Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-july-23-2024
Romans 14:1-12
The Weak and the Strong
1Accept the one whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat everything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not condemn the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 You, then, why do you judge your brother [or sister]? Or why do you look down on them? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
In drafting and refining these daily Reflections, my assumption is that almost all of our participants are people who have been raised in the Christian faith. And for those of us who fall into that category, that means we’ve been raised with theological ideas that have been in development throughout its 2,000 year history. So some ideas that seem clear to us – maybe even things we take for granted – weren’t nearly so clear to the first generation of believers. And those were the people the apostle Paul was ministering to. So when he was telling the story of Jesus to people in the gentile world, there were still lots of open questions about the Christian faith.
One of those questions was what ‘a Christian life’ was supposed to look like. The followers of Jesus weren’t supposed to be living just like the Jews, but they weren’t exactly supposed to be living like the pagans, either. Life as a follower of Jesus was a new and distinctive way of being in the world – and a way that was still emerging while Paul was writing his letters.
Our reading for today comes from that time of emergence – and it gives us a glimpse into the process of sorting out how followers of Jesus were supposed to live. And that points to how followers of Jesus are supposed to live today. It also gives us some things to think about as we live in a church that our tradition says is “always being reformed.”
As we said in one of our recent Reflections, there are people who don’t like the apostle Paul because they think he’s moralistic and judgmental. But that’s kind of a shame, because when you look closely at Pauls’ writings, a lot of the time Paul was actually telling his readers that they should avoid being moralistic and judgmental.
Of course, when you think about Paul’s background, it would be surprising if he didn’t come off as moralistic and judgmental. Paul was a Pharisee, which meant he had made a commitment to the strictest possible observance of the laws of Moses in the Old Testament. And that he had been taught that those who didn’t obey that law strictly deserved judgement and condemnation. So he had been raised and educated in a moralistic and judgmental environment.
But in the letters he wrote after becoming a follower of Jesus, Paul reflects a new understanding – that our relationship with God in Jesus isn’t just about observing the traditional rules of religious life. He says that some people are called by God to keep those rules strictly, but that others aren’t. Different followers of Jesus are called to different standards of behavior, even though we share a common faith.
And Paul calls on his fellow believers to give each other some room to live out the way of life God calls them to. He says that all followers of Jesus are servants of Jesus, and nobody has the right to judge and condemn a servant except their master.
That seems a little strange to us, because we’re all raised with the idea that what’s good is good for everyone and what’s bad is bad for everyone. But what might seem even more surprising is that Paul tells us that those who keep the rules and of the law most strictly are “the weak.” We’re used to thinking that keeping the rules with great discipline is a sign of strength, not of weakness.
But from Paul’s perspective, the traditional Hebrew way of life was all about trying to impress God by strictly keeping the laws of Moses. He had tried that, and concluded that it got him nowhere. Then when he started following Jesus, he realized that the outward expressions of a religious life don’t really make much difference to God. What really matters to God, Paul wrote, is what’s going on in the heart of the believer.
In our time, one of the most visible examples of the syndrome Paul is talking about here is the habit among Christians of criticizing other followers of Jesus because their beliefs or their practices are different than ours. Churches criticize each other’s ways of doing baptisms. Or of praying. We mainline Christians sometimes criticize the worship style of more ‘praise-type’ churches, and they return the favor. Some Christians condemn others for drinking alcohol, or for watching certain movies or listening to certain music.
I think Paul would say we should all take a breath – and I suspect Jesus would say the same thing. If other followers of Jesus are earnestly trying to serve him, that should be good enough for us. Heaven knows that we all have sins and shortcomings to work out before we’re in a position to criticize others.
Instead of criticizing and condemning one another, if we followers of Jesus accepted and appreciated the faithfulness of each other’s traditions and ways of serving in our master’s name, the world would see a much more united – a much more loving – body of Christ in the world. It would see a body that demonstrated the unity Jesus prayed we would have. And that would be a very good thing.
Let’s pray. Lord, by your Spirit, soften our hearts so that we spend less time finding fault with other believers, and more time encouraging them for their faithfulness in serving you. Give us the humility to see that the things about ourselves that we regard as strengths might actually be weaknesses in your eyes. And when others criticize our ways of practicing our faith, help us to be patient and to extend to them the same forgiveness we hope to get from you. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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