As I’m sure you know, Jesus’ first followers were Jewish, and
accepting Gentiles – non-Jews – into the early church was
somewhat fraught. Ought those early disciples to follow the Jewish
law in its entirety; must they be circumcised; how should they
proceed? St Luke tells us, in the book of Acts that there was such a
kerfuffle that they had to hold a special Council about it, in
Jerusalem. After a great deal of debate, and speeches from people
like Peter, who reminded the assembly that God had shown him that
Gentiles, too, were welcome, and from Paul and Barnabas, telling
about the people they had met on their travels, James, the Lord’s
brother, who was at the time de facto head of the Church in
Jerusalem, said: “Therefore I have reached the decision that we
should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we
should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols
and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled, and from
blood.” It is, of course, debatable whether Paul would really have
agreed to that, given the sort of views he is propounding in our
reading today, but hey.
The Letter to the Romans is
thought to have been written around 57-58 AD, or CE if you prefer
that terminology, and the book of Acts not until, probably, the 80s
or even 90s, so who knows how accurately his views have been
represented? It doesn’t really matter, of course, but what does
matter are his views in the passage we’ve just heard read.
The
issues are not about the ethical or health considerations of
vegetarianism, but it’s all about relations between the Jewish and
Gentile Christians. You see, about ten years earlier, Emperor
Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome, and of course many who left
would also have been Christians. The Church in Rome was then, for
some years, exclusively a Gentile church. But in 54 CE, Claudius
died and Nero took over as Emperor, and the Jews came back. And, of
course, during the time they were away, the church had grown and
evolved, and the Jewish Christians didn’t like the changes at all!
First of all, there was the vexed question of eating meat. In Rome,
as in other cities at the time, meat was normally sacrificed in the
temples and then sold to the butchers to resell to the public.
As
you know, the Jews need their meat to be kosher, killed properly
according to Jewish dietary laws, and, above all, not to have been
offered as a sacrifice in a temple to pagan gods. In a community
where there was a large Jewish population, that was not a problem,
since there would be a kosher butcher, from whom they could buy their
meat. But there hadn’t been any Jews in Rome for several years,
and so there was nowhere to buy meat that they could trust – there
was no way of knowing how and where it had been killed when you
bought from a street stall. Gentile Christians weren’t
particularly bothered by this; they didn’t keep kosher and anyway,
those pagan gods weren’t real, so what did it matter? But for the
Jews, this was dreadful – they couldn’t possibly eat meat when
they didn’t know where it had come from, so they would stay
vegetarian, and everybody else should, too!
Similarly, the
Jewish Christians were shocked to find that the Gentiles didn’t
observe the Sabbath as they thought it should be observed. For them,
the Gentile Christians simply weren’t honouring God as they should.
They must have thought they were adhering to What The Bible
Teaches
But, how does this affect us? We may or may not
choose to eat meat, and some people do make a moral issue out of it,
but it’s not a sticking point. And I do know, from personal
experience, there can be a dichotomy between those who observe Lent
and, to a lesser extent, Advent very strictly and those who don’t
really observe those seasons but who are fairly strictly Sabbatarian.
But really, they aren’t particularly major issues today.
But
we do have our major issues, don’t we? From whether or not you
should shop on a Sunday, have sex before marriage, get divorced,
drink alcohol, be gay…. When I was a young Christian, I wondered
what on earth Paul was talking about when he said “It is for
freedom Christ has set us free” when Christianity seemed to be
hedged about with all these rules and regulations, and people said
you were being a “bad witness” if you didn’t keep them as
strictly as the Pharisees kept their petty rules. Christianity, it
seemed to me, may have freed us from the Jewish law, but it imposed
extraordinarily heavy burdens on one, just the same.
Of
course, leaving the rules behind is extremely scary. Paul refers to
those who want to stick to the rules as “weak in the faith”,
which I imagine came as a big surprise to the Jewish Christians who
heard his letter being read. Surely, they were the strong ones?
They were the ones who were doing it right. I don’t think the meme
“God said it; I believe it; that settles it!” had been coined
back in the day, but that is certainly what they were thinking! And
yet, to Paul, they were the weak ones, clinging to a framework of
legalism and not allowing themselves to be truly free in Christ.
And
I remember being utterly terrified when I first began to let go of
all the evangelical rules and regulations, and to try to trust Jesus
alone. What if I got it wrong? Wouldn’t I be condemned as a
dreadful sinner?
It is really, really hard to accept that
we have been saved by Jesus and don’t need to cling to the Bible as
a rule book, but to read it more as a love letter from God. Mind
you, I’ve noticed that people tend to find whatever they look for
in the Bible – if they want a God who condemns those who aren’t
exactly like them, or who do things they’ve been taught are wrong,
then they are going to find that condemnation; if, on the other hand,
they go looking for a God who loves each and every one of his
children more than words can tell – then that’s who they will
find!
But the thing is, whether we are weak like the
Jewish Christians were, or like I was, or whether we are what Paul
would call “strong”, we haven’t to despise one another. Paul
writes, in a modern paraphrase:
“Don’t
put anyone down for being timid in their faith. Welcome them into the
congregation, and don’t give them a hard time for being hung up
about things that cause you no concern. You who are strong must not
make fun of those who play it safe; for the fact is that God has
extended a welcome to them too, and the Lord is quite capable of
getting them to stand where they should without your help.”©2002
Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
We
are all God’s children. We may choose to express our faith in
different ways. I may reckon that a certain behaviour is acceptable,
and you may disagree. Or vice versa. But
we haven’t to fight over it. In fact, more than that, we haven’t
to let our behaviour put someone else off. If someone believed, for
instance, that it was really wrong to paint a room on a Sunday, but
you were perfectly happy to do just that once you’d been to church,
Paul says elsewhere that you mustn’t let your freedom lead your
friend into doing something they believe is sinful. If they can’t
help you with your home decorating on Sunday, don’t try to make
them. Arrange another time that suits both of you! And
maybe, if the thought of your decorating really upsets them, don’t
do it!
Paul
points out that those who eat meat are doing it for God’s glory, to
prove that the pagan gods have no power, and those who don’t, in
that context, are also doing it for God’s glory, as they are
refusing to allow themselves to be contaminated by possible contact
with paganism. Both sides have valid points, and if your neighbour
at church lunch refuses the meat course, don’t try to persuade them
otherwise, and perhaps
don’t eat meat yourself that day.
C.S.Lewis said, in
The Screwtape Letters,
that if we took
Paul seriously, you would expect to see your low church neighbour
genuflecting and using incense and
so on so as not to lead
their high church friend into irreverence, and the high church one
would refrain from such things so as not to lead the other
into idolatry! But we
are not all so tolerant!
We will not, I think, talk about
those so-called Christian Nationalists who appear to believe that
only white people can be true Christians – but, while we believe
they are misguided, to say the least, we would want to welcome
anybody who turned up at our church holding such views, and accept
them and love them and hope to change them through love, not through
argument.
Similarly, I know some churches – not,
thankfully this one – seem to think gay marriage is wrong. “God
made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” they chunter. All the same,
I bet that if Adam and Steve – or Eve and Donna, for that matter –
were to rock up to that church next Sunday, they would be warmly
welcomed and find themselves on the coffee rota before they had time
to blink! And we know
that the whole issue has caused major heartache and even split some
churches, so we will be sensitive and not flaunt our own views in
front of those who don’t share them. The whole tenor of Jesus’
teaching, after all, is about treating other people – whoever they
are, whatever their views – with the greatest possible respect and
love.
The
point is, that whatever we do or don’t do, whatever we think or
don’t think; whether we treat the Bible as a rule book, or as a
love letter; whether we believe we have been set free in Christ, or
that Christianity is a life full of constraints; whatever we believe,
how can it possibly matter against what Christ has done for us?
God’s love for us in sending Jesus is so immense, so totally beyond
our understanding in its immensity, that our own beliefs are
insignificant. We are not saved by our faith, but by what God has
done! Yes, we need to express our willingness to be Jesus’ person
– but the Good News isn’t, although I was taught to believe it
was – it isn’t “You are a dreadful sinner”. The
Good News is “You are
loved”. Amen.
