“Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not
for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything,
while the weak eat only vegetables.” From the Letter of Paul the Apostle to the
Romans, chapter 14, verses 1 and 2.
In
the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well,
as we have just heard, we have it on the authority of the Apostle, that eating
only vegetables is either the consequence, or the cause, of weakness in faith!!
There we have it! Perhaps each is true! We have been warned! And perhaps this
is why people say to me, from time to time, that they disapprove of Saint Paul,
not to forget his remarks about sexuality elsewhere in the Letter to the Romans!
But, of course, we can’t judge all of Paul’s writings on the basis of one or
two lines from his letters, and, of course, he does tell us not to quarrel over
opinions, including, I think, opinions about him and his writings! And keep in
mind that Paul is not saying here that he has this from the Lord; we’re hearing
Paul’s own views here. So vegans need not feel that the Lord disapproves of
them!
Our
translation titles this section of the Letter, ‘Do not judge another.’ It is
not accidental that the first occasion of judgment in today’s reading, which in
this context means negative judgment, is food. It takes only a moment to
realize that in our own society we are endlessly opinionated and judgmental
about food, about eating, about everything connected to them. Perhaps we are
puzzled or annoyed by the food preferences of others, perhaps others disapprove
of our preferences, and say so, especially when they connect them to
fashionable ideas about health. We live in what must be, along with Manhattan,
one of the most food-obsessed cities on earth. This is a consequence of mass
prosperity and scientific agriculture, which have given us choices which people
in previous times, and in poor places today, could not possibly have. Our
situation gives us time and opportunity to develop obsessions, snobbery, fetishes,
superstitions, and just plain nonsensical ideas about food. Now of course Paul
is writing about people making food choices for what they believe to be good
and sufficient religious reasons. But we need not restrict our understanding of
his meaning, to a particular situation two thousand years ago. Food still
remains an occasion for judgmental ideas today, and we must not let them
overtake us, and lead us to “despise those who abstain, and those who abstain
must not pass judgment on those who eat.” “For God has welcomed them,” Paul
writes. Meals are to be occasions of fellowship, celebration, and not for
exclusion, disapproval, judgment. We remember that Our Lord commands us to feed
the hungry. I’m reminded of a remark that C S Lewis is supposed to have made,
that “the only people who are invited to banquets are those who already have
enough to eat!” Food and our attitude to it are at the center of our Christian
lives. Our Eucharistic worship teaches us to be reverent toward food and
thankful for it. The more reverent we are in our worship, the more reverent we
will be in other meals. And this reverence works in the other direction too. We
are never to take food for granted, never to think that it is merely routine,
uninteresting, unworthy of respect.
And
so, by extension, we are never to take people for granted either. We remember
the word “companion,” which means, “someone we share bread with.” Paul adds the
curious remark, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servants of another?” This
is a reminder that in meal situations, we are to be careful not to judge
someone on the basis of perceived low status; these are servants, in Paul’s
letter, but they could be anyone we perceive to be lower on the totem pole than
we are. “And they will be upheld,” Paul writes, “for the Lord is able to make
them stand.” In the end, the only status that matters is the status that Our
Lord gives us. Our social arrangements are temporary, and, ultimately, they are
trivial. At the Heavenly Banquet in the Kingdom, they won’t matter at all.
“Some
judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be
alike.” What a prescient remark that was! Christian history is full of disputes
about the calendar. In the first few centuries of the Church, there was much
disagreement about how and when to commemorate the Resurrection, and, in fact,
the date of Pascha, of Easter, is still a matter of contention today. Whom and
what to remember in the calendar, and how, and why, and when, or whether
Christians should have such a calendar at all, are still matters for argument.
This problem is thick with opportunities for judgmental attitudes, accusations
of disorder, irresponsibility, heresy, schism, apostasy, all of which lead
almost inevitably to physical violence, even murder and war. Christian history
is full of it, and the religious violence in the world today is no different.
We humans have a lot of difficulty living with others whose ways are different
from our own. We humans have a hard time living with pluralism and ambiguity,
the awareness that there really are other ways of doing things, and maybe those
other ways are right and our ways are wrong.
The
solution that Paul offers is a call to a higher reality than the temporary
arrangements of a calendar. “Let all be convinced in their own minds. Those who
observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.” Paul goes on to write, “We
do not live for ourselves…if we live, we live to the Lord…” That is, the only
reality that matters, is that we all belong to the Lord, regardless of what we
think about food, or calendars, or anything else. We all, in the end, are equal
before the Lord and his judgment seat. That is the only judgment that matters.
“For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” Paul writes. “As I
live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give
praise to God.” This is a promise that our tongues too shall give praise to
God, but the precondition, as it were, is that “each of us will be accountable
to God,” as Paul writes. The judgment of God will be the requirement that we
see our own judgments for what they are: ultimately, attempts to exclude others
from their life with the Lord. Once we see ourselves, once we accept God’s
judgment, only then will we be able to bow to him, and our tongues will give
praise to him.
So we
have come a long way from disputes about food and the calendar. These
apparently small things can lead to very big consequences. So let us welcome
each other then, “but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.”
In
the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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