something greater here. While Paul writes a quarter of the New Testament, he only refers to Satan 10 times. Most frequently Paul writes of Sin and Evil. This is more than the sum total of our sins. Sin is the total of all our sins, all the many sins we all do, together with the sins we do as a group, which we don’t intend. An example of this is the way both our desire and need for low cost products can lead to work practices in another part of the world that leave other people in virtually slavery. It’s an unintended consequence, but it is part of Sin. So there is the sin we do sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, there is the sin we do together as a society, and then there is the remainder. The Sin that is in the fallen world that seems to be beyond any of us. Scripture tells us this is the cost of a world that is fundamentally turned away from God. And all of this together is the capital “S” Sin of which Paul writes. Paul goes on to say that, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.” Paul lets us know that even as a mature Christian, he wrestles with sin living in him. He describes it as if he doesn’t even have complete control over his actions. Now if we pushed things too far at this point it would be as if we can’t have control over our own bodies and so we are not to blame. If even the saintly apostle Paul could not do what was right, why should I bother? Pushed to the extreme, the idea that we can not control ourselves would look rather silly. I’ll show you what I mean in a scene from the movie Beetlejuice. In this scene there are ghosts trying to chase a family out of their house and to do so, they make the people do things beyond their control. As you watch, consider whether Sin really has such a hold on you.
[show clip from Beetlejuice in
which the people around the table Now I know that was utter silliness to show. But it was not pure comic relief. We may struggle with Sin. We may face daily battles to do what is right. However, we are not being controlled against our will, being made to act in a particular way. When you decide to do what you already know to be wrong, you don’t experience it the way the people in the movie had their bodies moved in time to the music. The struggle is not against possession in that sense, but against your own sinful desires. There is an answer to this hamster wheel like cycle of chasing after the wrong things and never being happy. There is a way to not only will what is right, but to more and more frequently actually get it right. Our reading for today only hints at the answer. Paul reaches his conclusion about himself and then asks the question, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Then we get only the briefest glimpse at the answer as he says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Then he ends our reading for today rather cryptically saying, “So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.” All in all it is not very satisfying. The reason is that Paul did not know he was writing for a Sunday lectionary in which we would chop up his letters and read pieces here and there. Paul did intend for the letter to be read aloud in church. The problem is that that silly Paul thought we would read the whole letter to the Romans as one piece every time we read it. So he never thought we would read this part without pushing on. For Paul has now warned how we are held captive in our minds and in our flesh and he is holding out for a hero who seems to have not yet arrived. If we stop here and I push hard we could have had a rip roaring sermon about sin. I could have cranked up the knob on guilt and seen if I could have stoked the fires of self loathing or self hatred. I might have been able to beat a few people down enough so that they would want to turn to God in prayer, but a few others would just stumble on out to lunch, and everyone might wonder why you didn’t eat much. The vast majority of the congregation would tune me out about the time I shouted, “It’s just like Paul wrote earlier in Romans 3:23, ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’” You see it’s not that I can’t shout. It’s not that I can’t talk about sin. It’s not even that I can’t slip into guilt or self loathing myself. The problem is that I am stuck with the Bible. And Paul’s next words, though they are beyond this morning’s reading, make it clear that I have no license for a sermon on sin like that. Paul’s very next words are “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Paul says there is no condemnation, so this is no time for laying it on heavy with a guilt trip about how you people can’t ever do what is right. Paul lets us know that it is God’s spirit that sets us free from Sin and Death. We were its captives and then Jesus broke the bonds and set us free on the cross and then sent the Holy Spirit to complete the ongoing work of helping us to live into that freedom to follow Jesus wholly. Paul went on to write, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit.” In case we missed the consequences, Paul writes, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace…but you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Paul’s message isn’t Sin and Death and neither is mine. Unlike the people in the movie clip we saw, your actions are not beyond your control. Yes, there is a struggle within you to do what is right. Don’t worry, no matter how those around you look this morning, they are struggling too. They barely kept there religion while getting the kids dressed and to church this morning, so don’t feel like you are alone. There is a Native American story of a man who tells his grandchildren that there are two wolves inside of him fighting at all times to control him. One wolf is evil; the other is good. A granddaughter asks shyly a little nervousness creeping into her voice, “Which will win, grandfather?” He looks into her eyes and says, “Why, of course, the one I feed.” Paul says the same thing. If you feed the life of the flesh, you are feeding the evil within you that is working toward death. If you feed the spirit within you, you are feeding the good that is already on the path of life. This is not condemnation. This is the way the world works. But what Paul writes that is more important is that we are not alone in this struggle. It is not just us and the wolves within. Paul reminds us that we have God’s own spirit in our spirits. We do not have to determine good and evil on our own and we do not have to get will the good without support. We have the Spirit of God within us. This is why there is no condemnation. This is why we can win the war within us, even if we don’t win every battle. Your actions are not beyond your control, even if doing the good you want to do is and will continue to be a struggle. Feed the life of the spirit and you will find yourself strengthened for the fight. For, to paraphrase scripture, greater is that spirit which is in you than the Sin which is in the world. Amen.
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