Flesh and spirit, ego and soul. Paul’s language in Romans can feel dualistic and outdated until you begin to see what he is really getting at. This sermon reframes Paul’s words not as a war between body and soul, but as a tension between the part of you that lives as if everything depends on your own effort and the part that trusts something deeper.
You are invited to consider how much of your life is spent building fortresses around what you love, fencing it in, controlling the temperature, holding it all together at great cost. Through the vivid story of a church that wanted to encase a giant wax Last Supper in an air-conditioned fortress, you begin to see how easily we trade the living, breathing reality of love for a safe replica.
Paul’s concept of “the flesh” is not really about the body. It is about the ego, the false self that says your worth must be earned, your safety must be secured, and your identity depends on what you achieve, own, and control.
Like the old monkey trap where a hand reaches into a coconut and refuses to release the food inside, you can find yourself stuck, not because you are truly trapped, but because you will not let go. The spirit’s mindset, by contrast, holds that life is a gift rather than a possession. You do not have to earn your own worth. You can trust love more than fear, release your grip, and still be held.
“Deep hope flows over deep time. We are part of something bigger than this moment, bigger than our fear. We are brought at some point to the edge of what we can manage in our own little lives. Whether it’s illness or grief or loss or just waking up in the morning and reading the news. Our ego runs out of strength and it feels like death. But it’s right there just when we can’t hold ourselves together any longer that something deeper shows up. That is the spirit.”
Sooner or later, every one of us reaches a place where the ego can no longer save us, and that is precisely when we are most open to the spirit. This Lenten season, you are not invited to feel guilty but to notice where you have been living from the ego rather than the soul, and to loosen your grip. The spirit is already moving, already at work in you.
At First Plymouth, the invitation is always the same: you are not alone, you are so much more than anything you are afraid of, and love is already breaking through.
