“LOVING BEYOND OUR DIFFERENCES”

ROMANS 14: 1-12

14:1 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.

9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God;

11 for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.”

12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

What would you think about playing bongo drums in church? It might liven things up and sound pretty cool actually. And it would be a lot cheaper than buying a new organ. Some people may love it while others would think that it is a little sacrilegious. No matter what you think you don’t have to worry because the Council voted last Monday night to purchase a new organ! All kidding aside, bongo drums in worship was a real issue that I had to deal with in Amesbury several years ago when we were conducting  joint worship service with the other Congregational Church in town. And yes, some people thought they sounded pretty cool while others thought it was sacrilegious. I have to be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of them at first but they grew on me once I heard the story behind them. The person that played them was in recovery. He had been in prison and was trying to get his life back together. One day the music director was looking for someone to play the bongo’s for a special piece of music. Well, this gentleman volunteered. He played that day and was moved to be a part of the choir and part of worship. He felt that he was giving something back to God and to the congregation that had helped him so much.  The choir director was so touched that he gave the bongo’s to this man as a gift and he has been playing them in worship ever since. What one person saw as an offering to God was viewed by another as totally unacceptable. If Paul were standing here with us today my hunch is that he would say that his playing bongos in church was acceptable, whether he liked them or not. Why? Because they were being played out of love for and to God.

You see, the issue that Paul was dealing with in his letter this morning was very similar to the one I just described. Paul is writing to a community in Rome that was made up of Jews and Gentiles alike. People in this community came from very different backgrounds and traditions but were beginning to live with one another as a Christian community. Because their backgrounds and traditions were different they had different opinions when it came to what you should eat and when you should worship God.  Do you eat meat or not eat meat?  Do you worship God on Saturday, the traditional Sabbath day in the Jewish tradition or do you worship God on Sunday, the Sabbath day in the emerging Christian tradition.  Those different opinions apparently led to some heated debates and that troubled Paul.  So, Paul wrote to them and urged them not to let the love of Christ that brought them together be undermined by differences of opinion that were pulling them apart.  Simply put Paul told them that it’s more important to love than to be right.  How often do we make that mistake?  How often do we let our need to be right get in the way of our ability to love one another?

Sometimes we forget that living in community is about focusing on love for God and one another rather than focusing on the small things that set us apart. Take the meeting between the Jewish Rabbi and Roman Catholic Priest as an example. They were sitting next to each other at an Inter-faith event. When dinner was served someone thoughtlessly had placed a slab of ham in the Rabbi's plate. The Rabbi did not protest but simply proceeded to eat other things his faith and physician permitted. The Roman Catholic padre leaned over in the direction of the Rabbi and said. "Rabbi Cohen, you and I know that the dietary laws from the Old Testament were developed at a time when pork meat was indeed dangerous due to lack of refrigeration and low heat in cooking. Of course trychinosis was rampant and your ancestors in the faith were right in prohibiting eating pork in order to save the lives of many Israelites. Those days are gone, pork is safe and there is no reason to cling to outmoded ancient practices. When will you eat your first mouthful of ham, Rabbi Cohen?" The Rabbi paused briefly and then responded, "at your wedding, Father Maguire, at your wedding".

Some 2000 years have gone by, the names and faces in the story may have changed but we are still dealing with the same issues. It is still easier to point out what we see wrong with our brothers and sisters beliefs than it is to take a hard look at our own. Who is right in this situation? Both of them, neither of them? And does it even matter. We always have our opinions and at times we all think we are right. But in the end, it is more important to love one another than to be right.

About living together, living in community, Henri Nouwen writes about the importance of staying connected with God and of having God be the center of our community. He says, “The closer we come to God the closer we come to all our brothers and sisters in the human family. God is not a private God. The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being.” In other words, God is the reason that we are called to live in community. We are called by a God that is in each and every human being a God that transcends all of our difference. A God that calls to each and every one of us in love. It is God that we should be focused on Paul tells us not whether or not one eats meat or abstains from eating meat. Why are you doing what you do? Is it being done out of love. That my brothers and sisters is the important question. 

Whether you like politics or not, you have probably been exposed to it one way or another over these past few weeks. I don’t know about you but I get a kick out of watching the politicians go back and forth. It doesn’t matter which party that you belong to or which party you have been following because they are both doing and saying the same things. In one breathe they say how much they respect their opponent and how they want to unify the country. But before they can finish that thought they are talking about how their opponent has it all wrong and how all of the problems we have are due to the other party. How can that be? They say that they want unity while at the same time continuing to draw dividing lines. And it isn’t just the politicians that do it. We can see it in schools and at our jobs where people gather together and unify themselves by pointing out the differences of people that aren’t like them because they dress differently, look different or have different views. We even see it in families. We all have relatives that we consider black sheep because they don’t fit in just right because they have beliefs and views that are different than the rest of the family. Why is it easier to label them as a black sheep than to see them as someone that you share a family history with?  And yes, we even see it in our churches. People are divided, torn and split apart over small difference that at the end of the day shouldn’t be show stoppers. Sometimes we forget that we are called into community by God in love.

Living together in community in love isn’t always easy. It takes work and compromise. That is why so many of us would prefer to keep the dividing lines up. But that is why Paul reminds us that we are God’s people and that in order to live in community we must love one another.

Love can help us to see beyond our differences. Take for example the story of  these two students. One day at a Vocational Bible School the teacher invited the students to join her in their usual closing ceremony. “Let’s make our churches”, she said. “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the doors and there’s…” Just then it hit her. She had totally forgotten about the little boy who had joined the class that day, who was missing one arm. She had been so worried about one of the children making a comment about his handicap or saying something else to embarrass him. Now, the very thing she had worried about the children doing, she had done. As he stood there speechless, trying to decide what to do, the most wonderful thing happened. The little girl sitting next to the boy reached over with her left hand and placed it up to his right and said, “Davey, let’s make the church together.”

Yes we are all different but with love on our hearts and God at the center we can come together to make a better marriage, a better family, a better church, a better community, a better world.

Amen