A guy named John lived in the first century before Christ in Judea. He lived out in the desert, away from the comforts of towns and cities. He only ate bugs and wild honey, and he only wore animal skins, no woven fabrics. His simple lifestyle drew people to him, and he baptized his followers in a river. There is something about a guy going off into the desert that intrigues people. Something about a guy that only eats bugs that intrigues people. Maybe, we think, he knows something that we don’t. Maybe that’s how we find God.
A guy named Paul from the ancient city of Thebes in Egypt lived in the third century AD. They say that in his twenties Paul fled to the desert to escape persecution and lived in a cave. And he lived in that cave for the rest of his life. He ate only fruit from the palm tree outside his cave—I guess that’s dates or coconuts or something—and drank only water from a nearby spring. Paul lived the life of a hermit, he lived simply and he prayed. Paul also drew people to him, and other holy men sought his blessing and advice. There’s something about a guy who lives in a cave eating only dates or coconuts or whatever that intrigues people. Maybe that’s how we find God.
A guy named Simeon, known today as the Stylite, lived in the fifth century near Aleppo in what is now Syria. He was a zealous Christian even as a child and entered a monastery before his sixteenth birthday. The monks found him to be a little too anti-social even for them, and they kicked him out. He went up into the mountains and decided he would find God by living really simply in sort of a narrow place among the rocks that was only about 200 square feet. People heard about Simeon and went to the mountains to seek his advice and blessings. But he’s anti-social, remember, and wants to get away from them. So he decided he would have to live somewhere even more extreme: He climbed a pillar a few dozen feet high and built himself a 10 square foot platform on the top of a pillar, and he lived there out in the wind and the rain. The only food he got was passed up to him by young boys who would climb the pillar with bread and goat’s milk. And he spent his days in prayer, often bowing deeply so that his forehead approached his feet. He stayed on the pillar until he died, more than 30 years after he first got up there. People were drawn to Simeon. There’s something about a guy who won’t come down off of a pillar that intrigues people. Maybe living out in the wind and the rain and only drinking goat’s milk for decades is how we find God.
Asceticism, or self-denial, is a very ancient practice, as these examples show. And it has a kind of universal appeal. We all sort of know innately that denying ourselves some of the things that our bodies want is, to some degree, good for us. When I lived in Los Angeles, for instance, everyone was doing some kind of colon cleanse. The most interesting one, I thought, was the one where you were supposed to eat only hot sauce and lemon juice for a week. That seemed like it would definitely cleanse. But my point is that even the non-Christian world—even the heathens of Los Angeles—understand that there is something powerful about self-denial. And even those of us who don’t consider ourselves ascetics, subsisting on bugs or hot sauce or living in caves or up on pillars, even we are intrigued by these extreme ascetic feats. We see something powerful in these acts.
Paul’s text from Romans tonight almost seems to suggest that we too should follow some kind of extreme ascetic practice. “If you live according to the flesh you will die,” he says. That seems like a call to asceticism. “If you put to death the deeds of the body,” he says, “you will live.” That sounds like Paul wants us to deny ourselves. “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God,” he says, “and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” That sounds like Paul wants us to climb up a pillar and eat bugs and coconuts or maybe hot sauce. And we know that doing those kinds of things probably would have a powerful effect on our lives.
But I hate bugs. And I’m also terrible at living on a pillar.
And I think that’s ok.
Paul’s letter to the Romans definitely seems to set up this choice between the flesh and God. He seems to say that we can’t have God if we also have the flesh. But I’m not sure we have to deny ourselves in the same ways that some of the early saints of the church did.
Living in the spirit is about more than just what we eat or where we live, isn’t it? Living in the spirit is about how we think, isn’t it? Or what we think about, right? “To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace,” says Paul in Romans. So this thing that we have to do is more about our minds than our bodies. What, then, should we do with our minds? What, then, should we think about? Paul’s language about “The Spirit” is so vague, so nebulous and squishy. What, exactly, is the spirit?
For me, I go back to Jesus on the mount. And he gives that sermon where he reveals that the big secret of God isn’t bugs or caves or pillars or colon cleanses, but just Love. Love God, love your neighbor he says in that big sermon he gives on the mount. On these two hang all the law and the prophets. So I have to believe that when Paul says “the Spirit,” he means Love. And if Paul says focus your mind on Love, then that is something I’m going to be better at than some kind of ascetic life. I can think about Love. I can love my neighbor. I can look at the folks around me and show them love. I can look at the folks around me and try to figure out how to show them love. Are they hungry or ill? Are they lonely or depressed? Do they have needs that I can help meet? Of course they do! But if we are focused on our own flesh, how can we possibly see our neighbors’ needs and respond to them? If we are focused on our own flesh, how can we possibly do the things that Christ commanded us to do for our fellow humans? If our minds are focused on our own flesh, how can we see the Spirit?
So whether you fast or not, whether you go out onto the plains to live on nothing but hot sauce and lemon juice or not, this yearly observance of Lent is a great time to refocus our minds on the life of the spirit, a life focused not on ourselves but on others.
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