Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35
Bethel and KUMC; 9/14/08
Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD
A rabbi and a Roman Catholic priest were sitting next to each other at an inter-faith event. When dinner was served someone thoughtlessly had placed a slab of ham in the Rabbi’s plate. The Rabbi did not protest but simply proceeded to eat others things his faith and physician permitted. The Catholic padre leaned over to the Rabbi and said, “Rabbi, you and I know the dietary laws from the Hebrew Scriptures were developed at a time when pork meat was indeed dangerous due to lack of refrigeration and low heat in cooking. Of course, trychinosis was rampant and your ancestors in the faith rightly prohibited eating pork in order to save the lives of many Israelites. Those days are gone, however; pork is safe and there is no reason to cling to outmoded ancient practices.
“When will you eat your first mouthful of ham, Rabbi?” The Priest asked.
The Rabbi paused briefly and then responded, “at your wedding, Father, at your wedding.” (from Ignacio Castuera, Pomono, CA)
We Protestants, of course, can trump both the Rabbi and the Priest because not only do the people eat pork and the clergy get married, but we have a 1000 different denominations to show just how united we are on matters of faith and practice!
It’s a perennial issue of faith: how uniform should Christians be with regard to faith behaviors, practices, choices? How much freedom of conscience should be permitted in the life of the Christian?
The majority of the world’s Christians today live in the global south – the Church is growing most rapidly among Catholics and Pentecostal-charismatics in South America, Presbyterians and Methodists who far exceed American numbers in Korea and southeast Asia, and indigenous Christian groups that proliferate in Africa. If we went to visit local manifestations of Christianity in the global south, we’d no doubt encounter church practices we might find surprising from the point of view of a European or North American Christian orthodoxy – household shrines, for instance, that venerate ancestors, the acceptance of polygamy in certain settings as a form of social welfare for elderly women, alternative medicine and healing rituals that use ancient folklore and non-western remedies , and, in general, the inclusion of tribal or local customs in ministry and fellowship that would lie well outside the church manuals either my or your denomination has ever published.
Of course, even closer to home, we have 7th Day Adventists who worship only on Saturday and stipulate that members keep a vegetarian diet, Pentecostals who believe a true Christian must speak in tongues and prophesy, Quakers who refuse to serve in the military on Christian peacemaking grounds, Baptists who re-baptize and accept only immersion as the proper mode of baptism, and who knows what peculiarities we’d find out about our own two denominations if we really started looking closely? And within each group, name your issue, a variety of people “fer it & agin it.” The phrase “ignorance is bliss” was never intended as a compliment, but it can conveniently be used, ostensibly, at least, to protect us from dissension and division.
When the historian goes back and examines our bulletins for 2008, he or she will see a lot of continuity from Sunday to Sunday, the same basic elements in slightly different order, the only real difference, I’ve noticed, being that Presbyterians confess our sins every Sunday and Methodists only once a month which, of course, either means that Methodists don’t sin as much as Presbyterians or that Presbyterians are more honest than Methodists, but either way, we’ve discovered, and much to the benefit of a Christian witness in this community, that there’s far less to divide than there is to unite.
But, just how do you, and how far do you go, in honoring differences without passing judgment on a brother or sister whom you might think holds practices suspect, if not downright inferior, to your own?
I’ve often thought the reality of America’s religious pluralism – that is, how can we as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikks, Native Americans, Jews, etc. learn now to get along and share in public discourse under the banner of the Constitution’s First Amendment and the disestablishment of any one official religion for the republic, that religious pluralism is really the big issue of our day and time, but really, the prior and more fundamental question for Christians is this: how can we grow in esteem and appreciation and honor for our fellows Christians who are of another denomination or group or have a different set of firmly held convictions and commitments?
When the Apostle Paul writes to the church of Rome, he wades into controversy. Some thought the proper diet for a Christian should not include meat while others thought it didn’t matter. Perhaps the congregation had two groups of Jewish Christians: one that tilted towards honoring kosher Jewish dietary laws, the vegetarians; the other, a group of those who thought it permissible to eat meat slaughtered by cult personnel in pagan temples, which was then sold in the marketplace. First Century temples to pagan gods were places of worship as well as butcher shops and restaurants. Maybe there was even another group in the Roman congregation who ate meat, but avoided meat that had previously been sacrificed to idols.
For some reason, love had cooled in the congregation – a group had stopped drinking coffee together during fellowship hour or began going out a different door so wouldn’t have to face a person they didn’t like. You know how that goes. One group cannot tolerate being in a congregation where meat gets served at church suppers; another group looks down their noses at those who abstain from meat but who head straight for the dessert table and get all the good stuff before the meat eaters can get there. Now, on the surface, it may sound like that the church’s priorities were way out of whack back, but one wonders, is our track record much better?
Moreover, Paul writes, disputes had erupted about days. Perhaps Jewish feast days, even the Sabbath itself, in light of the day of resurrection being not on the 7th but the 1st day of the week, had come into question. At stake in Paul’s day was probably a sense of, what we might term, pride in being Jewish. The observance of Sabbath and special holy days, especially while in diaspora, formed much of what it meant to claim and feel connected with the homeland and Jerusalem. One’s holiness and purity, especially in a foreign land, could best be measured by faithfulness in doing the rituals, practicing circumcision, adhering to a kosher diet, keeping Sabbath. Such outward criteria, contested though they were by the new teachings of rabbi Jesus and his Jewish followers, became even more critical because the church, like the city of Rome, was probably cosmopolitan, including members with Jewish and Gentile commitments, transplanted to Rome from all over the empire, with a broad mix of backgrounds, learning, sophistication, outlook, expectations, experiences, maybe even with their own versions of worship wars or cultural battles that left deep scars.
Different opinions, however, should not lead to quarrels or divisions. By “weak,” Paul means some had a tender conscience and remained sensitive about violating the kosher food laws of scripture. Others, the “strong,” thought these vegetarians were too tied up with traditional habits. To both sides, whether the issue was diet or the special days, Paul advises that things like these are matters of indifference to the Christian.
Individuals are to have freedom of conscience in the church, and so long as Christ’s death and resurrection and coming judgment are kept central, then these other matters will take care of themselves. That’s what Paul advises, and who could argue with his common sense resolution to disagreement and division?
Debates about which parts of scripture to privilege over other scriptures, no doubt, formed the backdrop for disagreement and division in the Roman church, and still today we struggle to know how to read scripture and which teachings should be central, which ones to be held secondary, and then once we’ve decided, how to apply that in the life of the community. Love, we know, is what it’s all about, yet we falter in our efforts to discern a united voice and witness, and it seems to me that the gaps in today’s Church grow wider even as we seem to have lost a corporate traction supporting our ability to move forward and answer God’s call to witness to Christian truth and love as one body.
Whatever you eat, Paul reminds the Roman Christians, the important things is to remember to thank God for what you’ve got. Each one will be held accountable before God, less for particular choices you have made and more for whether you have lived a life of gratitude and found a way to make room for the dignity of difference within the larger body. Maybe that’s good advice for us, too.
I imagine some in Rome would have loved Paul’s words; others would have had no room for them. Little has changed.
Even though his examples of diet and days seem pretty pedestrian, maybe even irrelevant, in today’s context, Paul offers one of the great rhetorical flourishes in all literature to bring his point home, words that could serve as a suitable epitaph for many an aspiring or dying Christian:
“No one lives to himself or dies to himself; if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
There is accountability, but more, there is the sense of belonging to something greater than one’s self that is in play, and to belong to the Lord means that, ultimately, each one belongs to the other person, a quite radical affirmation in Paul’s day or any day. Self-righteousness can be a form of self-idolatry, and Paul asks all who would affirm Christ’s Lordship to embrace life’s larger purpose, for with liberation in Christ, comes responsibility to love one another.
Jesus introduced a new way of thinking about the rigors of religion with its commandments and convictions; instead of commandments and convictions Jesus offered a commitment to love God and serve neighbor, to be in relationship with the other, above all else.
Paul builds on this radical notion in the nitty-gritty context of day-to-day life in the Church. It’s not about new rules and more rules and judging one another based on who’s going to be able to publish and enforce the thickest version of a Presbyterian Book of Order or Methodist Rules of Discipline. There is only one judge, one Lord, who asks us to put relationships first; love before quarreling over matters that really don’t matter. When we judge others, we stand over them, despise them, instead of standing beside them or with them, thus misunderstanding the very nature of Christian community and the body of Christ.
In the 4th Century, archbishop John Chrysostom put it this way: “In essentials unity, non-essentials charity, in all things Christ.” Later, St. Augustine wrote: “Unity in things necessary, liberty in things doubtful, charity in all things.” In a different vein, but perhaps illustrative of Paul’s point comes this saying from a member of the Amish community in Pennsylvania following the tragic deaths of the school girls in the Nickel Mines community in 2006, a saying that strikes me as particularly good advice. The Amish say, “We believe in letting our light shine, but not shining it in the eyes of other people” (Amish Grace, 3).
Perhaps we all could benefit from recalibrating relationships based on Paul’s common-sense refusal to pass judgment on non-essential matters, realizing that not only our own but the other’s accountability is with God alone. That means that the virtue of humility is something we all must continue to work on.
There is a witness involved in the way we deal with everyday matters like those that troubled the Church in Rome. The key word in the passage is perhaps the key word for Paul’s ethic of the whole Christian life: that word being “welcome” or “accept” with its synonymn of “hospitality,” which would have “us seeing people as Jesus sees them and seeing Jesus in the people God brings before us” (Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, 13). To truly welcome others, means, not just saying hello but learning who they are and where they’re coming from; learning someone or something new is always a tremendous antidote to the temptation towards self-righteousness that forever will haunt the life of any congregation. To welcome others means an active engagement with their position and perspective, or as Paul will say in the next chapter, “Welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Respect their convictions, but more than that, build upon common commitments and a common desire for community.
I close with this quote from the book Crowded Pews and Lonely People:
If any group of Christians who claim to believe and practice all
God has said in scripture will face up to their personal responsibility
in the family of Christ, and to the real needs of [people] around them –
their church will impress its community with the shining goodness of
God’s love – to them and among them. Such a transformation probably
would do more to attract others to Jesus Christ than any hose to house
canvass, evangelistic campaign or new church facility. People are hungry
for acceptance, love, and friends, and unless they find them in the church
they may not stay long enough to become personally related to Jesus
Christ. People are not persuaded, they’re attracted. We must be able to
communicate far more by what we are, than by what we say.
And Paul asks, “why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Why do you despise them? For we all will stand before the judgment seat of God, and each one of us will be accountable.” (Romans 14:10,12)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
