“I begin with ends and end with endings.”

This is the first sentence of an essay by philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, an essay appropriately called “Ends and Endings.”

It’s a sentence that’s not only catchy, but also points to realities that make this week’s lectionary readings clearer. Their meanings rest on the difference between an end and an ending.

So we begin with ends and end with endings as we ask what bodies are for.

Isaiah 55:1-10; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

Robert Lewis Stevenson's exceptional 1868 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a sobering tale of good and evil raging war within the body of a kind and curious doctor, Henry Jekyll. Its impact was such that Jekyll and Hyde became an English idiom. Everyone knows what it means.

The story is shaded almost entirely by Stevenson's reading of St. Paul's writing in Romans 7. Unfortunately, however, he didn't read quite far enough, leaving his readers bereft of hope.

What he got right, though, he got really right. Paul and the witness of all Scripture would agree: If you are a human being, you simply cannot hide from Hyde.

Shortly after Nobel Prize Laureate (!) Bob Dylan famously converted to Christianity in the late 70s, he recorded Billboard Magazine's #3 1979 album, Slow Train Coming, featuring Gotta Serve Somebody:

You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes

Indeed you're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody

This isn't dissimilar to St. Paul's metaphor for salvation in Romans 6: a bondage swap. It's binary. One must choose.

Romans 5 culminates in a dramatic - if not overwhelming - crescendo of grace.

So much so that it prompts St. Paul to anticipate the question, often brushed aside as a rhetorical foil, that opens chapter 6.

But it's akin to questions pressed on Jesus. It is the kind of question put to St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Do we believe in grace so persistent and powerful that it actually makes sense to ask if we should just keep on sinning?

We live in an unprecedented time in the West.

More and more, people who have grown up in the faith, who have been baptized and willingly surrendered their lives to Jesus, no longer participate in any kind of formational spiritual community.

Many have asserted that so long as someone know what they need to “get to heaven,” there’s nothing else they need.

But God desires so much more for his people. And always has.