Proper 19, Year A 2026: Romans 14:1-12

 When I was a tween, the TV show 7th Heaven was popular among my peers. It’s a show about a generically protestant pastor’s family - there was an afternoon when I was in seminary and my classmates and I spent an inordinate amount of time discussing what denomination the family was, and we didn’t come to a satisfying conclusion. At one point in the show, their oldest son marries a Jewish woman and so his parents have hers over for dinner. And they’re having some kind of meat dish and her mother asks his mother something about the sauce. And she commented that to smooth it out she added a little bit of cream. And her Jewish mother freaks out and runs off like she’s going to be sick. I knew probably just as much as the writers did about eating Kosher - that you can’t mix meat and dairy - which his mother, as a minister’s wife for 25 years at this point, should have known. But they apparently didn’t go any deeper than that, because now I know it’s not that simple. There’s more to it than simply not mixing meat and dairy in the same dish. So you can’t just have people who keep Kosher over for dinner and cook in your non-Kosher kitchen with your non-Kosher dishes. It was an example of lazy writing mixed with a complete lack of understanding about what the writers were writing about. If these parents kept Kosher, it would’ve been a conversation before the dinner; they wouldn’t have just accepted that invitation. I had a Jewish professor when I was an undergrad who didn’t keep Kosher, but he wanted to be able to have his Kosher-keeping grandfather over to his home and feed him, so he began keeping Kosher as an act of hospitality and love toward his grandfather. And that is what Paul is getting at in today’s Romans lesson.

Paul, in general, is reluctant to treat Scripture as a rule book. He explicitly argues that various requirements of the Torah are not binding for the Gentile churches he is working to establish. It is noteworthy that in his epistles Paul never quotes the Old Testament at length or in complete detail for the purpose of developing his ethics. Except for a few instances, the citations are always brief, like in today’s text, which contains a composite quotation drawn primarily from Isaiah 45:23 - it is essentially a couplet that still is drawn from multiple sources. The Law, Paul says, was a teaching, whose commission was valid and necessary until faith came, but now, since the resurrection of Jesus, the Law is no longer necessary. Therefore, when he is confronted with various problems of conduct in his churches, he does not settle them as a rabbi would by seeking to apply Torah as the ethical basis for his argument. Paul seeks to present his moral teachings on the basis of the gospel itself: right behavior is understood as ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ (Gal 5:22-23), as he writes in Galatians; the natural outflow of the new life in Christ. Moral judgment becomes a matter not of obeying a written law but of discerning God’s will. (144-5)

I frequently comment on how much the writers of the Gospels assume their readers knew about Israel’s Scripture. Paul, as a Pharisee, absolutely knew Israel’s Scripture. But Paul, particularly in his mission to the Gentiles who would not know Israel’s Scripture, believes that Scripture has now been fulfilled and is making a new way forward where following the Law is not what our conduct is centered upon. It was the case that adherence to Torah was how God’s people showed their devotion. But now it is through faith in Christ Jesus.

In today’s lesson from the letter to the Romans, Paul outlines his position regarding the tension between those who scrupulously observe religiously grounded regulations governing dietary matters and special days (the weak) and those who insist on their freedom in Christ to ignore these regulations (the strong). This is the beginning of the final section of Paul’s letter, where he encourages his readers to take specific action: the strong are not to pass judgment on the weak, but are to love them.

Scholars are uncertain as to whether the language of “strong” and “weak” were coined by Paul or if they were already in use among his Roman audience. These designations seem to cover ways of looking at Christian requirements rather than divided factions, such as those who adhered to different Christian figures at Corinth (I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos…has Christ been divided?!). The “strong” are convinced they can eat anything and don’t need to treat any days as special; the “weak” are cautious about eating, trusting only vegetables, and observe certain holy days. Despite the efforts of some scholars to associate such preferences with Hellenistic gnostic or mystery-religion practices, the issue probably reflects observances stemming from the purity demands of the Mosaic Law - the Law of Moses from Israel’s Scripture. The “strong” regard those demands as irrelevant, the “weak” think they are obligatory. Paul is concerned that the two groups should not judge or despise each other. Whether they eat or abstain, each group should be doing it for the Lord. In particular, later on in Chapter 14 he warns the “strong” that it is better not to eat meat or drink wine if it causes the brother or sister to trip or stumble, proclaiming, “we who are strong ought to bear with failings of those who are weak rather than please ourselves.” (572-3) What is important to Paul is that whatever one is doing, they are making those choices as a way to give glory to God.

Paul knows that if someone else is caused to stumble in their faith by what the “strong” eat, then the strong are sinning against them, which means against the Messiah himself who died for them. This is a delicate balance of mutual respect, maintaining unity across traditional boundaries. While the “strong” and “weak” language is certainly not helpful, Paul’s point - that we ought to respect ways in which others are working to God’s glory or to live the way in which God is calling them to live - is one we are called to live into.

Paul calls the strong to responsibility, not to self-satisfaction or arrogance. In the text we read today, he doesn’t actually use “strong” as a descriptor, and he doesn’t use “weak” in every comparison - although it’s pretty clearly implied because the thing that one of the pair do is part of the Mosaic Law, like when he writes “some judge one day to be better than another” he is referring to the Sabbath. Paul transitions from Sabbath back into food restrictions, as those are the two most visible and most likely to affect others - what we eat and days during which we must rest. In First Corinthians he also addresses what Corinthian Christians ought to do around their Gentile friends who are not Christian, have you over for dinner, and serve food that has been sacrificed to idols. Paul’s guidance is that if you think it will cause you to stumble, then do not eat it. But if you don’t, go ahead, because the idols aren’t real anyway. 

But if Paul were advising the Gentile non-Christian host, he would say, “don’t serve that to your Christian friends”. In the same way as today I wouldn’t have a practicing Muslim over for dinner and serve pork, or a celiac and serve gluten, or an alcoholic and serve a wine based sauce, or a vegetarian and serve lamb.

In Paul’s example, the same people always fall into the “weak” camp and the same people fall into the “strong” because of how he is doing his groupings - based on Jewish vs Gentile background. But that sorting mechanism doesn’t continue to hold up today. So in some cases we are the “strong” and in some we are the “weak”. It is our calling, whichever spot we fall into at any time, to discern in what we are doing if we are giving thanks to God or if we are helping another give thanks to God without compromising our own faith. If I go to a Catholic Mass, I don’t take communion. Could I? Probably. They don’t check any more than I check - Episcopal Communion is open to all baptized Christians. But I know it’s wrong and I respect their space as a guest in their space. Am I the strong or the weak in this example? It depends on who you ask. Paul is giving us our first lessons in ecumenism - dialogue and cooperation within the Christian family. In the next verse after today’s reading, Paul writes, “Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.” Amen.