Pentecost 5

“To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace"

13^th July 2014

Sermon by Peter Davey

Readings:

Romans 8: 18 – 23

Matthew 13: 1 – 9

Do you ever listen to a reading from one of Paul’s letters and think to yourself, “Now what on earth was all that about?” This is particularly true for me, I find, when the reading is taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Did you know that Martin Luther considered the Letter to the Romans to be the most important book in the New Testament. In his well-known Preface to his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans he writes, “This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian’s while not only to memorise it word for word, but also to occupy himself with it daily as though it were the daily  bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious  it becomes and the better it tastes” Now I suspect that if I asked for a show of hands of those of you who have memorised Romans or meditate upon it daily, I somehow doubt there would be many hands raised!

Part of the difficulty of understanding a short extract from Paul’s Letter to the Romans is that without the previous explanation of various terms that Paul uses, it all seems very theological and complex. For example, in today’s reading from Romans 8, Paul uses terms like sin, flesh and law, but he has explained what he means by these terms earlier in the Letter. The fact is that Paul was not writing to fellow theologians, he was writing to ordinary Christians like you and me. For this reason Paul explains the words he uses in simple terms that we can understand. Let us take the word sin for example. Nowadays the word sin is felt to be rather old fashioned and theological, but in Chapter 7 verse 19 Paul explains what sin is in one brilliant sentence. He writes, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” This is not a theological statement, but a psychological statement about the human condition which we can all relate to. How often do we do say or think something out of anger, irritation, envy, small-mindedness, greed, lust  or just plain selfishness, and regret it immediately? It is as if something came over us and we couldn’t help ourselves and we just came out with it or thought it. Well what came over us was what Paul calls sin. What Paul is saying in today’s reading is that we are a slave to this sin as however hard we try, we cannot stop ourselves doing, saying or thinking  these so-called evil things. “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do”. 

Every time we say,  do or think  something unpleasant, we resolve not to do it again but only to do, say or think good things. But so often we fail. This is because they are engrained in us in our unconscious mind through habit  and try as we might, we cannot change them. We are slaves to our habits. In other words we are slaves to our own sense of self and we cannot stop ourselves being selfish. So does that mean there is nothing we can do? Well this is the good news that Paul is telling us! There is nothing we can do, but Christ Jesus is the one who can liberate us from ourselves. It is only the Spirit of Christ that can set us free. There is nothing we can do but let go of our sense of self, and the Spirit of Christ will act for us and through us. Only the Spirit of Christ in our hearts can truly love others and allow us to be patient and kind and gentle and good. .

So how can we practically allow the Spirit of Christ to live in us? I would like to share with you a vlittle technique that I find very useful. When you feel yourself getting angry or irritated or envious, just take 3 slow breaths and be aware of your breath in your body and that your breath is the Spirit of Christ dwelling  in you. This has the affect of stopping that unwanted thinking  before any action or speech can take place. You will, of course, not catch yourself every time but over time this technique can help us overcome our unwanted habitual thinking. As Paul puts it in today’s reading, To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”. By setting our minds on the breath of Christ in us, we can find peace and the true life of freedom from self.

But why is this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans coupled with our Gospel reading? Well in our Gospel reading this morning Jesus himself put this same insight in the form of the parable of the sower sowing seed. In the parable Jesus tells us that it is not enough to hear the word, to enter the Kingdom of heaven we have to let go of all our selfish desires and ambitions, all our sense of status  and intellect, and allow the seed of Christ’s Spirit to dwell in us and transform us from within. The seed must be sown in our hearts  and we must feed and water these good seeds so that we can bear fruit, some 100 fold, some 60 fold and some 30 fold.

And Paul tells us that it is essential to remember that we cannot bear good fruit at all if we rely on our self. The self must die to allow Christ to bear fruit in us. We must say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me”. As Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,being born in human likeness, and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient the point of death, even death on a Cross”.

So let us meditate on the cross every day, taking up our cross daily as jesus himself directed,  and so remind us that we have died  to self, are dead to sin, and now live in Christ Jesus. Life in the Spirit sets us  free to bear the fruit of the Spirit and so love   everyone we come in contact with in the way that Jesus loved. This is the purest gospel that Martin Luther spoke of. In Paul’s words in our reading, “But if Christ be in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”