To eat or not to eat

 

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.