Year A, Pentecost 16 Romans 14:1-12
I have been a vegetarian since I was 16. No one
else in my family was and my parents were particularly devastated when I told
them. It took my Dad about 10 years to stop attributing every ailment
(emotional or physical) to the lack of meat in my diet. Moving to
Southern Virginia was tricky for a vegetarian. My first church had an
annual fundraiser that was a pig roast. I hated it with a passion and
spent the whole afternoon avoiding the roasted pig. At one potluck, a
well meaning parishioner shared the vegetarian meat balls she made for me. I
was touched she did this as I knew it was out of her comfort zone. I ate
a few and then asked what was in them. They were turkey. She had
assumed that counted as vegetarian. When I interviewed at the church I
was at before here, they had a dinner for me. Somehow, they had learned I
was a vegetarian and the entire meal was vegetarian. I was so touched that they
all ate the vegetarian meal with me. It was an incredible display of
hospitality. I later learned they had it catered because none of them knew how
to make an entire vegetarian meal.
Whenever this reading from Paul’s letter to the
Romans comes up, I am reminded of my years as a vegetarian in very meat centric
places. While Paul does seem to say that vegetarians are weak, his point
is a larger one about hospitality and welcome. That welcome does come
with a slight insult… but when you consider it light of the other times Paul
talks about weakness, it’s not as bad as it seems.
I would think that if you heard this part of
Paul’s letter to the Romans and had not read very much of Paul’s writings, you
might find Paul’s description of people who are “weak in faith” a little
off-putting. On the one hand Paul
encourages us not to pass judgment on one another. Yet isn’t describing someone as “weak in
faith” passing judgment? It would seem
so.
Butt consider how Paul talks about weakness in
other letters that he wrote. When he
wrote to the Corinthians he wrote of something he described as a thorn in his
flesh. We don’t know what that was, but it
was something he perceived as a deficiency or a weakness in himself. He begged God to take it from him and God
responded: “My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in
weakness.” Paul then resolved to boast
more boldly in his weakness.
For a good portion of Romans and much of his
other writings, Paul is preoccupied with how Jewish Christians and Gentile
Christians could learn to be a part of one worshipping body. It’s unlikely that Paul was planning for the
long term viability of the Christian church.
He was just trying to find a way to spread the message of Christ as far
and wide as he could.
There were Jews who had started following
Christ. Paul was one of them…as were all
of the apostles. Many of them were still
trying to figure out what this looked like.
Did they need to follow all of the rules they had followed as Jews? Many thought they did. Some weren’t sure, so they followed them just
in case. That is probably what Paul was
talking about when he spoke of those who just ate vegetables. They abstained from meat because they knew
that a lot of the meat that was sold in the market had been sacrificed in pagan
rituals. That meant it was unclean and
their Jewish faith told them that they could not eat the meat.
Some of these Jewish Christians felt that those
who had never been Jewish should still take on the Jewish customs as well as
the new Christian customs. Paul was of
the mind that was not necessary. What to eat and when to worship were sticking
points between these two groups. The “weak in faith” were the ones who could
not let go of the old customs and were perhaps…not fully convinced of this new
way of being and worshipping.
But here is what is interesting about what Paul
was saying…just because one group had different perceptions of what the practice
of faith should look like, didn’t mean that the other group needed to correct
them or force their way of doing things on them. Remember, a big part of early
Christian worship was sharing a meal together…so what people ate together was
directly related to worship. Paul was saying: if having meat at a gathering of
the faithful makes those who abstain uncomfortable and could potentially cause
a crisis of faith, don’t eat meat around them.
That’s why this reading begins with “welcome.” Being welcoming and
hospitable isn’t just about being friendly, it’s about meeting someone exactly
where they are, with no expectation that they will change to be more like
you.
At
Christ Church, we say, “whoever you are or wherever you are on your journey of
faith, you are welcome here.” That
doesn’t come with any unspoken assumptions.
You are welcome here. Hard stop. We don’t mean, you are welcome and once
you get the lay of the land, then you can adapt to our customs and be more like
us. I have been at churches like that. They want you to feel welcome, but they
also want you to be more like them in time.
They will give you a few months, but eventually, you need to conform to
their expectations.
Today
we are handing out information about a program we are embarking on called,
“Invite, Welcome and Connect.” It’s not
about being a friendly church…although that is part of it. It’s about being a
community where you can be welcome without having to change. It’s about
training our current members on how to meet people where they are. That might mean that we have to change a
little—that can be the hard part. But
change brings growth and new ideas and that is the way a church not just
survives, but thrives.
One
of my favorite quotes is, “God loves you just the way you are, but God loves
you too much to stay that way.” Being a
Christian means that we seek transformation in our world and ourselves. A faith
community should be a place that helps you grow, that supports your
relationship with Christ. But there is a
difference between supporting someone in their journey of growth and
transformation and demanding that someone conform to a specific type of
Christian. We want people to transform,
not conform. We want the whole community
to transform together, to create something beautifully and unique.
I
realize that to some, the idea that we have to change to be truly welcoming and
loving seems unfair. Consider what God
did when Jesus was born to a woman and became human. God changed the way that God related to
humans. God came to this earth to meet humans exactly where they are. That is
an incredible to display of hospitality.
A chapter later in Romans, Paul continued this theme of welcome when he
said, “Welcome one another therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory
of God.” Invite, Welcome, Connect is a
church program…but it’s also more than that.
It’s not simply about growing a church.
It’s about learning how to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us.
No comments:
Post a Comment