Romans 12 and 14: No Judgment in a Heart at Peace

A Friends (Quaker) Perspective on Romans and Galatians

Provided several years ago for Illuminate, an adult Sunday School curriculum published by Barclay Press, a Friends publishing house

Lesson 9

Romans 12:1-8, 14, 17-21

In Romans 9-11, Paul revisits the comparison between Jews and Gentiles in relation to the faith in God that sets people right with God, each other, and themselves. Most notable is the cautionary example of the Jews, the chosen people through whom came the law, the worship, the promises, and the Messiah (Romans 9:4-5). The Jews, says Paul, look for righteousness based on fulfilling the law and fail, and are thus outside the life of faith and caught in a life of works. We in the church are often in the same place as these folks. It is so human to prefer the known, the law, to the unknown, God’s grace and God’s Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus that the wind blows where it chooses and humans do not understand where it comes from or where it goes, and that this is the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

Romans 12 helps us recognize the Spirit’s work, but it is not a new set of laws. Instead, because of what Jesus has already accomplished through identifying with our humanity, our sin, and our death, and through prefiguring the resurrection we all hope for, we are free to offer our whole selves, body and soul, to the service of God. We don’t have to be pawns of the forces that dominate our social world. As we obey God with our bodies, we worship God in spirit and in truth. God renews our minds so we can see clearly the good, acceptable, complete actions that are the will of God for us.

We use the gifts God gives us, as Jesus illustrated in the parable of the stewards. We treasure and care for the gifts of others. We aren’t tied up in the knots of competitiveness and self-sufficiency. We can lay down our sword and shield and study war no more.

The most important practical faith lesson I’ve learned recently is the importance of having a heart at peace toward those who I believe need to change. This is a spiritual discipline for me and involves praying blessing on them and for God to judge between us. And this prayer is frequent, just as frequent as the thought of conflict arises.

Lesson 10

Romans 14:1, 5-17

Underlying Romans 14 is this principle from Romans 13:8-10: all the interpersonal laws are summed up in “love your neighbor as yourself,” just as Jesus said. This means that we live honorably as if under a spotlight, which is where we are (John 3:21).

What about other believers who hold the wrong opinions?  Paul says, welcome them, but don’t argue with them. God has welcomed them. It is before God they stand or fall, not before us. Like us, whether they live or die, they are the Lord’s because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is one practical application of the law of love. Surely we can imagine that as we are judging them for wrong opinions, they are returning that judgment on us, unless we obey the law of love.

The advice not to judge repeats Romans 2. After the list of sins in Romans 1, therefore, Paul says, do not judge, since all have sinned. Here he says, do not judge, since you are no one’s boss, and all believers are accountable to God for how they obey. If a person hears from God that some behavior is unholy, that person must obey. The Gentiles and Jews to whom Paul wrote had different boundaries, and all still had to treat others with tenderness and love.

Another practical application of the law of love is that we don’t push people to violate their sense of what God wants from them. We respect the boundaries people believe God has given them. We don’t think we are better because God allows us different boundaries. Romans 12:3 tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought and to respect the fact that not all members of the body of Christ will function exactly like us.

Many times, I think, what causes our brother or sister to stumble is not a freedom in Christ we live into with joy and gratitude but rather the judgment that we pass on that brother and sister who does things differently from us, whether with more or less freedom. When we judge, we place ourselves as superior to the one being judged. Instead, we who are Spirit-led must be humble and obey God ourselves.

The Syro-Phoenician Woman Meets the Living Word of God

I preface this with the words of Hebrews 4:12: “For the word, the logos, the Word of God is alive, powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing right through to where soul divides from spirit or breath, to where joint divides from marrow, discriminating and discerning the thoughts and intents in the inmost self.” And I remind us that John’s gospel identifies the word, the logos, the Word of God like this: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…In him was life, and the life was the light of human beings….And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1: 1, 4, 14).  Jesus walked among us, making God visible, and speaking as the embodied Word of God to the other human beings he encountered each day.  As we listen to what he says to these others, we can hear as well what he is saying to us, since Jesus has come today to teach us Himself through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Given this foundation, what do we make of the encounter between Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman, told in Mark 7 (and Matthew 15)? Do we see a Jesus who does not understand that he is God-sent to the whole world? Do we see a Jesus who is given to testing the faith of a desperate mother before granting her wish? Do we see a Jesus who is modeling their prejudice in an acted parable for his disciples, teaching them thereby that God heals Gentiles also, that Gentiles also can have faith in the one God sends?

I’ve heard it all three ways, and now I want to add a fourth way that to me solves some of the vexing problems of the above interpretations.

First, I have an a priori objection to thinking that Jesus participated in the ethnocentrism of his countrymen. This may be a flaw in my rational self because I do object to the heresy that Jesus carried all of God’s knowledge around in his human brain and was just pretending to share in the human condition. So if Jesus was limited at all, there is no logical necessity that his limitations weren’t also ethnocentrically Jewish. The preacher I heard positing this interpretation was making the point that Jesus himself grew in understanding his mission, moving from the Jewish messiah to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  But since this is what John the Baptist said at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, it is hard for me to believe that John knew more about what Jesus was called to than Jesus did. Even in Mark’s telling, Jesus had already healed the Gerasene (Syrian) demoniac, who became the first non-Jewish bearer of the good news (Mark 5).

Jesus had the following things to say about his ministry, and only God knows how they fit chronologically with his encounter with this Gentile woman, but Mark puts them prior.

“Prophets are not without honor except in their hometown, among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mark 6:4). This makes clear his understanding that those closest to him were least likely to see his calling and gifts.  “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave shake the dust off of your feet as a testimony against them,” Jesus told his disciples (Mark 6:11). This makes clear his awareness that his own people might well reject the good news of God’s kingdom. Then he said to the most conscientious religious Jews of his day, “You have a way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition” and told his disciples, “It isn’t what a person eats that makes the person unclean, but the evil that comes from within” (Mark 7: 9, 17, 21).  This sets aside the dietary laws that were a key way to tell Jews from Gentiles.  So when Jesus comes to Tyre to talk with the Gentile woman, he has already said a number of things that confront the Jews.  He has notified his disciples of the need for “new wineskins” for the fresh “wine” of the good news. He has announced that his true family are all those who do what God wills.  For these reasons and more, it seems to me unlikely that Jesus was expressing his own racism in this moment.

I also have a visceral objection to the “test of faith” interpretation of this encounter.  Jesus did not ask the Gerasene demoniac if he believed or require him to ask in just the right way. Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic and then healed him with no question at all to the man about his faith (Mark 2). He did not require the man with the withered hand to express faith, and the man did not even ask for healing (Mark 3). He stopped the storm on the lake in spite of the disciples’ lack of faith (Mark 4). The two miracles recorded in Mark 5 do include Jesus commending the woman’s faith that moved her through the crowd to touch Jesus’s clothes, and encouraging Jairus to believe rather than fear. These two people and the Gentile woman share the characteristic that all three are desperate and turn to Jesus with hope. So why would Jesus test the one with the least background in Jewish faith more than he does the synagogue leader? It seems unlikely that the one of whom it is prophesied that “a smoking flax he will not quench” would pour cold water on a mother’s desperate hope while encouraging a father’s. Thus I can’t see this as Jesus testing the Gentile woman’s faith.

There is some precedent for seeing that the Gospel writers recorded Jesus’s actions that they found to be rich in metaphoric meaning—and these acted parables are available to us on many levels. However, I cannot think of any other of Jesus’s actions that depends on acting out for the disciples their own prejudices or limitations in a way that treats another human being negatively. He didn’t sucker people into agreeing with something he pretended to believe and then punch them with the opposite truth. Look at his interaction with the Samaritan woman (John 4). Jesus is already talking with her when the disciples return, even though they may well be scandalized by it. He doesn’t pretend first to share their distaste for Samaritans and then try to engage the woman. Additionally, it seems unlikely that Jesus would waste the opportunity to speak into an individual’s heart in order to make a point at that individual’s expense. So if this is an acted parable, its interpretation needs to be something different.

I remember finding out that a short story called “The Overcoat” by the Russian author Gogol is primarily seen by Russian readers as humorous and playful (see for example The Enigma of Gogol by Richard Peace, p. 148: “the author also laughs at his hero…”). As an American, however, I see it as grotesque and tragic. I miss all the puns and verbal hijinks of the Russian text, and my reading experience is linguistically and culturally distant from the reader Gogol wrote for. I read the translated text like an American.

In reading the Bible, I read like an American heir to the Judeo-Christian mindset. I have typically adopted the interpretive stance that sees God’s chosen people as the center of the story and all other peoples as “inferior.”  In fact, I read as if I myself were one of the chosen people, despite not being Jewish. I am, in fact, in the same boat as the disciples. So to them (and to me, ironically) this Gentile woman is by Jewish definition inferior and thus “a dog.”

Then it occurred to me: this encounter takes place on her turf, in Tyre. She is the one with Roman citizenship. She’s the one from a city with paved roads. She is the one who would be so unlikely to turn to an itinerant Jewish carpenter, even one with a reputation for working wonders. She is likely to be carrying in her heart a sense of social superiority, even pride. And if this is the case, I need to rethink her approach to Jesus.  Matthew records that she followed Jesus, shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” What can she possibly be meaning by these titles?  Does she think that they must be flattering, since she has heard that Jesus responds to them? Does she even know who David was? And does she continue shouting because she demands that they listen to her?

I think it is possible that she views herself as a social superior, bending because of her desperate need to ask for help from someone she would be unlikely to speak to under other circumstances.  In fact, she is more like me—a privileged American citizen—and Jesus is more like a recent immigrant, perhaps even a migrant worker with or without a green card. She uses a title of respect that she has heard but that means little to her to get Jesus’s attention so he will grant her desperate request.  To her, Jesus is a means to an end. 

His responses are recorded in different form in Matthew and Mark.  In Matthew, he replies, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Perhaps he even shouts this back to her. He confronts the ethnic and class issues directly. Jesus has a pattern of confronting issues directly. Why do you call me good, he asked a good Jewish man. You know only God is good.  Why do you call me “son of David,” why do you call me “Lord”? These titles mean nothing to you. They are signs to the house of Israel.

But he does stop walking, and she embodies her desperation by bowing before him. The Greek word used for this contains in it the idea of a dog licking the master’s hand.  Perhaps she has caught his hand and is kissing it, perhaps she is crouched over his feet. I dare say she has not often bowed before a Jew before. She is a Roman citizen, in a prosperous and vital center of trade and manufacturing, and he is a provincial manual laborer, not even a citizen.  “Help me,” she says.

The words Jesus says next still confront her. Jesus says this: God sent me first to Israel, a people you feel yourself to be superior to, but a people God has called God’s children. You understand that it is inappropriate, it is not a beautiful thing to take what these children need (whom you care nothing for) and give it to the little dogs under the table, leaving the children hungry.

She finds a loophole in this parable; she’s a smart woman. She tells it again, from the dogs’ point of view. Her willingness to be counted among the little dogs shows that she is willing to accept a humble place in God’s economy. “Yes, Lord, but we both know that children drop food, and the little dogs are welcome to scavenge.  There is enough goodness, enough mercy, to feed my child, my dear dear daughter, to free her from being tormented by evil. Even the little dogs eat the crumbs.”

Why is this speech counted a sign of great faith? Here is a woman driven by desperation to accost a socially insignificant itinerant laborer in public, despite her prejudices and assurance of superiority.  As Jesus often, and perhaps always, does, he pierces to her heart and requires her to come clean. And when they get to the heart, they discover that she does have faith that there is enough goodness, enough mercy, for the arrogant, self-satisfied outsider, that the dogs have a place in God’s economy as well, and that an honest conversation with Jesus is good for everyone. This is true for us today as well. Bring your desperation and hope to Jesus and then hear what He says to you.  When it pierces to your most inner self, you will recognize that you have heard the Word of God.  Listen, accept, and respond to that Word, and then do what Jesus tells you to do.

Peace, Richard. The Enigma of Gogol: An Examination of the Writings of N.V. Gogol and Their Place in the Russian Literary Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981. Google Books.

The last century of Seleucid rule was marked by disorder and dynastic struggles. These ended in 64 B.C., when the Roman general Pompey added Syria and Lebanon to the Roman Empire. Economic and intellectual activities flourished in Lebanon during the Pax Romana. The inhabitants of the principal Phoenician cities of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre were granted Roman citizenship. These cities were centers of the pottery, glass, and purple dye industries; their harbors also served as warehouses for products imported from Syria, Persia, and India. They exported cedar, perfume, jewelry, wine, and fruit to Rome. Economic prosperity led to a revival in construction and urban development; temples and palaces were built throughout the country, as well as paved roads that linked the cities. (http://www.ghazi.de/romegree.html)

The Graciousness of God: Naaman and Elisha, Cornelius and Peter

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

Feb. 10, 2013

Before I get to the actual sermon, I want to share with you some of my own story.  Growing up Christian, as I did, and as perhaps some of you did, resulted in my getting the Gospel message mixed up with the Christian culture variation I grew up in.  I made God like my parents and other adults I was around, the negative as well as the positive.  I did not have much understanding of the enduring love of God, and how that is a part of God's character, nor of God's grace.  I lived in fear of the Rapture catching me in an imperfect state.  I feared God would abandon me for mysterious reasons.  

Because God is love, God began tutoring me about how God loves when I was in my teens, a rebellious and sincere spiritual seeker.  God met me at various times, never insisting I be all perfect first.  And a few years ago, when I was so angry at God for messing up my life, I was in church during our time of silent waiting, and I heard God say, "Look at me." Just like a little kid, I kept my head down in sulky anger.  I felt God take my chin and tip up my head and God looked into my eyes, and I saw nothing in God's eyes except love.  This is what I want everyone I know to experience.  God loves me, God loves you, even if or when we don't like it. 

When I took this denominational job, God placed these words of Jesus in front of me: "Come to me, all you who labor and are carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke on you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in my spirit, and your souls will find rest.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." When I have found the load heavy, I try to off-load it onto Jesus because of this promise of partnership and because Jesus is strong and smart. Jesus wants to partner with each one of us.

The two stories that caught me as I prepared for today’s sermon were the story of Naaman and Elisha and the story of Cornelius and Peter.  One from the Old Testament, one from the New.  Listen to the stories in a slightly free-range version, and then later you can read them in 2 Kings 5 and Acts 10.  To be sure, there are some differences, but those seem minor compared to the liberating and grace-filled similarities.

Naaman was the commander of the Syrian forces, which at this time were successful in battle against Israel.  He took prisoners, and one of those, a young girl, became a slave in his house.  Naaman also had the skin disease the Bible calls leprosy, which is different from what we call leprosy today.  It was a disease that disfigured people by turning parts of their skin white and was believed by Israelites to be an outward sign of a failure to care for others’ needs and share their hurts—gossip, murder, stinginess, theft, pride.  The little Israelite girl said to Naaman’s wife, “If the master were in Israel, he could go to the prophet Elisha and be healed of his leprosy.”  Naaman’s wife told Naaman, he told the king of Syria, and the king said, “Go to Israel and tell their king I want you to be healed.”

Naaman took some gifts with him, entered Israel and told the king there that the king of Syria wanted Naaman healed.  The king of Israel was scared and suspicious: “He just wants to pick a fight with us so he can invade us again.”  He was so upset he tore his clothes apart.

But Elisha, the prophet of God, heard about the problem and sent a message to the king of Israel.  “Send Naaman on over to me.  He’ll find out there is indeed a God to be respected in Israel.”

Naaman journeyed to where Elisha lived.  Elisha sent his servant out to meet the Syrian captain.  “My master Elisha says that you should go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River and you will be healed.”

Naaman was so offended.  “The prophet won’t even come talk to me himself?  The nerve!  And to wash in the Jordan?  That river is filthy, not like the sparkling waters of my rivers back home in Syria.”  He turned around and started home, angry and disappointed.

Some of his followers came to him, probably cautiously, and said, “Sir, if the prophet had asked you to undertake a dangerous and difficult quest in order to be healed, wouldn’t you have tried it?  Why not try this easy thing?  What could it hurt?”

Naaman saw the sense of this.  He drove to the Jordan River, walked into the water, and washed himself seven times.  When he came up after the seventh, his skin was clear of leprosy, as unblemished as a baby’s.  “Now I know that there is no other God in all the world except Israel’s God,” he said.  “I will never worship any other God.” He went back to thank Elisha, who came out to meet him this time.  “Let me give you a thank you gift,” he said.  “No need,” said Elisha.  “Then do me one more kindness,” said Naaman.  “Let me take dirt from Israel so that I can build an altar to your God on it and worship only your God from this day on.  But please ask the Lord to forgive me for my duty to my king—entering the temple of the Syrian god Rimmon and bowing down; I will have to bow down also.  May God forgive me for this.”  “Go in peace,” replied Elisha.

Notice these things:  Naaman was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  His healing came about as he was able to humble himself to do a simple task prescribed by one of the lowly Israelites.  The healing was free—an example of God’s graciousness. Naaman was convinced on the spot of the supremacy of God and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  He went home to his job and family and resumed his duties, again covered by the graciousness of God.  He is a sign of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and implicitly a rebuke to those who wanted to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in Luke 4:27, “there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” This comment maddened the Nazareth folks to the point where they wanted to kill Jesus.

This story focuses on Naaman, the foreigner.  We don’t see much of what Elisha was thinking or how God prepared him for the encounter.

In the New Testament, we do see this preparation in the story of Cornelius the Roman and Peter, Jesus’s disciple.  Acts 10 tells this story, and it is so important, it is retold several times.  I’ll tell it just once.

Once again, the foreigner is a political enemy of Israel, a Roman military officer, part of the occupation forces.  But Cornelius reverenced God, gave to the needy, and prayed regularly. One day he saw an angelic messenger from God, who told him to send for Peter from Joppa.  The angel even gave Cornelius Peter’s street address.  So Cornelius sent three of his people to get Peter.

The next day in Joppa, around noon, Peter went up on the roof to pray.  He became hungry and asked someone for something to eat, but while he was waiting, he too had a message from God.  He saw a sheet full of animals, reptiles, and birds coming down from heaven, and he heard a voice tell him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”

Peter was horrified.  “You know I have never eaten anything unclean.  I can’t do this!”  The voice replied, “Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.”

This happened three times.  Peter was amazed and wondering what it meant when God’s spirit said to him, “Go downstairs and find the three men who are looking for you.  Don’t hesitate to go with them, for I sent them to you.”

Peter went downstairs and found Cornelius’s messengers.  “I’m the one you’re looking for.  Why have you come?”

They told him about Cornelius and his message from God.  Peter invited them in for the night.  (This was a big deal, by the way, since at least one of these folks was a Roman soldier.)

The next day, Peter and some other believers went to see Cornelius.  The whole family met them along with close friends.  When Peter entered the house, Cornelius bowed down to him, but Peter made him stand up.  “I am only a human,” Peter said.

He addressed the crowd.  “You all know it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person unclean or impure.  So when I was sent for, I came willingly.  Why am I here?”

Cornelius told him again the story of the heavenly messenger, and how glad he was to see Peter in person.  “Now we are all here in the presence of God to hear what God has to say to us.”

So Peter spoke:  “I now realize how true it is that God doesn’t have favorites.  Instead, if you revere and respect God and do what God says is right, God accepts and welcomes you. So I’ll share what I know about God.  God sent to Israel the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who owns everything. God set Jesus apart and filled him with the Holy Spirit and power to do good and defeat the devil.  God was with him.  I know because I saw this myself.  I also saw Jesus murdered—crucified—and then I saw how God raised Jesus out of death.  Many of us saw the risen Jesus, who sent us out to tell this story and preach that Jesus is appointed and ordained by God to judge the living and the dead.  All the prophets point to him and bear witness that everyone who trusts in Jesus and relies on Him receives forgiveness of sins.  That is the nature and character of Jesus.”

While Peter spoke, the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles and they spoke in unknown tongues, just like the Jews earlier at Pentecost. 

Peter’s Jewish companions were surprised by this.  Then Peter asked, “Can anyone forbid taking these folks into full fellowship with us through the ceremony of baptism, seeing that God has graced them just as God graced us with the Holy Spirit?” And no one could.

When Peter went home, he was in trouble with the other Jewish believers, so he told the whole story again (see Acts 11).  “The voice spoke from heaven, ‘Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.’ So who was I to think I could oppose God.”

Then Jewish believers started preaching to Gentiles, and Gentiles believed, and Barnabas went and got Saul, who became an apostle to the Gentiles, and even later, in Acts 15, Peter stood and again told the story of Cornelius being graced with the gift of the Holy Spirit even prior to baptizing him. Peter said, “God, who knows the heart—the will, the emotions, the imagination—bore witness to their faith by giving them the same Holy Spirit we received.  God made no difference between us and them.  God cleansed them by faith, by their conviction that Jesus came from God, and that by means of Jesus, we are saved for eternity and welcomed into God’s kingdom. Now then, why do you test God’s patience by requiring Gentile believers to come under the law of Moses which neither we nor our ancestors have been able to obey.  We Jews are saved through the grace of our Master and Owner Jesus just as the Gentiles are.”

James stood in agreement and quoted some prophets who pointed to the inclusion of Gentiles. He concluded, “We should not put obstacles in the way of Gentiles who turn to God.  We will ask them to refrain from sexual immorality, from eating food sacrificed to idols, from eating or drinking blood, and from practicing strangulation (a puzzle that may refer to the common practice of infanticide, see David Instone-Brewer's sermons on the web). These four behaviors scandalize Jews, and we want to reach them, too.“

Notice these things:  Cornelius was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  Unlike Naaman, he was able to humble himself, even bowing to one of the lowly Jews.  The gift of God’s Holy Spirit was free, not requiring any kind of ritual—an example of God’s graciousness. Peter was convinced on the spot of the graciousness of God to all human beings, and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  Peter went home to his fellow Jewish believers and taught them about the graciousness of God.  Cornelius and Peter are signs of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and they are an implicit rebuke to those who want to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in John 10:16, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I am commissioned by God to bring with me to God, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.”

We don’t read in the history that the conversion of Naaman had any far-reaching effect on ancient Syria, but we do read that the conversion of Cornelius, and because of him, the convincement of Peter, had an enormous effect.  Christians now understand God through the work God did in the heart of Peter.  Salvation is not through rules but through the graciousness of God.  The law of God’s kingdom is the law of love.  As Micah puts it, “What does God require of us but to do the right thing, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.” And as Paul says, “The secret is this, Jesus Christ in, beside, and with you, your hope and expectation of glory.”

Some queries to think about:

How can I exemplify to those inside and outside the church the character and nature of God’s graciousness? 

How have I cleared away barriers so that others can trust and love Jesus?

 How have I imposed my rules on others in ways that are hurtful and ungracious?