Meditation for 21 July 2010
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
Romans 14:13-23
13 Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another. 14I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. 15If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. 16So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. 17For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. 19Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification. 20Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; 21it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. 22The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. 23But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
Love and Faith and …
Paul is basically saying here, “Yes, it’s true that now in Christ we are free to eat anything – i.e., there are no more dietary restrictions – but if you are around someone who doesn’t believe that eating meat or drinking is right, don’t offer them a glass of wine when they come to your house, and don’t serve them filet mignon.” Why? Because you should be nice? No. Out of love. “If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love.” (verse 15) Paul is most concerned about what builds up the Body of Christ. (see verse 19 and “mutual edification”) And what builds up the body is the practice of love. Practice loving God. Practice loving others. Practice loving yourself.
The practice of love can be very practical.
Don’t offer a recovering alcoholic alcohol. Make a vegetarian lasagna when your vegetarian friends are coming over for dinner, not a meat lasagna. Offer a gluten-free communion bread to those with Celiac’s disease. Only bring up the one thing that you are frustrated with your spouse about in that particular moment, not a “laundry list” of things they have done that have annoyed you over the past ten (or forty) years. Ask someone if you can give him or her some feedback, and if he/she says ‘yes”, offer it in a way that they can hear it; that is, say what you feel led to say with love in your voice, and with love in your heart.
Love is at the heart of the Gospel, but loving someone is not the same thing as being nice. When we love another, we also want what is best for that person. C.S. Lewis put it well in one of his classic books, Mere Christianity. “Niceness is an excellent thing. But we must not suppose that if we succeeded in making everyone nice we have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to bring to God.” (p. 182)
“Turned away from God…” That brings me to the last part of verse 23 above, the faith part: “… for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” That is quite a statement, isn’t it? There are a lot of ways to describe sin. The original meaning was “missing the mark”, like an arrow that falls short of its target. Another way to think of sin is turning your back on God, or anything you do that results in alienation or separation between you and God or between you and your fellow man. There is also corporate sin, of course – the things that we do that separate us from God, such as societal structures that legitimize racism or oppression of some particular group.
But back to Paul. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. When you and I act as if God is not needed… when you and act as if God cannot help us with a very difficult challenge, or act as if God doesn’t want to help us… whenever you or I squeeze God out of the center of our lives… whenever you or I make something else that isn’t god our God (money, status, power, etc.), and make decisions based only on those things… (For example, if the only variable we consider is ‘Do I/we have the money to do this?’, then we are letting money decide the issue for us, and God is squeezed out, and He is no longer God.) … if we know in our gut what God is prompting us to do, and then we don’t do it, due to fear (most likely) or laziness… in all of these cases we have sinned; we have missed the mark. Because what we have done has not proceeded from faith.
And what about hope? Paul doesn’t write about hope in this particular passage. But if we are practicing love, and practicing faith in God, we will discover that hope is present, too. For when love is happening, and when we are living in faith and experiencing God’s grace, we suddenly realize that we are people who are full of hope, too.
May we know all three this week – love, faith, and hope. And may we give thanks for the One who is the source of all three.