Freedom and Respect

From the sermon series: Intimacy, Love and Marriage: Making Love Last a Lifetime
January13, 2013
Covenant Presbyterian Church
Romans 14:1-9

A rabbi and a Catholic priest were sitting next to each other at a public dinner when the waiter rather thoughtlessly served the rabbi a piece of ham. The rabbi didn't protest, deciding simply to eat around it and enjoy the other items on his plate. The Catholic priest leaned over and said, "Rabbi Cohen, we both know that the dietary laws in the Hebrew Scriptures were developed when pork was dangerous. There wasn't any refrigeration; they used low heat when cooking. Trichinosis was rampant. So, your ancestors were right to prohibit eating pork. But those days are gone; pork is safe and there is no reason to cling to outmoded ancient practices. When will you eat your first mouthful of ham?"

Rabbi Cohen responded quietly, "At your wedding, Father Maguire, at your wedding.”

Our scripture passage today offers a glimpse at specific faith practices in the early Christian church. You may be shocked to learn this, but way back in the early church apparently not everyone was of one mind. Some ate meat; others did not. Some honored the Sabbath; others did not. Some wore jeans to church; others preferred coats and ties. Some thought they should provide for the world’s poorest wherever they lived; others believed charity began at home. Some were quite convinced that church should be convenient, open, accessible; others knew God assigned 9:30 for Sunday School and 11:00 for worship. Some even dared to believe in a broadly inclusive church, that God welcomed all people, regardless; others thought it best that folks shape up a bit before coming in, modify this behavior, renounce that sin.

As you might expect, they were conflicted about it, fighting, arguing, doing all those things that drive the saner among us to the golf course on Sunday morning, and after laying out thirteen chapters of sophisticated theology, Paul addresses this community conflict by offering three specific principles. This morning as we continue our series on relationships, how to make them last a lifetime, and as we ordain and install elders, I'd like to explore them carefully.

The first principle for remaining in relationship with those who think and act differently from us is to remember that whatever that person is doing, they’re doing it, "in honor of the Lord" (14:6).

Even though their practice may seem silly or outdated, no pork, no sex, no work on the Sabbath, or, even when it’s more serious, like excluding women from leadership in the church or people of certain sexual orientations from ordination, Paul says when someone offends, the best response is to get out of our own skin, drop our default perspective, and realize they’re doing what they think is right. They're seeking to honor God with their lives.

It’s good advice for families, parents, friends and elders to be ordained today, to remember that even the most foolhardy, wrong-headed person you meet may actually be seeking to honor God as best he or she knows how.

Some times that's harder to believe than at others. I know not all of you keep up with goings on in the Presbyterian denomination, but you may have read recently that some in the Presbyterian family are disaffected by our recent decision around ordination standards. After years of trying, the denomination has finally granted congregations and presbyteries a careful way to ordain practicing homosexuals. Along the way there have been ugly trials in which people's sex lives were discussed, accusations made and a lot of mean-spiritedness. But now the PCUSA has finally made a way to honor the specific convictions of local congregations and Presbyteries, allowing each to choose whom to ordain and by what standards. Many, and I am among them, think it a long awaited great step for our denomination. Others are crestfallen.

And now, some congregations, some ministers and elders, are leaving instead of assuming the best and saying, "Maybe those who think and act differently from us are also trying to honor God and maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from them.” Instead of that, some are saying, “We can’t be members of this family anymore. We’re leaving and taking our stuff with us.” I think it breaks God's heart.

Before we get sanctimonious toward our departing friends in faith, let us also remember Paul’s teaching is not only for them; it’s for us, too, and it is for us to be able to say, “We’re disappointed in your decision. We’ll miss you. But as you go, we will remember that you’re trying to honor God as well.” It's an essential framework for unity and reconciled relationships.

The second reason Paul gives for bearing with one another is related to the first. He says not only are all trying to honor Christ but Christ is, in fact, the Lord of all people, all the time. Paul has an extraordinarily expansive view of God's reign. He says that in Christ death has been defeated, that anyone in Christ is a new creation, all things are new through him, and therefore Christ alone is judge of all. It must have been terribly difficult to hold this expansive view of God while watching his loved ones engage in such petty judgments … Should we eat this kind of meat? Worship only on Sunday, sing this song, wear that robe, play that instrument? Can you imagine Paul’s cognitive dissonance? To hear his beloved congregation majoring in the minors had to drive him crazy. So Paul says,

"If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living." (14:8-9)

It’s a powerful claim. No matter what we do, what we think, what we practice, even whether we're alive or dead, what's most true about every one of us is that we belong to God. What’s most important about us is that God claims us as God’s very own. When we disagree – even over important matters – we can at least agree on this: whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God.

This becomes clearest when standing over the grave of a loved one. Years ago, I was asked to do a funeral for a church member's adult son named Bill. Bill was in his fifties and had lived a colorful life. He had endured numerous prison sentences, been kicked out of more rehab programs than anyone could number, proliferated a few children with whom he had no contact and was still facing a number of assault charges when he died.

We gathered at the funeral home where members of his extended family and their compassionate friends streamed in. One guest sidled up to me just before the service and said, "I can't wait to hear what you're going to say about this character." We laughed at the challenge – and it was a challenge – but Bill made me consider exactly what I thought about God’s reign. When I stood to speak, I said, "Bill was exactly the kind of person Jesus hung out with. James and John were called Sons of Thunder and would have been in a motorcycle gang like Bill was. Simon was a right-wing nationalist zealot. Peter was a coward. Judas was a traitor, and Bill would have fit right in. He possessed all the qualities necessary to be in Jesus' inner circle.”

The apostle Paul understood that. He knew Jesus' primary purpose was to bring life to all, to break down the dividing wall between the most fundamental differences: Jew/Greek, slave/free, dead/living! One theologian writes, “To acknowledge Jesus as Lord implies a critique of all other powers, even the power of our most precious values and considered judgments.”

Whether we live well or die poorly, we belong to God. Remembering that allows us to stay in relationship with one another even in the most difficult times.

The third and final reason Paul offers for bearing with those who differ from us is that if there's any judging to be done, God will do it. And, one judge is enough. Some may be disappointed to hear this, but when it comes to judging the world, God doesn't need our help. Judgment is quite the popular trend these days. It’s the whole basis of the so-called reality shows, rendering judgment and evaluation on others. The tribe speaks, the panel evaluates, the bachelor chooses, and people are pitted against one another in a series of ruthless evaluations. One night not long ago I settled in to watch the brutal judgments rendered by the panelists on American Idol. Simon Cowell, always the sharpest, just crushed a contestant saying she sounded like Dolly Parton on helium.

It’s not just secular society; evangelical scholar J.I. Packer knew the dangers of his community’s propensity to judge and wrote, “Confidence that one’s impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through prayer.”

The apostle Paul reminds us God alone is judge, and taking that to heart releases us from our incessant need to evaluate, measure and categorize those who live differently. God’s role as judge releases us from the consuming energies of evaluation, deciding who’s in and who’s out, what’s right and what’s wrong – we get released from all that and freed up to love.

Occasionally we get a glimpse of the freedom of that way of life, the freedom of letting go. Instead of playing God with our judgments, we turn instead toward focusing our energies on God's redemptive work.

Many stories have been told about Mother Teresa, but one of my very favorites is about the time she spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. The host introduced her as “the greatest woman in the world.” She bristled at all human attempts to judge her life, even positive judgments, and dismissed the introduction saying if she were the greatest woman in the world, God would have made her tall enough to see over the lectern behind which she was standing. But she went on to say, “I am nothing close to being the greatest woman in the world, but I will tell you the greatest thing about my life. I have been able to be a tiny pencil in the hand of God, someone through whom God writes love letters to the world.”

What a glad thought … that you and I might be the means by which God’s love is lived out in this broken and often, divided, conflicted, hateful and hard-edged world. … that we might be released from the binding matrix of right and wrong, good and bad, the paralysis of analysis regarding who's in who’s out and instead become pencils in God's hands through whom God writes love letters to the world.

It is my hope and earnest prayer for all of us, in our families, our work, our relationships, our new elders who will serve God in this place – that we transcend the consuming work of judgment and be freed to live as agents of God’s love and grace.

Few said it better than St. Francis, who himself had to be set free from the matrix of judgment. He wrote a prayer I'd like to use to close today’s sermon and I invite you to join me:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.