The Roommate From Hell: Part 1

“How could he do something so terrible?!” we say when we have been hurt, or when we are horrified by how awful someone can be.  It is an exclamation of our emotions. And it is also a genuine question.  How is it possible that someone could violate the norms of basic human decency that way?  We struggle to understand something so shocking.

The author Byron Katie has a thought exercise for us.  She suggests that we recall a time when we said or did something that we regretted as soon as we’d done it.  She invites us to think of the instant right before we opened our mouth, the instant right before we moved our hand.  She asks us: in that instant, with what you were thinking and believing in that moment, did you have a choice?  When I remember that moment, right smack in the middle of the heated argument, feeling humiliated, and my mind filled with the desire to fight back with something humiliating, no, in that moment, I did not have a choice.  

Or, when I remember a moment, my mind flooded with fear and my body paralyzed by anxiety, craving the relief of escape, no in that moment, I did not have a choice.  

In theory, of course, we like to imagine how rational we are, and to tell ourselves and our children “you always have a choice about how you behave.”  In reality, though, if we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that there are times when we lose our temper, times when our courage vanishes, times when, in that moment, we do not have a choice.  

I can find examples of things i regret that i repeated over the long term.  i look back at the wrong things I did in grade seven because I thought and believed that getting the approval of a certain group of classmates was so important.  Looking back on it in hindsight, it seems crazy to have cared so much about those dumb kids.  I wish I had been more mature.  But when I go back to that moment right before we did each wrong thing, thinking and believing what I did then about how important their approval was to us, I didn’t have a choice.  

Other times, as an adult, I thought my relationship with someone was just fine.  And then the person tells me how she felt about her interactions with me.  And I realize, with regret, that I was so focused on my own goals and my own struggles, that I had never looked at my interactions from her point of view.  Now I can see that I had been oblivious and insensitive.  But when I look back at the self-absorbed stuff I was thinking and believing in the moment before I acted that way, in that moment, I didn’t have a choice.

The reason I am bringing this up is not to plunge us into shame and self-recrimination at one extreme, and it’s not to plunge us into a refusal to take responsibility for our actions on the other extreme.  The reason I am bringing this up today is that it gives us a valuable entry point for understanding more deeply today’s scripture from Romans.  It does that in three ways.  

The first improvement is in understanding our relationships with our neighbours.  When we ask the question, “How could he do something so terrible?” we are locked into a mindset of should/shouldn’t in judging our neighbour.  When we remember something we ourselves regret, and we ask ourselves, “When I consider what I was thinking and believing in that moment, did I have a choice?” and we recognize that we didn’t, that enables us to realize that when we consider what he was thinking and believing in that moment, he didn’t have a choice either.  He’s like us.  And recognizing that he’s like us means that the sense of superiority we get from judging someone to be morally inferior to us (which is the sin of pride Jesus so often warns us about) can get a little ray of the sunshine of humility.  And that humility can broaden into understanding and even, sometimes, compassion.

The second improvement is in understanding our relationship with ourself.  I love the wrenching honesty and vulnerability of the Apostle Paul as he pours out his heart in today’s passage.  As he tells us himself in Philippians 3, before his conversion, he was a Pharisee, and not just an ordinary Pharisee, but someone who surpassed other pharisees in the intensity of his zeal and his determination to keep every single law as rigorously as possible.  He was extremely hard on himself, and he was extremely hard on others who were not as rigorous as he was.  This spilled over, as it sometimes does in highly judgmental people, into persecution of others who are not as rigorous in following the “shoulds”, and Paul was literally on his way to persecute Christians when God knocked him to the ground on the road to Damascus in his dramatic conversion and turned his life around.    

God has transformed Paul. In the transformation, Paul’s personality is redirected; it is not erased.  He brings the same intensity to his Christian faith that he had brought to his Pharisaism.  The more we read of the letters Paul wrote, which make up a big chunk of the New Testament, the more we see how intense and demanding he is of himself, and how intense and demanding he is of others.  This isn’t some slacker who’s making excuses to let himself off easy.  This is the exact opposite.  Paul has worked extremely hard at living the Christian life to very high standards, and at trying to get everybody else to live the Christian life to very high standards.  And here in today’s passage he expresses his intense frustration that after all that effort, it doesn’t work: He is frustrated that he doesn’t even understand his own actions.  He exclaims, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate!”  He can agree wholeheartedly that the law is good.  He even says, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”  In other words, in that moment, I had no choice.  When he looks at the way he does the thing he hates, “in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”  The word “dwells” here is an interesting one.  It’s the verb form of the word “oikos” meaning “house” which we’ve looked at before.  It’s like sin is a nightmare roommate living in your house.  You get everything set up in your room just the way you like it, and then before you know it you find your nightmare roommate has come in and trashed the place.  Your nightmare roommate is sometimes quiet for awhile, and then will unpredictably undermine you.  The nightmare roommate has lived in your house as long as you have, and never moves out.  We live with the nightmare roommate as long as we live in the house of this mortal body, and we leave this roommate only when we move out to go to our heavenly home.  The house we live in is our flesh.  

Some people assume that when Paul is talking about the flesh he’s focused on sex, but when you look closely at his words you see that’s not really his focus.  In Galatians 5 where he says “the works of the flesh are obvious” and then lists 15 of them, there are a couple of sexual sins in the mix but it’s mostly stuff like factions, idolatry, strife, jealousy, quarrels, envy.  It is simply that sin lives where we live, and the place we live, during this mortal life, is in our flesh.  It is part of being human.  It is common to us all. 

Paul hates it.  He’s tried everything to kick out this nightmare roommate.  He’s got willpower out the wazoo.  He’s on fire with zeal for God. He’s got the courage to risk everything and the endurance for lots of physical suffering.  He’s had a life-changing conversion.  He knows the scriptures inside and out.  He prays fervently and constantly.  Still, the roommate continues to dwell right there with him in the house of his flesh.  He describes the relationship his “inmost self” has with this nightmare roommate as being “at war”.  He describes it as being “ captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”  He exclaims, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  

And as he calls out in wretchedness for rescue, the answer comes: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Here is the turning point.  Ultimately, it’s not about Paul.  It’s not about you.  It’s not about me.  It’s about God.  We humans cannot get sin out of our lives no matter how hard we try.  It’s good for us to continue to try, don’t get me wrong.  Don’t tell people that your preacher today said to just quit trying to avoid sin. There are sins that we can and do avoid, and that’s good.  But it’s important to keep in mind what Jesus tells us in Matthew 5.  “You have heard it said ‘you shall not commit adultery’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  You can avoid adultery, but the lust has already popped up in you and there’s no way to prevent it.  You’ve got the same sin as the person you thought you were superior to.  Or you might think you’re superior to a murderer, but Jesus says in Matthew 5 that if you’re angry with someone or insult someone, you’re just as liable as the murderer.  Anger and insults have already popped up in you and there’s no way to prevent them.  It’s the same for all of us.

So while it’s good to do what we can, we can not rely on our own efforts to solve this problem, because our own efforts are woefully insufficient.  Even our best efforts, as Paul knows from bitter experience, are woefully insufficient.  Paul realizes that the solution has to come from somewhere beyond us.  And thanks be to God, it does.  It comes as the gift from God of Jesus Christ our Lord.  The third improvement is in understanding our relationship with God.  What we rely on is not our own efforts, it is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Today’s passage from Romans 7 explores the depth of the problem.  Next Sunday’s passage from Romans 8 explores the height of the solution.  As a result, today’s sermon is part one of a two-part sermon series.  The title of today’s sermon is “The Roommate From Hell” Part 1.  The title of next Sunday’s sermon is “The Roommate from Heaven: The Sequel”. 

Until then, a few closing thoughts to take with you.   We humans tend to spend a lot of time being judgemental of people whose sins we think make them inferior to us, or believing we can or should or must by our own efforts eliminate the sin in ourselves.  Paul is here to tell us it doesn’t work.  Sin is common to all of us.  We can understand now why we all do terrible things. It is part of being human, while we mortals dwell in this house of flesh.  But by the grace of God, God has sent his own son in human flesh.  And now there is more to us than our sin, because the Spirit of God dwells in us.  I encourage you to come back next week to hear more about your roommate from Heaven.