Relationships count - Living by the Word - Column

Christian Century, August 28, 1996 by Edgar Krentz

Romans 14:1-12

THE CLASSICAL WORLD was set on its ears in 1958 with the discovery of Bodmer papyrus 4, which gave drama scholars an almost complete text of a comedy by Menander, a writer from the late fourth century B.C.E. Its title is "Dyskolos" ("the grump"). An ancient summary gave it an alternate title: "Misanthrope," or "people hater." So Moliere was not the first to write about such a person. Playgoers ancient and modern have rejoiced when the misanthrope fails--though they often don't recognize traits of the misanthrope in themselves.

Paul knew such small-mindedness well and argued against it. "Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions." The Roman church was divided between the weak and the strong, between those who were vegetarian and those who could eat anything. Some observed a ritual calendar, others did not, and that led to one-upmanship, to finding one's own significance at the expense of others.

The old nursery rhyme describes the condition well: "Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said, `What a good boy am I.' " Jack views his little world in terms of self. Not one word about the cook.

Where do we stand in relation to others? Above them or beside them? We position ourselves to center the world around ourselves, and canonize the few who don't, the Mother Teresas of our world. Most of us are Jack Horners, congratulating ourselves on our own cleverness.

Paul speaks directly to this attitude by asking who the judge of human actions is and what the criteria are for human actions within the Christian community. He is not a weak-kneed Christian who has no standards. But his concept of judgment is shaped by his knowledge of the judge. Christians are ultimately responsible to their Lord. Paul understands baptism as a change of lords. In his mind, no one is entirely free, completely independent. Baptism frees one from the lords of sin and death by making one a slave of God. Masters judge their slaves; so does God judge us. That is the burden of Romans 6. In baptism we died to sin in order to live in fidelity to God.

What is Paul's criterion for action? It is the nature of the church itself, the community formed by baptism into Christ. Baptism removes us from the need or the desire to pass judgment on others. When we judge others, we despise them, stand over them, not beside or with them. We misunderstand the very nature of the Christian community, the body of Christ which Paul describes in Romans 12:5: "So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." We all stand in the same place.

There are days when I feel great sympathy for the grump. And as I grow older those got-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-bed days seem to come more frequently. I have less sympathy with errors and the foibles of other people--more, perhaps, for my own. I impose my standards on others and judge them accordingly.

In my own way I take the so-called homo mensura standard of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "man is the measure of all things," and employ it personally. I become the standard by which I measure all things. Either others measure up to me or, like the queen in Alice in Wonderland, I react with "off with their heads." There is little room for human fallibility on those days, and small space for forgiveness.

And what, again, is Paul's criterion for action? It is God, whose character and will are revealed to us by Jesus Christ. Do the decisions people take give glory to God or not? "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."

Paul actually delays the big punch line for this whole discussion to 15:7-9: "Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the gentiles might glorify God for his mercy."

Christians are to welcome difference and variety because God in Christ has done so. That's what should characterize the Christian community and its individual members. Christians know that relationships count, because they know the cost it took God in Christ to make their relationship with God possible. They glorify God by being as open, accepting and forgiving as God has been to them.

Matthew 18:21-35 stresses that forgiveness is measured not by the convenience of the forgiver, but by the need for forgiveness. Peter looked for a boundary for forgiveness; Jesus recognized no such boundary. Because God's forgiveness meets the sinner, great or small, the Christian's can do no less.

A Christian curmudgeon or misanthrope is an oxymoron, a paradox, an impossibility, an ultimate denial of the forgiving grace of God. Sweet reasonableness, openness to all, are the hallmarks of the Christian faith.