Romans 14:1-12
“The Judgment Seat”
September 13, 2020
According to the old story, one day a stranger walked into the center of a small town. He was wearing a strange-looking coat. The coat itself was black and sewed all over the front of it were these different cloth patches. The patches were a variety of shapes and sizes and colors. People from all over town heard about this guy and they came to the town green and stood around silently looking at him and his coat. After a while one person asked him what the meaning of his unusual coat was.
Right away he started pointing to each of the different patches and explaining that they each represented the sins of the different people there in the town. Some folks were embarrassed and quietly left while others were offended and got mad. After the stranger explained every patch and every sin he turned around and headed out of town.
Only then did they see the big patch of dark colored cloth that covered the whole back of his coat. Some of the townsfolk shouted out loud, “What does that big patch mean?” In response they heard a voice clearly say, “That represents his own sin, for he is willing to point out the shortcomings of others and yet fails to see his own.” (as told by Gilberto Collazo in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, 62)
For some of us it takes a lifetime to figure out that perfect doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in our expectations of others and it is doomed to failure in ourselves. And yet for many of us it would be tough to get through a single day without a judgmental thought which highlights just how short of perfect we fall.
Matthew’s Gospel points out, “You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye.” (Mt 7:3, CEV) In our 24-hour news feed world where we wake up to multiple events big and small every morning, we tend not to have a lot of time for uncertainty. We can be impatient when a new or different viewpoint is expressed. Usually we listen to other people for as long as it takes to figure out if we agree with them. And then we’re on to that next sound bite or snippet that confirms the opinion we already have. It is really hard to give up being certain.
We Christians like to think we have things all figured out when it comes to being Jesus followers. We may have answers that point to perfection but Paul is saying we need to widen the circle to include all of those who don’t know, aren’t sure, are confused or are seeking.
What Paul is encouraging the Romans to do, those people of the empire, is not just to tolerate those whose faith is weak but to welcome them. If we believe that our faith in God impacts our world view, then we probably need to get used to the idea that neither you nor I nor anyone else has it figured out exactly as God intends. This is why perfect doesn’t work and that’s not a bad thing.
What if acknowledging that we are not perfect and don’t have all the answers was part of the loving way in which we don’t live for ourselves. If we didn’t always have to be right, we might find that more loving way. To allow ourselves to hold less tightly to our certainty, especially in our ever-changing world, may allow us to love more deeply. This doesn’t mean we have to agree but rather we can offer ourselves and our beliefs without apologizing but also with no malice toward others. To acknowledge our own vulnerability that comes with imperfection is to recognize that every phase of life has trial and error.
Paul speaks here from a place where the tension was evident when it came to religious practices between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. The Jewish Christians had a handle on what it meant to be observant Jews but they were not so clear on what it meant to be an observant Gentile Christian. What they could eat and drink and how they observed the sabbath all proved to be prone to interpretation.
We modern-day Christians certainly fall under a big tent with lots of differences between us from our beliefs about the sacraments to who is qualified to preach and what is considered sinful and then what to do about that. We all call ourselves followers of Jesus but that means different things from denomination to denomination and even within our denomination. And a lot of energy has been devoted in the past two millennia trying to figure out who has the inside track. Maybe we could redirect some of that energy toward the loving way Jesus pointed to rather than judging which one of us is doing it correctly.
The teacher and theologian Sr. Joan Chittister wrote “It is precisely our vulnerability that entitles us to love and guarantees us a hearing from the rest of the human race.” (Saved by Struggle, 65) Instead of spending so much time on judgment maybe we could spend more time on relating to our shared vulnerability and seek compassionate responses together.
May these words of the hymn Help Us Accept Each Other guide us on our way:
Help us accept each other as Christ accepted us;
Teach us as sister, brother, each person to embrace.
Be present, Lord, among us, and bring us to believe
We are our selves accepted and meant to love and live.
Amen.