Homily, Welcome as You Have Been Welcomed
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19A, 2023
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church
Tequesta, FL
The Rev. Derek M Larson, TSSF
Today’s Lectionary Readings:
Exodus 14:19-31
Psalm 114
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I love communal Bible study. There’s something fantastic about reading Scripture together in community, and I’m really looking forward to our Wednesday Bible Study starting back up this week. Because when you get a group of people together to read the Bible and reflect on what they read, you get a lot of different perspectives and opinions. You hear people read it in different ways. And where you thought there was one obvious meaning, suddenly through someone else sharing you hear the passage in an entirely new way, and we all grow from it. The Spirit speaks to us not only through words on the page, but through the voices of one another, and it’s delightful.
Except when it isn’t. While sometimes hearing someone else’s perspective is enlightening, sometimes it’s disturbing. Sometimes its confusing. Sometimes we hear something with which we don’t agree, or something that goes against what we believe about God and God’s will for humanity. And then what do we do?
That’s exactly the scenario we encounter in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans today. The Church was still young. But as it rapidly grew to include people of different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, it’s theological diversity also grew. And disagreements arose.
And so in today’s passage from Romans, St. Paul highlights two of these disagreements, one having to do with food, and one having to do with holy days. Now from our perspective, looking back, these don’t seem like particularly pressing concerns, but for the early church, these were concerns that had the potential of dividing communities.
The one about food, for example, was not simply a question of personal diet, but about tradition and the role of Scripture.
Having been birthed from Judaism, the early Christian communities were deeply influenced by the Hebrew Scriptures, which included long sections about the importance of eating kosher. Passages like Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. For many of those Christians, eating kosher was a clear biblical mandate that had been instilled in them from childhood. And in Rome—a predominantly non-Jewish community, it was difficult to eat kosher, because much of the meat found in the marketplace had actually been sacrificed to idols and false gods, and so some Christians, understandably, refused to eat meat.
But other Christians read Scripture a different way. They didn’t grow up eating kosher, and when they became Christians they experienced the grace of Christ and the movement of the Holy Spirit attached not to the ancient laws of Israel but God’s eternal law of love. They felt God doing a new thing among them and they were not so concerned about eating a specific way.
You can imagine, then, the tension at the table of those early Christian communities when some of them showed up to the potluck with meat purchased in the marketplace. You can imagine the conversation. “Did you see what he brought? How could a Bible-reading Christian eat that?” Or another “Can you believe they won’t eat meat? Do they not trust in in the grace and love of Christ?”
And so Paul writes to the Romans and essentially says to them, “Don’t judge the heart and actions of your siblings in Christ on this, for they are simply following their conscience. There is room at the table for us all.” In chapter 15, verse 7 he writes, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
St. Paul is saying in this passage that it’s okay if we have come to different theological understandings than our neighbor, if we stay committed to one another in Christ. We don’t have to agree on everything to be in relationship with our neighbor.
Now that’s a lesson I can get behind! In a world that is so divided on so many things, that’s a lesson that could change the world. And that’s one of the reasons why I love the motto of the Episcopal Church, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You,” and the motto of Good Shepherd, “We have a place for you.” Because both of these phrases capture the heart of what Paul is saying here to the Romans. We will never agree on everything, but by golly that won’t stop us from loving one another and loving God together. As a popular teachinga goes, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
Here at Good Shepherd we are a richly, theologically diverse place. We have members that come from the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Pentecostal Church. We have members that come from the northeast, from the southwest, from Africa, from Europe. We have members who are proudly conservative and proudly liberal. And what binds us all together is not that we agree on everything, but that we join together in our love of God and one another. We welcome one another, because we have all been welcomed by Christ.
And for that reason Good Shepherd is a beautiful place. And so this morning as we hear the words of Paul to the Romans, let us also hear the encouragement of the Spirit to Good Shepherd. Continue the good work of welcoming others, just as Christ has welcomed you. Amen.
Thoughts on Faith 