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Romans 14
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Because what Paul is saying here is that in Christ, our rightness is a function of our helpfulness. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome today. My name is Jeremy. I'm really glad that you're here. Thanks for taking part of your weekend to worship with us. Today, we are picking up where we left off in Romans.
Speaker 1:We're coming into the final stretch with this book this year. Over the past five years, we have taken some time each year to knock off another section. And this year, we are actually gonna finish that journey through Romans. But last week was chapter 13. Today is 14.
Speaker 1:Then we have fifteen sixteen, a recap, and we're out. And you know what? This has actually been a lot of fun, at least for me. I think tackling some of these large scale conversations and seeing how some of these more famous passages from Paul that often get pulled out of their immediate context actually fit within larger letters can be really illuminating for us. So in a moment, we'll look back at chapter 13, but first, some community notes.
Speaker 1:Last week, we had a big family announcement. Rachel and Eaton and I are excited about Em and her birth mother joining our family. I wanted to say thank you for all of the messages of support that we've received. To be honest, it has been a little bit overwhelming, so I apologize if I've not been able to respond to you directly. But please know that we feel very loved.
Speaker 1:We were able to get permission this week to bring Eaton into the NICU after the adoption was finalized, and this was his first chance to see his new baby sister. He is over the moon at the idea of being a big brother. He even gave her a silent scream to let her know how excited that he was. And lots of people have been asking how you can help. Honestly, this point, we don't know.
Speaker 1:So don't worry about any of that. Just for now, pray for Em and for our family as we prepare to bring her home in a few weeks. She's putting on some weight. She's up over three pounds now. She's doing really well, and she's heading in a good direction, so hopefully soon.
Speaker 1:Now one more thing. People have asked about how our son is doing with all this. It's all very new, a lot of change for our family. But of course, Eaton is also adopted. And so we talk about a lot of this all of the time.
Speaker 1:How families come together and form and reform in different ways all around us and how beautiful that can be. Cover, he's been talking to me a lot about our dog, Cedar, this week. He said to me last week, dad, I am very excited about being a big brother, but I am a little bit worried about Cedar. I think that he might be jealous when M comes home if he doesn't get as much attention as he's used to getting, and that might be really hard for him. And I said, you know what, buddy?
Speaker 1:You're right. That might be really hard. Do you think that you might feel that way when the baby comes home? And he said, no. No.
Speaker 1:I am very excited, but I do think Cedar is a little bit worried about this. So here's your reminder that even when you're not quite ready to name what it is that you're going through, having those safe spaces where you can talk about things and you can try on new emotions for yourself. This is important for all of us, so seek out those spaces in your life. Now last week, we dove back into Romans at chapter 13. It was a doozy because we had to deal not only with the words that Paul wrote, but also the place from which we hear those words.
Speaker 1:The simple truth is Romans 13 reads one way. If you are living under the authority of a mostly benevolent government who works in your best interests, let's say a government elected by the population to serve the population, one who may or may not do that particularly well but who will ultimately answer to us in the next election. Well, those same words will sound very different if you find yourself living under a hostile regime. One that is happy to discard your safety if it becomes politically expedient for them. And so where at first it might sound to us like Paul is praising the empire, extolling the virtues of their judgment to a community that's living in the shadow of the empire.
Speaker 1:Paul may instead sound like he is challenging the limits of that authority and subjecting that authority to the lordship of Jesus, reminding his friends to be cautious and wise around those who wield that power. In fact, one of my favorite moments in all of Romans is when Paul is able to create this double entendre with the law. He says the law can be summed up in one statement, love your neighbor, this is the fulfillment of law. And of course, can be Torah or religious law, but here in Romans, law can also be legality imposed by the authorities. And here, Paul is saying that love supersedes religion, but the way of Jesus also supersedes the legal.
Speaker 1:Because for Paul, everything in the universe, including the law of the land around us, is subject to the law of Christ's love. Now, today, we move on to chapter 14, and this one is all about what we eat. So we will need to talk about the deal with meals, disputable matters, being for judgment and being for each other. And first, let's pray together. God of all, from whom all authority flows, to whom all love returns.
Speaker 1:Might we work hard not only to hear your word to us, but to place ourselves in the position to hear it well. What our privilege and our position, our authority or lack thereof, never confuse the message of your son. This message that infiltrates us with love and reaches down to us, that changes us, and then moves us into the world to carry your story of grace. As we come to know you, your grace and peace born in us, may we now turn toward each other. May our desire to be right be superseded by our desire to be loving.
Speaker 1:May our desire to be validated be subsumed in our need to be welcomed in. And in this, may we begin to see ourselves and each other and you more clearly. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:It's chapter 14 today, and I'm gonna read a bunch of sections to you from this chapter. And there's basically only one big meta argument in this chapter, and it all revolves around what we eat. Now Paul's gonna hammer that metaphor over and over and over again as we will see. And sometimes I wonder if I repeat myself a little bit too often in a sermon, and then I read Paul and I'm like, no. I'm not the problem here.
Speaker 1:However, in verse one he says, accept the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. That's basically Paul's argument for the chapter. We'll see how he comes back to it time and again, but for now he continues and he says, one person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. And here's the thing. I have mentioned that I have had my issues with Paul in the past.
Speaker 1:He seems very eight ish on the Enneagram, and I am an eight on the Enneagram, and often we tend to get annoyed with people who are like us. For me, that's louder people with loud opinions. But you know what? Paul and I, we have made our peace. We have become friends.
Speaker 1:I have learned to learn from him, but now he takes this cheap shot at me, and I struggle how to respond. The one whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. This is shameful stuff here. Come on, Paul. Be better.
Speaker 1:And yes, I am a vegetarian, and no, I don't want to talk to you about protein, but we'll come back to this. This is exactly what Paul is getting at, and we will see here that this is a very big deal for Paul. Next verse. 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 judge the one who does, for God has accepted both of them.
Speaker 1:Verse five, the one who considers one day more sacred than another, another considers every day alike and each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God as well. And just when we thought we are finally moving on, are back to vegetables here. Verse 10, why then do you judge your brother or sister? Why do you treat them with contempt?
Speaker 1:For all will stand before God's judgment seat. For it is written as surely as I live says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will acknowledge God. So each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.
Speaker 1:For I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. Therefore, if your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. And come on Paul, that seems a little dramatic, but he continues here. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone to stumble.
Speaker 1:It is better not to eat meat, or to drink wine, or to do anything else that will cause another to fall. And then he ends this chapter by saying, whatever you believe about these things, keep it between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves, but whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat. Because their eating is not from faith and everything that does not come from faith is sin. So quite a chapter here with quite a lot to say about what we eat.
Speaker 1:And then again, between all of these food metaphors, Paul is actually making a series of really important points, and that's what we wanna look at today. First though, we're gonna have to talk about what the deal is with all of these meals for Paul. About twenty years ago, I took a trip through The United States Of America, America, and we drove with some friends from Toronto where we lived at the time to Orlando. And at some point along that route, somewhere in the Carolinas, I believe, we stopped for dinner. We stopped at a barbecue place where they served meat by the pound.
Speaker 1:And when it came, it was just this huge plate of communal meat. The focus totality of all of our orders piled like some caveman's hedonistic fantasy. And so began an evening of meat and coke accompanied by an enormous selection of barbecue sauces that all tasted exactly the same to me. Basically, just thicker versions of the Coke, which I used to wash down all that barbecue sauce now slathered on my meat. But I ate the meat that day.
Speaker 1:I got the meat sweats that night, and I never ate an animal again in my life. However, here in Romans, Paul is talking about something very different, though no less religious in its fervor. And let me tell you, that meat, that day was a religious experience in all the worst ways possible. But Paul here is talking about two very specific complications for his friends in Rome. The first was the very limited access to kosher meats in Rome.
Speaker 1:Last week, we talked about the first great persecution. After the great fire of Rome in sixty four CE, the Christian community, including this church in Rome, were scapegoated for the fire. Well, about a decade earlier than that in forty nine CE, the emperor Claudius, who was Nero's father, had actually expelled all of the Jewish people from Rome. He felt that they were agitators against the state and he just had them all kicked out of the city. So this Christian community living in Rome under the shadow of the empire, a community as we talked about in earlier sections of this letter that was almost certainly made up of both Jewish and Gentile converts to the way of Jesus.
Speaker 1:They have a lot to worry about here. They're doing their best to fly below the radar and go unnoticed. They don't wanna bring more attention to themselves than they need to, but for those early Christians coming from the Jewish tradition and wanting to retain their practices and culture, for them, the very act of looking for kosher meat in the city, which was not only specific animals, but also animals slaughtered in a specific way, that would immediately put them at risk of being identified as Jewish and possibly expelled from their homes. So a lot of these Roman Christians who retained their Jewish cultural practices had probably just stopped eating meat altogether figuring that was safer for them. But there's more than that as well.
Speaker 1:Because the practice of sacrificing animals intended for food to idols was also a concern for some. And Paul deals with this in several different communities. For example, the church in Corinth wrestled with this. To that community, he writes some very similar advice. In first Corinthians eight, he basically says, look, idols aren't real.
Speaker 1:So you can't actually sacrifice an animal to an idol and have it matter. It it doesn't matter. It's basically his hard monotheism argument. There's only one God, so food sacrificed to imaginary gods is fair game. But at the same time, he then says, look, if you feel weird about it, then it matters to you, then avoid it.
Speaker 1:And if you know people who do care about that, well then don't be a jerk and talk about your meat sweats from all this food sacrificed to idols that you just ate. Leave them alone. And I really think it's this intersection that's why Paul finds this whole meat question so compelling here in Rome. See, Paul has been, in the background of this letter throughout this entire passage working to bring this very diverse community together. And now he's got this great convergence of concerns.
Speaker 1:You may be a Roman convert to the way of Christ, someone who has come from a background in the temple rituals and sacrifices to Isis or Serapis or Asclepius or any of the multitude of gods in the Roman culture. And because of that, you might feel weird about eating meat from vendors that you know worship and sacrifice the way that you used to. Or you may be a Jewish follower of Christ. Someone who wants to retain all of the beauty and the memory of these cultural practices that formed your faith, that kosher diet that you grew up with and you still value, but you fear for your safety and so you choose instead to abstain altogether. And so for two very different reasons, from two very different sides, you may find yourself brought together here in the middle as involuntary Roman vegetarians.
Speaker 1:And this just happens to be one of the things that Paul is focused on in this letter to Rome, the intersection between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. Well, here, Paul's able to take a concern within the community and focus it in such a way that it becomes a point of solidarity now between two groups that had historically been at odds with each other. Remember when we started today, and I told you a story about my son projecting his concerns about a new baby sister onto our dog, and you thought that I was just telling you a fun story to get the ball rolling. Well, sometimes when we're able to see our story and our concerns through the eyes of another, we end up with more clarity and more charity about both. And I have to wonder here, if there aren't people sitting in Rome reading, hearing this letter, Gentile Christians who now see their dilemma in their Jewish siblings.
Speaker 1:And Jewish followers of Jesus who recognize their fears now shared by all of these newcomers who are beginning to recognize now that all of this is about more than meat. Because all of a sudden Paul's words about community find purchase in new ways. This is just a really clever way for Paul to talk about unity within this particular city and setting. And so now, with some background about why he's so hot on this new vegan diet, you heard it here first. Paul was cool before it was cool.
Speaker 1:Take that, Greta. We can now go back and we can take another look at Paul's advice for community in the light of all of these things that draw us together. So let's go back to verse one where he says, accept the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. And there's two important words here, accept and dispute. And what's important about them is specifically the way they interact.
Speaker 1:Because our immediate question is, what exactly is a disputable matter? And obviously, one disputable matter is whether we're going to eat meat, obviously, but it would be a huge mistake to assume that's all that Paul is interested in here. Remember, meat is the unifying example. Meat is the metaphor, not the meal, if you will. And I often think that people read this chapter and they come away with the idea that we can have a difference of opinion in the terms of our diet as if that was the unity Christ prayed for.
Speaker 1:And I can only imagine Paul being at least a little disappointed in that exegesis because Paul is talking about much more than diet here. Paul is talking about all of the varied ways that we encounter the divine, and we personalize that through our experience, and then we struggle to communicate that faithfully to each other. Look, Paul doesn't even think his opinions are indisputable. In first Corinthians seven, he's dealing with marriage and divorce and relationships within the church between believers and unbelievers and all of the complexity of all of that. And he gives a bunch of advice in a series of sayings and introduces that advice in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1:At one point he says, I say this as a concession not a command. At another point he says, I give this command not I but the Lord says. And then in the very next sentence he says, and to the rest I say this and by the way is my opinion not the Lord's. Remember Paul doesn't think that he's writing scripture when he's writing it. He is writing as the spirit guides him for the good of his friends.
Speaker 1:It's only afterward as we began to understand the true significance of his writing that we canonized it. Now Paul certainly does think some things are indisputable. In Philippians two, and then again here in Romans 14, he will say that every knee will eventually bow before Jesus. In Romans 10, he says that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And in chapter eight, we heard him say, I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love.
Speaker 1:Neither death nor life nor angels nor demons, neither fears for today or worries for tomorrow, not even the power of hell can separate us from God's love. For no power in the sky above or in the earth below, nothing at all in all of creation could ever begin to separate us from the love of God revealed in Jesus. So it's clearly not anything goes for Paul. There was a Christian story about God's love that comes to us in Jesus and nothing we can ever do can ever change any of that. But how we make sense of that story and how we do our best to live out of that story, how we often trip and fall and fail and find ourselves picked up all over again by that story.
Speaker 1:All of that is inherently disputable because all of that is human beings attempting to discern the divine now come near to us. And so Paul says, because of that, we have to accept one another. And this word accept is important because I think we often substitute in our minds tolerate. Okay. We both call in the name of Christ, and we both trust Christ alone for salvation, and we both gather to worship God revealed in the person of the Christ.
Speaker 1:Therefore, I will tolerate your idiosyncrasies. And I'll admit, I have trouble when we talk about being a tolerant society as if tolerating each other was the best that we can do. Because that's not what this word means. In Greek, the word here is. Now means to take a hold of something.
Speaker 1:Is a prefix that indicates a direction toward something. So means to receive something given to you. Specifically, it was used of receiving food given to you to partake in a meal offered to you. And so the definition given for its use in Romans is usually something like to extend welcome or to receive into one's home or family. The significance being Paul is not encouraging us to tolerate each other in our differences.
Speaker 1:Paul is encouraging us to welcome each other, to celebrate each other, to learn from each other, to partake in the stories of those around us alongside each other. And often, I found a helpful way to think about this for myself using the idea of gravity. You and I believe in the gravity of the Jesus story. That the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus sits at the center of our lives, and both of us acknowledge our orbit around that story. Then the gravity of that orbit around Jesus should enable all kinds of difference in discussion between us as we learn from each other.
Speaker 1:See, if you and I are orbiting around the same Jesus, then you and I may find ourselves on opposite sides of a host of different issues. But if we're committed to being drawn towards the center with Jesus, And if we're both doing committed to following the way of Jesus we can do a lot more than tolerate each other. We can actually celebrate and learn from each other. Now the person on the bus who tells me they're not really into Pearl Jam, maybe that's enough for me to say good day, I don't need that kind of negativity in my life. But the person who tells me they love Jesus, the person who demonstrates their commitment to becoming more like Jesus, what I share with that person will always outweigh any of my differences from them.
Speaker 1:And I would hazard to add that it's this awareness as it begins to grow inside of me that leads me to uncover what I actually share with everyone I encounter. But Paul doesn't stop there. Because next he says, why then do you judge your brother or sister? Why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.
Speaker 1:And this is an interesting one because I think a lot of the time we imagine that judgment is inherently bad. Now we talked about judgment in the fall, in the sermon on the mount, and some judgment certainly is bad. There are voices that have not earned the right to judge you and you should run from those. But as a general rule, when Paul speaks of judgment, he's not automatically talking about something to be avoided. See, Paul doesn't see God's judgment as limited to punishment.
Speaker 1:Paul sees judgment as something that all of us need in order to see ourselves truthfully. So when we can actually be for each other and when our discernment can bring out the best in each other and when our judgment can actually begin to heal each other, when my opinion is offered in love, grounded in acceptance, it presumes the fact that I have already welcomed you fully into my life, then sure, my perspective can be welcomed. But if you don't already know before I open my mouth that I love you, I accept you, I welcome you in as you are, then our relationship is not sufficiently grounded in the that Paul starts this section with. Good judgment is always earned on the other side of acceptance, Which is why Paul ends this section with one more very important piece here. Verse 20 he says, All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.
Speaker 1:In other words, relationship is more important than being right. And then in verse 22 he adds, so whatever you believe about these things, learn to keep it between yourself and God. In other words, sometimes your silence is sacred. And look, coming from Paul, someone who was famous for sharing his opinions on everything, this is a pretty striking moment of self awareness. Because what Paul is saying here is that in Christ, our rightness is a function of our helpfulness.
Speaker 1:And that when we carry ourselves in a way that harms someone, that causes someone to fall, that makes them feel unloved or unwelcome, then in that moment, we are subjectively wrong even if we are objectively right. And in Christ, it's actually the first that matters more. And sadly, this is often a new way for a lot of us to think when it comes to our faith. I mean, we understand this in friendships. And we get this in our marriages.
Speaker 1:We know this when it comes to our work and yet somehow when it comes to our faith community, we often forget that being for each other is our prime directive. And that's really what this chapter is all about. Because Paul's point here is that faith is a team sport. And if your faith is not good for the people around you, then your faith is not good for you. Because here, what even someone as opinionated as Paul knows is that we get a lot of things wrong.
Speaker 1:And our salvation will never be found in finding and fixing all of our errors. Salvation is found only in the grace that comes to us, the grace that welcomes us to the table, the grace that slowly begins to transform us into graceful people, the grace that makes us graceful toward each other. Let's pray. God of all grace, for those moments when we have elevated our judgments above our helpfulness, We have elevated our perspectives and our opinions above our concern for another. Where we have spoken before we have earned the right to share, we are sorry.
Speaker 1:But we ask that you would do more than forgive us. You would actually transform us. That the grace of your story that welcomed us in, that accepted us as we were, that offered us a seat at your table would be the story that we would live out of, and that we would find ways to speak the truth in love after only we have accepted people as they are, welcomed them without qualifications into our lives, That we would open ourselves to each other, and in that, we might see the beauty in difference and the wisdom in new perspectives that together as we share what we see in you, each of us would come away with an imagination of the divine that is bigger than any one single part of us. That together, we might know you better than we could on our own. God, as you gift this to us in community, may we continue to expand the table so that all are welcome and together we may share with each other the truth of who you are.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.