That's what Christinia Stone calls us Pentecosted sinners, "con-SPIRIT-ors." And so in effect do all the other writers, below: David Heyen, Liz Pfeifle, Richard Schademann, James Squire, Terry Moore, Susan Till. They were part of a larger class last fall -- a very spirited, high-morale class, I might add -- in Saint Louis' new Lutheran School of Theology. The course was entitled, "Holying Spirit/ Whole Spirituality." In the pages which follow, each one of the seven students comments briefly (with some streamlining by the editor) on a separate section of Romans 8, Paul's classic tribute to the Spirit of Pentecost. See how they take Paul's Crossing of his situation and translate it into a Crossing of our situation. That apostolic hand-me-down, with the gospel as hot potato, is The Pentecostal Relay. Catch!

First, permit a bit of a refresher on Romans 8. Paul's readers, you recall, were under some kind of "condemnation," maybe from their society because they were Christians, but ultimately also from God because they were sinners. Wherever their condemnation came from, whether just or unjust, it was they themselves who made the condemnation worse, potentially fatal. How? By letting the condemnation consume all their attention, their whole "mindset." Their condemnation had the effect of "setting their minds" altogether on themselves and their survival, on their own innocence or guilt, on how to clear themselves or how to counter-attack, in short how to save their own necks -- their "flesh." Out of the sheer desperate grasp for self-preservation, they become all the more tightly involved in their sin. They cannot let it go. Consequently, as "the law" attacks their sin it cannot help but attack fleshly them as well, so compulsive is the self's attachment to its sin.

Actually, the law's accusations only draw the two culprits together all the more tightly. So inseparable is this alliance, the fleshly self in a defensive

pact with its own sin. Thus the law cannot condemn sin alone, apart from the self which clutches onto it. Notice that the poor law, too, suffers from this alliance. Since it was sin which the law was sent to destroy, not us, the law is now up against double trouble. The law is now badly outnumbered by sin's powerful human ally, our flesh. The law, says Paul, is "weakened by the flesh." Not that the law doesn't still accomplish death by condemnation. But now both allies, sin and the fleshly ego which fuels it, come under the law's condemnation -- and defeat -- together. But don't blame the law for that blunder. We, by our feverish struggle to defend our sin, give the law no choice but to overkill.

As a rough analogy, think of cancer. Picture what Paul calls "sin" as malignant, metastasizing cancer cells. But this sin, these enemy cells are not just unwelcome invaders from the outside. They get an awful lot of help from me, my body -- "the flesh." I'm not just a victim or a "patient" who suffers this cancer. Like "the flesh" I quite actively, bodily host the cancer. I collude in its rampant growth within me. True, as with "sin," this cancer also comes up against fierce "condemnation" from "the law," in this case, from my body's own immune system and from such medical interventions as surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. But these forces of "the law" would have a far, far better chance of destroying the cancer (sin) if they did not have to contend with a second, very powerful opponent as well, namely, me. It is I, "the flesh," who am the cancer's chief sponsor and life support system, providing it with blood and all it needs to proliferate -- and kill