To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law - indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
(Romans 8:6-11)
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The story of Narcissus has always fascinated me. It comes from ancient Greek mythology. Narcissus was a handsome man - the most handsome man in the world, according to the myth. People fawned over him. Men wanted to be seen with him; women - well - women just wanted him. He was so handsome that the world was at his doorstep, so to speak. Whatever he wanted he could have had. His life could have been full of everything that anyone had ever dreamed of. But Narcissus had one fatal flaw. He knew how handsome he was, and because he was so handsome he started to look down his nose at everyone else. No one was good enough for him. He spurned human companionship; he cared nothing for those around him. One day, he looked into a pool of water and he saw his own reflection for the first time. He had never seen such a beautiful creature. It must have been the only creature in the world that he could possibly consider worthy of him. Narcissus was smitten with his image. He fell in love with the reflection he saw in the pool of water. He looked and looked and looked. He couldn't drag himself away from the beautiful creature staring back at him. He stared and stared and stared. And eventually he died, having lived his life alone, with only his own image for companionship, having rebuffed every effort that anyone had made to befriend him. The myth has given birth to a recognized psychological condition called "narcissism" - which refers to people who are fixated on themselves and their own appearance and with how people perceive them.
I don't propose to get into the psychological issues around narcissism - basically because I'm not qualified to do that. But the story and the idea interests me. How many people shut themselves off from people, from the world and from life in any meaningful way because they become obsessed with themselves in one way or another? Obviously we all have needs that have to be met, but it becomes a problem when we simply become fixated on ourselves - because when that happens our focus tends to be less on our needs and more on our wants. We want to satisfy our desires. We expect others to satisfy our desires for us. Everything revolves around us. And when that happens, we stop enjoying life, because the enjoyment and the richness of life come from our interactions and relationships with others; from engaging the world around us rather than withdrawing from that world; from being challenged and changed by new experiences rather than by being set in our ways and unable to make room for anything new or different. Narcissus withdrew and Narcissus died alone. Narcissists risk the same fate.
“It takes a leap of faith to open ourselves to life ...,” is what Alan Brehm wrote. I think he's right. It may sound strange, but the reason it takes a leap of faith to open ourselves to life is because opening ourselves to life is actually quite risky. To truly live you have to take chances; you can't keep everything neat and tidy; you can't hide yourself away. You also can't become obsessed with yourself and your own life - because that's not real life. Jesus said that “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Those twenty words contain a huge amount of wisdom. If you spend your whole life being consumed with the thought of saving your life, you're never really going to be able to live your life. Jesus was talking about living with a willingness to give yourself away, but many people are too consumed with saving themselves to do that. So are many churches. How many churches do I know who seem to survive for the sake of surviving; whose idea of mission is to keep the doors open for another month, but for very little reason other than keeping the doors open. They struggle to live, cutting budgets and cutting programs and doing less and less ministry, thinking that will somehow help them survive - but all is really does is stop them from living. For the church to be the church the church has to be willing to take chances. A church that follows Jesus - who willingly set his sights on Jerusalem, knowing that his chosen route would lead him to the cross - needs to be willing to risk itself sometimes rather than simply play it safe. The same can be said for individual Christians. If we don't take a few chances, we're not really following Jesus, and if we're not following Jesus, then - well - what are we doing, and what's the purpose?
Paul understood that. That's why, in today's reading, he wrote that "to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. To set your mind on your flesh means to be consumed with yourself - your own needs, your own wants and your own desires. Setting everything else aside, that's a hard way to live, because while you might satisfy all your needs, and you might get most of what you want, there are always going to be things that you desire that don't come your way. If all you're focussed on is yourself you can never truly live, because simply put life will then always be consumed either by frustration over the things we can't get or by the fear of what happens if we don't get them. That's a hard way to live. In fact, it's not really life. But it's hard to live any other way. We want to set our mind on the flesh because the flesh is what we're familiar with - it's what we see and know. When he speaks of "the flesh" Paul doesn't just mean the body we live in. That's part of it, but Paul is also referring to the whole material world around us. The flesh is everything we can see and touch and smell; it's everything our senses respond to. We think of that as life. We fight for that life. We want to hold on to it. But Paul says something different. Paul says that life is found by letting go of the flesh and by focussing on the Spirit, and what he means here is God's Spirit; not our spirits or souls. Paul isn't telling us to focus on the next life, or heaven or eternity - because if we do that we're thinking again of ourselves and our own well being. He's specifically saying that we have to set our mind on the Spirit of God, and on how the Spirit of God directs us in the here and now, because the Spirit of God directs us to real life. And the Spirit of God, revealed to us by the prophets, revealed to us by Jesus, revealed to us by the Scriptures and even revealed to us by our own consciences tells us not to live for ourselves but for others. We have to let go of ourselves in other words, and embrace what the Spirit of God is doing in our lives and through our lives to offer this life that we've discovered to others.
This Spirit of God - this Spirit of God that Alan Brehm referred to as "the wonderful and unpredictable Spirit that is flowing so freely and so full of life all around us” is the source of our life, and this Spirit of God we must embrace if we are to live as God wants us to live.
It's risky business, being led by the Spirit. Jesus was led by the Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness - a story we read about when we began the Season of Lent. And, ultimately, the Spirit led Jesus to Jerusalem, to Pilate, to Golgotha and to the cross. We haven't arrived at Good Friday yet, but today we do find life in the strangest place - in the midst of Lent, at the table of the Lord, where we commemorate the Lord's death. It's odd - but this is where we find life. In the willingness of Jesus to sacrifice, and in the ultimate hope we encounter here - because we know that his death wasn't the end. As we say during the Communion litany, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." But even more - he's here now. Offering us new life. As Paul wrote, "if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you." May we claim that life for ourselves. May we truly learn to live for others. Only then can we be sure that Christ is in us.
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