September 15, 8:30am (Sare Gordy)
Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with – even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently. -Romans 14:1
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Proper 19, Year A, 2008
September 14, 2008
Romans 14: 1-12
The Rev. Sare Gordy
“Treat Them Gently”
Paul wrote the lengthy letter to Rome somewhere around 25 years after the death of Jesus. Now, we’re pretty sure that it was Paul who wrote it, and we’re pretty sure about the date – about 57 AD. We’re also sure that Paul wrote it cold – it wasn’t he who founded the small church, the house church, the community of The Way in Rome, and from his letter we understand that there were some varying views there on whether or not he was a worthwhile guy.
But what we do know was that Paul was a thinker. He wasn’t an academic – he was a tentmaker, but he was trained as a Rabbi, which means that he knew his Hebrew sciptures inside and out, and it means that he was used to being able to interpret scripture to give meaning to present experience. Literally, he was able to take different parts, perhaps seemingly unrelated parts of scripture, and bring them together, and like an amoeba, have them wrap around an event, a thing, a current going-on in the community to explain and make clear why that thing was holy, was of the Living God, or was repugnant. That was what he did, and he did it before and after his conversion, though it played out very differently before and after his conversion.
But one of the issues that Paul addresses in his cold-call letter to the church in Rome, a church that was comprised not entirely of Jews, nor entirely of the non-Jew, Everybody-Else catchall category of Gentiles, but of a mixture of both, one of the issues he addresses is, ‘how do we get along when we are so different?’
Now, the issue on the table was literally on the table at the time: food, and holy days, and holy days inevitably had a lot to do with food. Do we fast or do we feast? Do we go vegetarian, or is steak okay? Is someone holier because they do one over the other, because certainly both sides are giving thanks to God, and doing what their doing to the glory of God. And holy days! Some say that there are special days, particularly holy that require special observance – perhaps prayers, perhaps fasting, perhaps feasting. Others say that no day is less holy than another. And so there are misunderstandings, offenses taken, sectarianism perhaps, and certainly generally ill-will.
And what does Paul say? Our itinerant theologian?
Paul points out that it’s not our job to judge or change our companions eating habits, nor even their sense of how God might or might not make days holy, that is, how God is worshipped. Not even, Paul says, when we disagree with them, or when we see that they are young and inexperienced in literally this experience of the Living God. Our job, on either side of the question, Paul says, is to be in community with them.
We’ve all been invited to the feast of God, Paul says, and it’s not our job to criticize the guest sitting next to us.
Be strong in your conviction, he does say. Do what you’re going to do, and do it to the Glory of God. But take a good look at what you’re doing, rather than being critical about what someone else is doing. Take a good look at what you’re doing, and if you see that it’s making your friend across the aisle stumble, catch them quick and work it out.
In one Bible that I was reviewing, this passage has a very simple title that perhaps should be commonsensical. “Cultivating Good Relationships.” But you know, I think that in this day and age, we are loosing the ability to do this, to cultivate good relationships with people who differ from us. But then again, perhaps I’m wrong about that – perhaps it’s got nothing to do with ‘this age’, and everything to do with human nature, which is perhaps why Paul needed to write about it to the church in Rome so they could get along within themselves, and why his advice to them can still speak strongly to us, today, in all realms of our lives, in our personal lives, in our regional politics, in our national politics, in the Anglican Communion, everywhere in our Global Village.
Part of life in the post-modern world, and to some even before that, is the wide-spread understanding among Christians that while God had been revealed most perfectly in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, God has been revealed before, thousands of times and continues to be revealed and speaks in the lives of every person in every culture, in every religion. And so for us, even the concept of a ‘believer of God’, or a ‘follower of God’ is a wider, broader, farther-reaching concept, today, and so Paul’s words don’t ring less true, but even more so, with an even more profound implication on our behavior today. And so, to close, I want to re-read the first verse of this chapter to you, as it is translated by the pastor Eugene Peterson. Paul’s opening words on cultivating good relationships:
Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with – even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.
Treat them gently.
It’s good advice for the 21st century, as it was in the 1st century.
Amen.
