Come to the Table: Pursuing Peace
Romans 14:1-12
September 17, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF-ajxGuMek
I was at the home of a church family, in a church much like this one. We had shared a delicious dinner and were still sitting at the table when a young child in the house popped out of her seat and went to the front door. Apparently, she and her father had exchanged some signal that I had missed. Still inside the house, she opened the door and yelled
“Go Yankees!”
A neighbor out for a walk on the sidewalk immediately hollered back “Go Red Sox!”
“Yankees”
“Red Sox”
This exchange continued with vigor on both sides and with encouragement from within the house until the neighbor was out of range.
I may be rushing in where angels fear to tread, but I’m just telling the truth if I point out that we have both Yankees and Red Sox fans among us. There might also be some people who cheer for a football team other than the Giants here too, but I can only handle one sports illustration per sermon.
Back to the Yankees and the Red Sox . . .
Some people say that baseball is “just a game” and others know that it is the very best metaphor for the meaning of life. Which side you come down on and whether you cheer for the Yankees or the Sox or someone else probably has more to do with who raised you than your systematic theology, even if you claim baseball as your theology.
This kind of division is something like what was going on in the Roman church. Their conflict was about food, not baseball. We aren’t sure about the details. The difference of opinion might have been about whether or not a person needed to keep Biblical dietary laws in order to please God. It might have been about whether eating meat sold in the market after a portion was sacrificed to the Roman gods mattered to God. In any case, there was a division between those who ate meat and those didn’t.
For some, this was a deeply rooted cultural issue. To eat meat that was not kosher or might have been sacrificed to idols went against everything they had been taught from childhood. To others, who had been raised in different families, it was of absolutely no significance. Maybe they were Gentile Christians who had never observed food purity laws. Maybe they were Christians who believed that the Roman gods didn’t exist and so sacrifices made to them had no meaning.
There were serious conflicts in the early churches about these questions. About a decade earlier, in writing to the church at Galatia, Paul had strong words against Peter who had separated himself from Gentile Christians during meals. He also chastised the Galatians for celebrating some days as more holy than others. But he has had some time to reflect. Here in Romans, perhaps we are hearing from a more mature Paul who is speaking in a more calm and considered tone.[1]
The Galatian church also seemed to be requiring new Christians to adopt Jewish practices related to food and circumcision. Paul was adamant that that was not necessary. But, in Rome, no one was requiring adherence to Jewish traditions as a test of faith. What was happening in Rome was that people were treating each other with contempt. Meat-eating Christians were looking down on vegetarian Christians. What Paul is concerned about is the absence of love in the congregation.
We have different faith practices and different beliefs because we have different life experiences. Some of us have lived through difficult events which either profoundly changed our minds or else strongly reinforced what we had always understood to be true. We may feel like our faith has been hard-won. I grew up in a household where the only opinions that seemed to matter were those of the grown-ups. I was a long ways into adulthood before I claimed my own voice, but once I did, I knew that I was entitled to my opinion and I often thought that everyone else was entitled to it as well.
Last week, Edith and I heard a report from the sociologists who are directing the study within the Thrive project. The discussion was about differences within our congregations on the issue of racism. A survey of congregations within the Alliance of Baptists was taken at the beginning of the project. Many of you participated in that. Among the results of that survey were these – 85% of respondents agreed that they were motivated to work for racial justice and 88% said that the Bible teaches to stand up for the oppressed. If we turn that around, it means that 15% of the members of Alliance churches indicated that they are not motivated to work for racial justice and 12% believe that the Bible does not teach us to stand up for the oppressed.
That seems so much harder to deal with than which baseball team you cheer for or whether you are a vegetarian or carnivore. The majority of these progressive Baptists might easily have contempt for those who hold the minority opinion. But that is precisely what Paul warns against – we are not to dismiss those who do not believe like us or vote like us or live like us. They do not answer to us. They answer to their own conscience and to God. It does not mean that we cannot talk about our differences. I believe we should. It means that we cannot write each other off.
In verses 7-8, Paul writes, “ We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 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.”
Remember that this is a community with internal divisions, but also a minority community greatly at odds with the surrounding culture. These Roman Christians may quite literally be the only Christians their neighbors will ever know. So, living to the Lord means that they represent the God of Jesus. They represent Jesus everywhere they go. They represent the others in this congregation.
Our culture prizes the rights of individuals to speak and act for ourselves. But it is still true that when some of us are out in the world, by no choice of our own, we represent all white people. When some of us are out in the world, by no choice of our own, we represent all black people. I have been the first and only woman pastor that some people know, and so they evaluate all women pastors everywhere based on my words and actions. There is more at stake that our petty squabbles or even our most serious disagreements. What we do in some situations may make all the difference in whether peace will prevail.
Aman Ali is a American whose parents emigrated from India. He is Muslim. He was 16 years old on September 11 2001. On September 11, 2015, he offered this reflection on that day:
Fourteen years ago today, I almost beat the living snot out of a kid in my high school. It was the last class of the school day, and everyone was glued to the TV in the room . . .
The teacher walked out of the classroom for a second and when she did, a kid in my class stood up and said "Man, I hope we bomb Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages where it belongs."
I remember every word and every moment.
I turned around and looked at him and said "Why? They didn’t do anything. Yes, lets go after who did this, but why do you want to bomb thousands of people who had nothing to do with it?"
He looked at me in disgust and said "Are you seriously defending them?" as he pointed to the footage on the TV of the planes hitting the buildings.
I said "Of course not. I'm just saying what good does bombing all those innocent people do?"
Then he goes "I bet it was your father flying that plane."
And as if it was some kind of Pavlovian reflex, I grabbed him by his shirt and came inches away from punching him in the face . . . The only thing that stopped me milliseconds before doing it was the look he gave me.
He had a smug smile on his face as if he was telling me "Yep, I knew it."
I froze when I saw that smile. I knew I had lost this argument because I essentially reinforced everything he believed that I was trying so hard to passionately counter.
I let go of his shirt and pushed him away from me. He continued to stare at me with that smile telling me again and again "Yep, I knew it."
Thankfully the teacher wasn't in the room when that happened, otherwise I probably would have gotten suspended. But the fact that nothing happened to me physically didn't take away the pain and regret I still have from that moment.
To this day I randomly have nightmares about this incident, thinking about his smile telling me "Yep, I knew it" again and again and again. What if I was the only exposure to Muslims he ever had? What if that's the opinion he carries about Muslims for the rest of his life? What if he goes around at dinner parties and tells others "Those Moslems, man. I had a class with a Moslem once and the dude tried to punch me for no reason at all."
And in unison, everyone at the party would go "Yep, I knew it."
I woke up this morning realizing what the date was and uttered "Oh God, here we go" to myself. I pulled out my phone to see what I missed while I was asleep and noticed a Facebook message. It was from the kid I tried to punch. I haven't spoken to him in 14 years ever since that moment. What was he messaging me for now? He told me how difficult it is to think about that day because he can't forget all the hurtful things he said to me and he profusely apologized. I was like "Whaaaaaaaaa?" and gave him my phone number and asked him to call me.
We talked and I asked him what he's been up to since high school. He said he spent two U.S. army tours deployed to Afghanistan and got to interact with hundreds and hundreds of people that were nothing but warm to him. Night after night, he said he'd be invited to the poorest of poor people's houses for food eating some of the best things he's ever tasted. The endless supply of love, hospitality and goodwill he got from people there were a constant reminder of that hateful moment as an ignorant teen he wanted to bomb this country mercilessly and the hurtful things he said about my dad.
"I deserved to be punched." he said. "Sometimes I really wish you did."
And that's when I realized I'm really glad I didn't. Because we never would have been able to have this conversation 14 years later.[2]
Beloved ones, may we learn to recognize God’s image in those who are not in our image, whose language, choices, behavior and convictions are not the same as ours. As Paul writes near the end of this chapter, “let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” May it be so for you and me. Amen.
[1] The work of Mary Hinkle Shore on this text was very helpful to me this week. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24/commentary-on-romans-141-12-2
[2] Aman Ali on his Facebook page, September 11, 2015