TEXT: Romans 14:1-12
A Wider World and Faith
When our windows are replaced with
mirrors, and everything we see looks like ourselves, there is no chance for
community; only conflict and coercive strategies for compliance.
In her best-selling novel The Poisonwood Bible, author Barbara
Kingsolver chronicles the frustrations of Nathan Price, a fierce and demanding
evangelist in the
In the process he comes to all sorts
of explanations accounting for their recalcitrance, but he never once guesses or
even gets close to the truth – that it isn’t the concept of baptism they
resist, but the river itself, filled as it is with crocodiles and snakes and
other mortal enemies. As someone finally
has the disgusted courtesy to explain to the good reverend, people die by
stepping into that river. And it isn’t
any “death unto life” that is accomplished by such an immersion; it is simply
death. By being so single-minded about
form, he has lost all sight of substance.
A wise person I know regularly quotes
the wisdom that “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” It is, perhaps, an inevitable beginning –
assuming that our beliefs and behaviors and lifestyles are not only normal, but
also normative. But as we learned four
years ago today, however – and as recently as last week, it can be a deadly
place to end up. When we assume that
everyone is middle class, like ourselves, with places to go in an emergency and
means to travel there, then those who aren’t – and don’t – are left to die in
streets become rivers and gathering places become little more than hog
confinements.
When everyone has to look like us,
believe like us, hate what we hate and want what we want, any variance is
vilified and any measure employed to eradicate it, sanctioned. Among peer groups, the result is
ostracism. In partisan politics, the
result is specious attack ads. Between
governments, the result is demonizing caricatures. Between ideologues, the result is Crusades
and suicide bombings. In the church, we
just consign our detractors to hell.
The tendency is nothing new.
In 1650, Oliver Cromwell struggled
against the tide, famously writing to the Assembly of the Church of Scotland,
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
mistaken.”
And in the New Testament church to
which the Apostle Paul wrote, such narcissistic prejudice was already actively
at work. In the verses we shared from
the letter to the Romans, Paul scowls at those who condemn fellow disciples
whose practices are different from their own.
Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Some
judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be
alike. Let all be fully convinced in
their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.
Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God;
while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.
In other words – and I’m translating
loosely here – “get off of each other’s back!”
And then, as if addressing himself to
two imaginary bystanders, Paul calls out, “You, there! And yes, you too! Why do you judge your brother or your sister? Why do you despise your neighbor?”
I’ve been
intrigued thinking about those accusations.
We have some familiarity with the idea of “judgment,” but what does it
mean to “despise”? Various translations
render it variously. One has it mean
“holding in contempt” while another casts it as vertical vision – to “look down
on” another. But the most intriguing to
me – and no one could more surprised by this than me – is the old King James
Version. “Why,” it has Paul asking,
“doth thou set at nought thy brother/sister?”
“Why doth thou
set at nought?” As it turns out, that version
is, albeit archaically phrased, almost literally correct. The actual word in its original language has
to do with “making no account of” – to count someone, in other words, as
nothing; to look at someone as a zero, devoid of presence, empty of value,
absent any claim. And so Paul can be
heard to ask, “why do you look at others as if they don’t matter – or worse, as
if they don’t exist?”
The truth that
he asserts in contrast is that everyone does,
and the counsel he offers is “respect the convictions of each other.”
Now, it’s
possible, I suppose, to hear this as some ancient antecedent to Post-modern
individualism. “You do your thing; I’ll
do mine. You go believe what you want;
I’ll make up my mind.” But Paul isn’t disbanding any concern for
spiritual or ritual integrity – as if anything
done with conviction has got to be OK. He
is not trying to say that once one is a Christian, anything goes. What he is trying to do is nest any
conversation about belief and practice within the larger, more fundamental
premise of personal humility, the divine estimation of mutual worth, the
varying angles from which different people view reality.
Music is a
funny thing. I can remember when my Dad
was driving me to school and I would beg to change the radio station. “I want to listen to music,” I would whine, in contrast to the vapid elevator nonsense
he inevitably preferred. Once I had
gotten my way, he could often be heard to mutter, “How can you call that music?”
I’ve replayed that conversation a thousand times since my kids started
changing my channels, settling on audio catastrophes that they believe to be the very soundtrack of heaven. We sense the collision even here, this
morning, in the company of melodies and instruments from the
Neither
people nor their value. In her beautiful
novel titled A Thread of Grace that spotlights the efforts of ordinary
Italians to shelter Jews in the waning months of World War 2, Mary Doria
Russell introduces the reader to Renzo Leoni, a native Italian and Jew who has
returned to his hometown from the Italian Air Force after perilous and
controversial duty in
As a
pilot, Leoni had bombed a civilian hospital, killing all 43 inside, under the
quite justified understanding that it was a military front. When it was later determined that the victims
were, indeed, innocents, Renzo lost himself in the horror of his own actions. Observing now the escalation of the war and
the German planes flying overhead, he muses that “Pilots fly now by the
hundreds, kill by the thousands. It
would be easy,” he acknowledges, “to lose his grip on guilt, but he clings to
this one truth: greater crimes do not
excuse his own. When the murder of
forty-three people no longer matters, civilization is extinct. His shame is the last vestige of honor in a
vicious, barbaric world” (p. 307).
So
how are we doing by Renzo Leoni’s measure?
How are we doing according to Paul?
Is civilization increasingly extinct, or are we coming to embrace a
wider world and faith? The
flood-drenched streets in New Orleans and the beleaguered shelters in Houston, the
blood-bathed streets in Baghdad and the body-stuffed railroad cars from Mexico,
the hate-taut tribes of Rwanda and the swollen bellies of Niger, the 10,000
children in Des Moines still attending school in substandard buildings and the
thousands of immigrants in Iowa, both legal and illegal, who do not have a
voice are all waiting to hear how we answer.
Does anybody hear them? Does
anybody care? Are they despised, counted
exactly zero, or are these also the voices of ones for whom Christ died?
Taking stock of the many surface
differences – all held fervently and with strong conviction – Paul finally
implores, “do not judge one another, nor
despise, for God has given welcome.”
I might say it
this way: never indulge yourself with
the absolute conviction that you have discovered the very last word and way,
for wisdom and truth are always more than possession of facts. And never lose your grip on the truth that
every word spoken – no matter how foolish it may sound to you – is uttered by a
child of God, made in God’s own image and animated by God’s own breath, for the
Christ who offered the kingdom of God to those who receive it as children is the
one who will finally judge.
God has given welcome. Into our wider world and faith, then, may the
holy welcome we have received be the gracious welcome we extend.