Violence. It’s everywhere. We’ve just gone through a week of discussion about the video of Ray Rice punching his fiancee. In the weeks before that it was the violence allegedly begun by the shooting of an unarmed African American by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A meme going around Facebook says that more American children have died from gun violence than American soldiers died in the Iraqi and Afghan war zones during the last ten years. On the international side of things, we have had two videoed beheadings by ISIS, rocket and mortar assaults on Gaza City and the West Bank, and fighting in eastern Ukraine. And who knows what other violence didn’t make the headlines.
Secretary of State John Kerry is shuttling among capitals trying to resolve international conflicts. Former FBI director Robert Mueller will investigate the NFL’s response to the Ray Rice video. It is not just instantaneous media. People seem to have quicker tempers that they used to. We need ways in which to address conflict between individuals, between social groups, between ideologies, between cultures, between nations.
The church is not exempt from conflict. Across the centuries Christians have flared up about important things and things hardly important in the larger scope of faith. We Presbyterians are in the season of peacemaking. The original Commitment to Peacemaking began thirty years ago. It sought to address peacemaking skills and needs between individuals, in families, in communities, and in the global arena. A number of years ago, another emphasis was added, peacemaking with the earth.
Jesus said that he came bringing a sword which would divide. He meant that his words of truth would divide those who gratefully receive God’s grace from those who deny God and reject the love which God wishes to lavish on humanity. But Jesus’ sword is not to be used to bludgeon people into faith or destroy those who have not yet figured out that Christ’s glory is beneficial for them.
In today’s reading from the Roman letter, Paul offers spiritual guidance to prevent conflict. He knows that the root of conflict is not only differences of opinion but also differences in power. Paul encouraged the Romans, the people of the empire, not just to tolerate those who were weak in faith, but to show hospitality, to extend an extra measure of patience and to make the weak feel welcomed.
Who are the weak? And how can those who are weak and those who are strong live together in Christ? Who are the weak? Are the weak those who suffer from substance abuse? Are the weak those who suffer from mental illness? Are the weak those who are developmentally disabled? Are the weak those who are blown about by every fad and whim that comes along? Are the weak the vulnerable new immigrants not yet acclimated to our culture? Are the weak those who are educationally disadvantaged? Are the weak the youth who sometimes risk life and limb to scramble into the country, often illegally because the risk is less dangerous than staying home? Are the weak those who make $7.35 an hour (federal minimum wage) and have to pay half of that for substandard housing, and then are expected to pay utilities and put food on the table for and clothes on the backs of themselves and any dependents with what is left?
Who are the weak? Are the weak those who can run up billions of dollars in debts and get off scot-free? Or those who run up a few thousand in debts and get thrown into the poor house? That’s the upshot of the story that Jesus posed to the disciples.
Paul posits that the weak are more than those who are behind the economic eightball. Are the weak those who operate under a very narrow system of belief? Or are the strong those who seem to have a very broad approach to faith. Or is it the other way around?
In the Roman Christian community, there was conflict between Christians with a Jewish heritage and Christians who never were Jews. The Jewish Christians knew exactly how to behave. They followed the Jewish kosher laws and added Christ’s salvation to their faith. But what did it mean to be an observant Gentile Christian? The dietary laws and the rest of the Mosaic legal system was foreign to them. Did they have to give up meat? Could they have a glass of wine? Which day was the Sabbath – Saturday or Sunday?
Christians today have the same kind of differences. Does a Christian wear a cross or not? Must a Christian carry a Bible? And which Bible? Are only certain Bibles okay? Do we have to be born again? Do we only baptize adults or is it all right to baptize children?
We live in a world where these kinds of questions are roiling Christian communities. Similar questions are just as prevalent in Jewish and Islamic faith communities. Do all Jews have to be ultra-Zionists? Or are all Muslims jihadists?
There may be two thousand years of calendar pages intervening, but being a Christian today isn’t all that different from being a Christian in the Roman Empire in Paul’s day. The main difference is trajectory. In Paul’s day, being a Christian was a new thing. It called into question the prevailing beliefs and practices of the day, including the cult of the emperor which pervaded all the civil practices. Jesus Christ offered an alternative loyalty.
Faith in Christ today takes on a similar alternative because the emerging church today realizes that the two millennia of the ascendency of Christianity in the European-North American world has left the faith that Paul transmitted eviscerated and reduced in meaning. A watered-down Christianity is so ubiquitous that almost anyone can claim it. The struggle of the church is to reclaim Christ in the fullness of the gospel. And that causes the same kind of conflict as Paul faced with the Jewish and Gentile Christians.
Instead of arguing over meat and beverages, Christians argue over secondary and tertiary understandings and explanations of what the grace, forgiveness, and lordship of Jesus Christ means. Must Christians eschew anything but the simplest of understandings in reading the ageless texts? Or does God continue to reveal God’s self in new ways to succeeding generations? Or is God to be worshiped only with organs, preferably piped, and never with guitars and drums and tambourines, even though those instruments, not organs, are mentioned in scripture? And must joyful noises be only in four-part harmony rather than one-part unison? The conflicts go on and on. Christians are at each other’s theological throats.
Paul says that there is another way to deal with this. It’s the faith way. Paul acknowledges that people can hold radically different convictions and still be good and faithful people. Paul is helping persons in the early Christian community to resist demonizing each other. He teaches sincere, heart-felt, respectful disagreement.
We don’t live for ourselves and we don’t die for ourselves. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to God. This is why Christ died and lived: so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.Just as there is no “I” in team, there is no place for self-centeredness in Christ, because as Christians our entire life is ultimately centered on Christ.
Who are the weak? We are the weak. We are the those who are so deep in debt to God that we have no choice but to bow before our maker, admit our inability to pay up, and receive saving forgiveness. Unlike the mega-bankrupt servant who pitches a fit at the fellow servant who owes him a pittance, God looks at the life-debt which each of us has run up and forgives us, wipes the slate clean, and gives us a perfect 850 FICO score (not the bank version) but “Faith in Christ Overall.”
Who are the weak? We are. And in Christ there are neither weak nor strong. For all of us are God-imaged sisters and brothers, accountable to God for each other as well as ourselves. “Whether we live or die, we belong to God.” Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Forgiving God, you don’t ignore our debts. In our weakness, you tally them up and pay them off with your forgiving love. Grant us forgiving grace to forsake self-imposed notions of strength so that we may accept each other as you accept us, free and clear, and fully welcomed in your eternal realm. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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