Leaning Into Lent | Week 4 | New Testament (3-18-26)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hey everybody, it is uh Wednesday. We're going through our normal pattern where on Monday we go through the Old Testament lesson, Wednesday the New Testament epistle, and Friday the gospel lesson. We're journeying through the lectionary text all during Lent. Each week we've had a different pastor with us. Um this week we're so grateful for the Reverend uh Michael Prack being with us today. He is the senior pastor at Fair Hope United Methodist Church. And uh he and I got the privilege to work together a dolphin way, and so thank you for continuing to be with us this week, Michael. Glad to be here, wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Sneak attack. Um because we obviously record all these on the same day. Don't give away the secret. Well, welcome behind the fourth wall, everybody. Um we're gonna jump into Romans 8, uh, verses 6 through 11. I have tried to summarize some of the epistles at times, and it ends up like not working. So it's just easier to read what is the epistle test like text like that. There's limits. Yep. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the spirit. If indeed the spirit of God lives in you, and if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you. Thus ends the reading from Romans. Um first pass, you know, what are some things that you hear that stick out to you, things you haven't heard before, questions of the text, just kind of anything that comes up from your initial reading.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

First thing that comes to me is just that I've got to figure out um what is the distinction in the flesh and the spirit. Um that is a thing that comes up often in Paul's writing, and especially in Romans and in this passage, it seems really, really important that if you're going to understand what on earth he's talking about, you've got to have some summary or understanding of what is the flesh and what is the spirit, and how do we distinguish between whether I'm living in the flesh or living in the spirit.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, that's a good word. As um I'm just inundated right now with uh all the linting connections, all the lectionary kind of relationships. I am drawn to how uh like every other week, we have these thematic connections where this idea of the spirit living in you was such a big part of what we talked about on Monday about Ezekiel. And here we are, where uh this is basically all Paul is talking about. Um you live according to the flesh or you live in the spirit. If you live according to the spirit, it's because uh it is living within you. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But of the spirit, if you live by the spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of your body and you will live. Um that's the verses right after what we just read. And it's just kind of this idea of if there is the spirit of God in you, you will do good, and if there is not, you will be at these dry bones that we talk about in Ezekiel. So I I like I've been making these, it's been fun for me this whole season of Lent making these connections from text throughout the scriptures. Is there anything from you on the first pass that you want to highlight?

SPEAKER_02 3:28

I think I mean it's it's nothing like earth shattering or anything, but there was um I might have been the NIV, I read it in a different version at first, and um in verse eight, it had said those who are in the flesh are incapable of pleasing God. And that that language just like stood out to me because it's not, you know, it'll be hard for you to please God, or you know, you're gonna have a hard time, or something like that. It was you're incapable of doing that if that's the way you live. And so seeing it that version in the in our SB, it just says, you cannot. But the word incapable, I was like, Yeah, that's a ditz.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

As we move into kind of the context of this particular scripture, uh, as I've said earlier, this is the uh we have Romans four times during Lent as our epistle lesson. You know, often the gospel will be chronological and follow it the same gospel in a lectionary year, you know, through all the stories. Uh, but the epistle lessons on the old testament lessons are often drawn to make connections to that, but Romans has come up a bunch because this whole Lenten season there's been a big emphasis on living by the grace of God, having faith, not being uh subject to the works or the laws. And so we've been we've been hearing about this a lot. And we um one of the things that I just keep coming back to is just how dense Romans is.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah. Oh real.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

It is uh it is such a a heavy book, not in a like an emotional way, but like it just takes some work to get through it. And not and I mean get through like a oh, we gotta you know get from the beginning to the end, but like to really understand, to live with, to to hear what Paul is trying to do, is as we said, this is his theological manifesto. This is his my culmination of all the work that I've been doing. I'm now sharing with you all my thoughts about what I think about things. And it's got a lot of um every section has so much to unpack.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

And here we are again, doing absolutely, yeah. And to me, when I read Romans, I think this is the difference between Paul when he's writing to people he knows about a situation that's specific, yeah, uh, to when he's writing as he does in the book of Romans to people he's not visited before, uh to a church he didn't found and he's not writing because of an occasion. Um, I think theologically and and spiritually that has a lot to do with us um or for us, and that you know, as a pastor, sometimes people want to come and ask me very big picture questions. And I want to talk through those answers, but it feels like maybe it'd be more helpful if we kept it really small, if we kept it very localized, if we s if we talked about this particular consideration and we put names and faces in specifics, and we don't have to answer everything for all time. I may not give you a principle that applies to all situations, yeah, but maybe we can find something specific. When you go big, you end up like Romans. Yeah, you can say something true, but it might take you the rest of your lifetime to even understand it.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, yeah. I um as we talk about kind of the tension here or um the convictions you feel, some things when you ask questions of the text. I'll be honest and say, like uh you were naming what you where you started, Michael, is very uh prudent for me in the sense of this idea of flesh and fleshment and being in spirit. And I do worry that sometimes we read texts like this. Um, it's the same body, right? We're talking about the same human incarnational body. And flesh for Paul is not the same thing as like the physical who God has created you to be only. There's a carnal nature to it. And so I think when I hear text like this, I worry about us leaning into a theology of disembodiment, of like, then I'll fly away, and how the spirit isn't better than like, so we don't have to care for the earth, we don't have to care for ourselves, who cares if you eat fried chicken for every meal? It just denigrates, I think, the creation and the incarnational nature of who God has made us to be. Whenever we separate the parts of ourselves into spiritual and physical, with spiritual being better and physical being not good. And whenever we denigrate the physical nature, we we la we lose the appreciation of the fact that Jesus chose to be a human.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah. Jesus chose to put on flesh. And wants to give us flesh at the end. Yeah. There's gonna be a resurrection. Flesh is so important that God's not gonna let it go away. Right. Um, but the whole the whole project of salvation is about giving us an immortal flesh, a resurrected body. Um, people have made their entire um PhD about what does the flesh mean? And it's this uh this image that Paul uses that is so fluid and has multiple meanings. And so you're never gonna be able to pin it down and say, this is what he means without leaving out like three other things that he means. But I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna leave out and when I read flesh and spirit uh in the book of Romans, the place I start is in my mind to replace those words with temporary and eternal. That's good. Um, short term versus long term. What makes the flesh difficult or problematic, that idea of the flesh in the book of Romans, is the fact that it's governed by death. And I think of how much of our sinfulness ultimately comes back to our fear of death or our realization of death. You've heard me say many times um that I think half of all sins come from impatience. This sense that we don't have enough time, and so we have to resort to anger to get something done. We have to resort to um any number of shortcuts to get our satisfaction or get what we want, rather than trusting that love wins out, rather than trusting in our hope uh and in faith. And so when we think we don't have enough time, all that means to me is we remember we're gonna die.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

I don't want to waste my life doing this. And what I hear Paul saying is as long as you keep your eye on what's eternal, as long as you are keeping the biggest of all big pictures and longest of all long terms in mind, you'll realize that you always have enough time to do what you should do. Right. And to do it in time and in keeping with Christ and the spirit. Um, and if you can take that c that shot clock out of your mind, uh stop thinking short term and always think, how is this gonna matter in eternity? You begin to get a uh for me, what is a helpful way of thinking about flesh versus spirit um and not just reducing it to like physical stuff doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah. Yeah. And more than anybody, Michael, you you've helped me have that kind of perspective of if there is eternity, there's always enough time. And and I think that's something we do miss so much. So I appreciate you bringing that back up. Um anything else that kind of just stood out to you as either a tension or a conviction or something that you know you you hear here and you're just kind of like wrestling with within your soul before we ridge it to our practical lives too. All right. Um, so one of the things I thought of, and if I were to preach this text, or if I were to try to give some nuggets or takeaways or something like that, is is where do you see death creeping in? Um I think the impatience is a good word, but also like if in flesh, if flesh for um for Paul is not the physical, it's just the the sinfulness, the thing that is not good, where do you see death creeping into your life? So is it like cynicism, defensiveness, exhaustion because you're not able to keep up with life? I almost be like these are the parts of flesh that um we all know, but we don't name as the evil that they are, right? The destructive nature of like automatically being defensive. The destructive nature of like I'm always so tired that I never have time to do things. So I don't know anybody. And one of the things I'm trying to be better about is not automatically just like bashing anything. Right. Like this movie isn't the best movie, it's a terrible movie, but or um assuming that I can preach that text better than somebody else or whatever. Like I think cynicism is such a prevalent part of how we live our lives to assume that we do it better, that we think better. But that's flesh. I mean, that is not eternal, that is not spirit-filled. And so if I were to, you know, kind of help somebody navigate this text in a in a preaching capacity, I I would kind of go that direction. Where is death, where is flesh kind of creeping in in way in ways that you don't recognize.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I think that it's important to recognize that like that that does happen. Um it kind of makes me think of simultaneously being both sinner and saint and recognizing that that they do exist at the same time and like those things do creep in. But like I am certainly sinful, I am human, but you know, praise God that that's not what defines me in just recognizing those things and coming to terms with them and addressing them. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Y'all both um are right, and that's what you should preach, especially in Lent. And is the time to to remember that we are mortal, to remember death, to be on attention, be at attention, to to look for where death is creeping in. Um, but for the sake of the zag, um, I'll add in a different perspective or another thing to consider here, um, which is to look at your own life and ask, where could I let life creep in? And specifically, I go to that last verse um that uh if the spirit of him is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies who lives in you. And that verse reminds me um that we should be doing some things that don't make any sense unless we believe we're gonna be resurrected. There should be something in my life that looks like a waste of time unless one day God's gonna look back on it and say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. It's not gonna bear any fruit right now, it's not gonna make a difference right now, but I believe that we'll be remembered in eternity and that that's gonna compound and one day it'll be the most important thing in the world. And so as I look at this, I do want to be on uh on guard about where is death creeping in. But I also want to ask, is there any place I'm letting life creep in? Is there any place I'm doing something that doesn't make sense unless there's gonna be a resurrection? You sound like somebody who's read a lot of Wendellberry.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

I suppose, yeah. Yeah. That sounds a lot like the Mad Farmer's Liberation Front. Resurrection. Uh, yeah. Plant sequoias. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Absolutely. Yeah, that's good. Well, I think that's a good place to land it here. Um, or what is worth I did have Where Do You Find Life Caribbean, too? I just didn't I left that one for you. That's what we're the same. We got the same mind. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Does she roll her eyes? Yes, she did. That's okay. I'm gonna ask you to pray for us, Pastor Michael.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

God of it all. God of flesh and spirit, God of the good creation, God who tends us even in death, and who speaks life even when we can't see how it will happen. We give you thanks for dense words that are worth pondering and returning to over and over again. We thank you that they remind us that we'll never have you figured out, but that we will always need to return to you. And we pray that in this season of Lent we might be on guard against anything that might call us towards death, and we might be aware that in every single moment you are breathing life into the world. May we see it, may we claim it, may we inhale it so that your life may be in us, and therefore we can exhale a word of life for others. In Jesus' name and in your spirit's power we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Amen. Thank you so much. Uh, we'll see you all on Friday.