A sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN June 30, 2013
texts: Mark 7:1-7,14-23; Romans 14:1 - 15:6
My professors that taught preaching would likely take me to task for selecting such large expanses of scripture for a sermon. The problem of course is as you shrink down the text you approach a method of "proof texting," that I oppose. Sometimes to fully appreciate what point is being make requires a bit of context. This is one of those texts.
This passage in Romans
is a very challenging to preach but it neatly dovetails to our scripture from last
week in Acts on Christian conversion and Jewish dietary laws (Day 195). Here, Paul “takes no prisoners” with his
argument. He gives little comfort to
Christians who think we are free to do something as long as we think is right, or to Christians who want to fall back on the more universal absolutes of
the Law and not do anything a scripture forbids. Paul states we have some difficult and uncomfortable obligations to responsible “Christian
liberty.” I encourage you to read the texts again this week and think about
where you stand.
We have to appreciate
the two things in the life of the congregation that Paul values most: He
completely believed that every Christian should invite others to assess one’s conduct
as the measure of one's devotion to Jesus Christ. He invited his congregations to do so and expects us to extend the same invitation to others. Second, the congregation is the primary force for proclaiming the Word
into the world. Paul knows that anything that works against the peace
and purity of the congregation is a sin. The congregation is the face of Christ
in the world and strife within it (or denomination at large) is an act of
self-condemnation.
He uses the
conflict over the role of the Law in Jewish Christian life to make a far more
expansive point about Christian liberty that he says is really the freedom to limit liberty in order to be a slave to Christ. Ending dietary
restrictions and choosing what day to worship (should it be Sabbath or Sunday) profoundly
troubled many Jewish Christians because the Law is part of both religious and
ethnic identity. A penitent Jew(ish Christian) must choose between the Christian
liberty that frees them from the Jewish tradition of Law, or following the Law
and Christianity.
Paul uses the word “strong” for those Jewish Christians who
can comfortably disregard the Law and “weak” for those who were spiritually troubled
not to follow it. It is an understandable
distinction but it does a disservice to our modern ear. Respectively, we might
more appropriately call the two perspectives “liberal” and “conservative” not
in a political sense but in the true sense of the words. A liberal view takes
into account favors the immediate circumstance in deciding on the proper thing
to do, for example eating with gentile Christians. Not only that, you will find we seldom can put ourself 100% in one camp or the other. Not even Jesus did that. Jesus demonstrated a liberal
view when he said it was proper to heal a person on the Sabbath. He
demonstrated a conservative view that favors tradition when He said, “Do not
think I have not come to abolish the Law or the prophets. I have come not to
abolish but to fulfill.” (Matt. 5:17-26) Keep this passage in mind because this is basically what Paul is saying and he never had the Gospel of Mark to read!
Like Jesus, Paul actually honors both positions but he adds
important caveats. He says wherever you stand on Christian liberty and
responsible behavior, the Law may offer
spiritual comfort but it is not a path to salvation. At the same time, if you
exercise of liberty and cause someone to stumble, you bring condemnation on
yourself.
Paul goes right to the heart of the matter from an
individual and congregational viewpoint. This issue is not the food we eat or
day we worship. It is the basic question of freedom, “How do we know what is
good and bad, or responsible and irresponsible behavior?”
Paul’s answer may dissatisfy you. He says, “It depends.”
Paul knows scripture guides us to discern the difference between responsible
and irresponsible behavior. It does not give us a set of rigid rules for behavior, it gives us only rigid rules for determining good behavior. Paul says irresponsible behavior is not violating a
set of rules or Laws but is any behavior that separates us from God. In other
words, as Jesus said in Mark (and Matthew), nothing in itself is good or bad.
What is bad comes from the heart. Paul tells the congregation that each person
must decide responsible behavior according to the standard, “Does it
separate me from God or not?” This is the individual viewpoint.
Paul does not make it easy but at least he gives us a
roadmap to decision. On one hand he says if I have confidence in my faith
regardless of the Law I am Ok to violate the Law. However even though I know
the law is not a path to salvation, if the Law is so tightly ingrained in my
psyche that I suffer spiritual anguish by not following it, I should let it
guide it my daily living. If I do not,
the anguish of my heart feeling it is wrong condemns me.
From the congregational viewpoint Paul identifies three Christian obligations of liberty:
1.
To be responsible to self.
2.
To be responsible to the wider non-believing
public (who observe and decide the merit of our belief based on our behavior.)
3.
To be responsible to the congregation.
What he says about “good intentions” in Romans 14:14-17 is
difficult teaching. One’s good intentions are irrelevant. Only the actual
effect of our action on others is important. Personal motivation cannot justify
an action that leads some one astray. (Have you ever said, “I didn’t mean to hurt
your feelings!”)
The reason goes to the effect of the action. If we cause
anguish or strife among our members by our behavior or disagreement, we present
ourselves and congregation as hypocrites to the non-believing world. Paul’s measure of good behavior, the ethical test
if you will, is whether or not our action promotes the presence of peace and
joy in the Holy Spirit.
The whole argument rests on Romans 14:15, the word “love.” John
wrote “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” Paul
believes this love points seriously to the passage in Isaiah about the
suffering servant (Is. 53:4 - 11), to Christ who put on the cloak of weakness and
servitude out of love for us to reveal his power over death on the cross. Paul
said nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35-37):
“Who will separate us from the love
of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all
day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
For Paul, the only test is whether we
are acting as a slave for Christ giving the same love to our brothers and
sisters to honor his love for us. The test of right or wrong is only, ”Is our
Christian liberty self-restrained for our brother and sister’s sake, or not?,” echoing
the most basic teaching of Jesus (Compare Romans14:1-17 with the Mark reading).
Paul says freedom is
limited. We are always obligated as Christians to work for peace by not just avoiding
antagonism and factionalism with our cohorts, and not just being quiet when we
disagree with our cohorts, but by actively building up the congregation through
fostering our interdependence regardless of opinion. We hear, respect and honor
our fellow’s faith and liberty regardless of our own. The best example is the
Jerusalem conference that listened to Paul while disagreeing.
This is where a nasty
little word “relativism” appears. Paul has spent the better part of two
chapters in his letter to the Romans to make the point that imposing
absolute rules is dangerous in human relationships. We must understand we must have self-restricted liberty – we are condemned if we do anything to cause a fellow
believer or visitor to stumble and fall (vv20-21).
Saying responsible behavior is relative absolutely is
not saying anything is permissible if it seems OK relative to the personal circumstance.
That would be too easy. Paul’s relativism is even harder to swallow. He is
saying anything is permissible if it uplifts the spirit of the congregation and
the public who watch us.
Our liberty is restricted by others; whether we are
“strong” or “weak.” On one hand, Paul instructs the strong: A devout person strong
in Spirit can ignore the Law because they know the Law is not a path to
righteousness; but this independence is nothing but self-indulgence and condemnation if it leads
them to think they have independence from God or if it damages someone not as
strong. Then Paul speaks to the weak,
“If you have doubts about whether something is responsible behavior, you are
not acting in faith if you do it, but nevertheless respect those faithful who
do.” In other words, let what your heart
that tells you what is good rule your liberty but remember other Christians.
Finally Paul’s reveals the greater burden always rests
on the strong. The “weak” (conservative) are always in more danger because they
may feel communal pressure or expectation to behave in a manner not of their
own choice (engage in a behavior that they feel it is harmful, e.g. meat, wine,
etc.). In such case the strong (liberal) are condemned because they have made
the weak(conservative) stumble. The one who claims strength is obligated to
limit their liberty in order not to impose a stumbling block on the weak. Paul does not favor the conservative or
liberal viewpoint (though he lets us know his view), for example, eating
non-kosher meat or worshipping on Sunday. What he approves for both is they
must accept that there are consequences of sin not to accommodate and identify with
the other fellow.
For Paul, liberty is not the right to do any thing you
please, it is having openness to (not necessarily acceptance of) a diversity of
opinions/options. For the strong, liberty and faith are always tied together in
the interests of the “weak We are obligated not to force one’s liberty on
others but to use our liberty to discerning God’s will and safeguard that
liberty. A Christian must always
remember how easy it is to harm someone by unintended communal pressure/imposition
that commits them to a behavior not by
choice. To do so encumbers condemnation.
Romans 15:1-6 summarizes everything Paul says in Chapter
14 into the two great principles that guide Christian liberty:
The good and benefit of the community always constrains
Christian liberty. How can we put this into some common circumstances? We have all hear the expression “love the
sinner, but hate the sin.” This is exactly what Paul is talking about not doing.
This statement implies we are the strong and are imposing our strength (and
judgment) on someone we identify as weaker.
Such judgment asserts we are independent of God.
The core of Christian strength is its weakness: that
Christ died in weakness at the hands of man in order to exercise his power over
death for humanity’s resurrection. Thus Paul says, strive to live as Christ
lived. Always ask yourself, “Am I renewing hope and sustaining the faith of the
world by my action?”
If sin is present it lies in our heart and can only be
judged by God. On the other hand,
salvation rests in a person’s faith and God’s freely given grace. That grace is
independent of sin and offered because of sin. All God’s people have the
liberty to embrace that grace regardless of the struggles in their heart. Christ
does not want tacit tolerance of our differences, but mutual acceptance
expressed in common worship. How else shall we glorify God?
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