Frankenstein: flesh and spirit
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
February 16, 2020—Epiphany 6A
Sirach 15:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
It can be hard, in this world, to figure out which thing is the monster. Look at our bulletin cover, for instance. We see the picture, and we say, “Oh, it’s Frankenstein.” But even those of us who’ve read the book struggle to remember that Frankenstein isn’t the name of the monster; it’s the name of the doctor. The monster never gets a name. In fact, while we leap to call him a monster, he always refers to himself as a creature.
In fact, it’s that very tendency to recoil and label that fuels the horror of the story, driving the creature’s loneliness and growing agitation. He wants love and connection, but what he gets from his creator is fear and revulsion. The doctor flees, leaving his creature alone. And from there, pain and guilt spin out in a tragic cycle of destruction.
So really, who is the monster? Is it the disfigured creature, alive with eloquence, rejection, and rage? Or is it the man whose ego drove him to knit together parts of flesh and try to give it life, only to have no idea what to do with him once he succeeded?
I started thinking about this, when I was wrestling with that passage from First Corinthians. In it, Paul seems to be setting up a comparison between flesh and spirit that makes flesh the monster. “I could not speak to you as spiritual people,” he says, “but rather as people of the flesh.” As though our flesh is the lumbering and dangerous creature that must be fled or overcome to get to our higher, spiritual nature.
And certainly, there were early Christians who believed this. A group called the Gnostics, in particular, believed the material world to be under the rule of a lesser god, and insisted that salvation could only come through escaping this world of flesh into the spiritual realm. This they attempted through extremes of fasting, meditation, or even death.
Gnosticism, let me be clear, was declared a heresy. Still, that dualism (the idea that flesh and spirit are somehow separable, and that flesh is the lesser of the two) crept around the edges of the New Testament, and the influence of Greek philosophical thought only strengthened that idea as the church spread.
Paul has clearly drunk a little bit of that kool-aid. He uses flesh and spirit as a metaphor for stages on a spiritual journey, and flesh is definitely the bunny hill. But I don’t think he believes we can or should transcend our flesh. It’s just that Paul is extremely … wary of the flesh. He refers elsewhere to thorns and temptations he experiences in his flesh. He has struggled, and he has suffered. He knows that to have a body is to wrestle with such things, possibly your whole life. And part of him very definitely wishes he could escape that reality.
But the fact is, Jesus is an incarnate savior, and our salvation is an incarnate salvation that includes both flesh and spirit. They are bound together, in this form God created us to be. We are creatures of flesh and spirit, and both of those things will tempt and perhaps even torture us as Paul was. But that combination of flesh and spirit is also what allows us to love, to pray, to trust, and to show kindness.
They are, then, what makes it possible for us to follow the commandments, as our first reading insists that we can do if we choose. And they are also what will allow us to choose badly, over and over and over.
Which is, many would argue, the reality that underlies that jaw-dropping speech Jesus gave on that mountain. “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit murder,’” he says, and most of us will manage that. “’But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment’”? Now we’re all in trouble. And that’s the point Jesus is making: none of us will EVER do it perfectly. We will fail, over and over. Because we are both spirit and flesh. We are working out our salvation in these mortal bodies, and we will always be working out our salvation in these mortal bodies. So we will make good decisions sometimes, but we will definitely make bad decisions as well. Thinking that we can avoid that, if we only try hard enough: it is NOT TRUE. And it’s really, really exhausting!
So, thank God for Jesus.
Because Jesus might not have abolished the commandments, but he HAS fulfilled them. That’s how he began this whole section (though it was cut off the reading), telling us that we can’t complete them, but he can. He DID. He did it not just by living as sinless a life as possible, but by allowing himself to be completely swallowed up by the very worst of human sin (the greed, the fear, the brutality of the world). He was put to death by an array of political, religious and economic powers, but then he was raised from the dead as a sign that God’s power is greater than any of these.
He fulfilled the commandments; he completed the covenant that binds God to God’s people. So, we can still work to live by the commandments, and let the light of Jesus shine through us by doing so. But we can let go of the idea that we need to, that we ever could live them out perfectly.
Which means we can forgive ourselves for this inability.
And while we’re at it, we can forgive each other. Did you notice that, in the middle of his speech? He’d been pointing out the ways in which we will SURELY mess things up, and his advice is not to try harder. It’s to forgive each other. Learn to admit your mistakes and ask for forgiveness. Learn to see others’ mistakes and offer forgiveness. Work it out. Do it now, he insists, because nothing is more important. Do it, or you will pay the cost for ever.
Honestly, that’s the great gift and call of the church. Not to follow the rules, or even to teach others to follow the rules. But to model forgiveness. To live out the deep truth and power of forgiveness. To offer it, proclaim it, and believe it.
Because every last one of us needs it. Every last one of our tortured, exhausted souls. Without it, we will never be able to accept the salvation that is in Jesus. Without it for ourselves, we will be mired in guilt, anxiety, and despair. Without it for others, we will be destroyed by pride, division, and resentment.
Look, our ability to forgive will also be imperfect. But it’s a more faithful place to focus our energy. And the more we can trust in Jesus’ forgiveness of each of us, the more forgiveness will live in us. In our spirit, and in our flesh.
No matter what travails Paul suffered, the flesh isn’t the monster. Jesus may have observed in Gethsemane that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41), but as far as it’s possible to distinguish between the two, they can both be pretty weak. Which means both will necessitate forgiveness. Which means both can remind us of the great gift God gives us in Jesus. This, indeed, is good news. May we know it to be so. Amen.