The Complex Problem of Peace
A Reflection on Romans 15:4-13 for Advent 2A
In this Advent and Christmas Season, my writing will focus on the epistles and Old Testament readings from the Revised Common Lectionary. But that doesn’t mean that I have ignored the Gospels. If you’re looking for my reflections on the Gospel readings, they are in the new Advent and Christmas Guide from Sacredise, Living as Advent People. You can find that here.
CHANGING THE DEFAULT
Many years ago, in a church where my wife was the pastor, we were often amused by one particularly odd couple. When we met her, Mary’s1 youthful days of modelling were long behind her, and she lived a simple, solitary life, wrestling with a body that was breaking down and bent almost double. Every Sunday she would hobble to church, sing in the choir, and then over tea, complain about black people and how unsafe she felt around them. Caleb was a black gangsta rapper who was decades younger than Mary. While we had no proof, we were pretty sure he made much of his income from selling drugs. He had frequent run-ins with the police, and it was common for him to arrive at church dressed to the nines, but sporting a massive hangover from whatever substance he had been using on Saturday night. He was the epitome of the black people Mary feared, and yet, every week after the services, Caleb would walk with Mary, listening patiently to her rants about people who looked like him, to ensure she arrived home safely. And every week, we would shake our heads as we watched them slowly disappear down the road, and we would wonder how the old, white, racist woman and the young, black, drug dealer had ever managed to connect. It was a strange, complex demonstration of the weirdness of Christian community.
Even as I write this story, I can hear the voices in my head asking why we tolerated one or the other of these two people. Both were potentially bringing harm to others. Both seemed to have missed the point of Christ’s life and teachings. My wife had counselled and confronted both of them at different times, with little visible result. And yet, somehow, they had found an unlikely friendship beyond their differences and vices that was miraculous, disturbing, and beautiful. Casting them out would not have made them change their ways, and it would probably have put them both beyond even the possibility of change. And so, in an attempt to follow Jesus as best we could, we loved them and gave thanks for their bizarre relationship.
In most of Christian society, the default response to people who, like this couple, fail to meet our standards of respectability would be to cast them out, or at least make things uncomfortable enough that they would leave. But, to borrow the old evangelical catch phrase, is this what Jesus would do? The great challenge of our faith, one which is brought into stark focus when we encounter people like these two peculiar friends, is to choose what our default response to other people will be. We cannot follow Christ without asking who we are called to be and how we are to embody his vision and values in our own lives and world. And beneath it all, we need to ask ourselves what, in our view, truly makes for peace.
The second week of Advent is generally known as the week of peace. In our world filled with conflict, war, polarisation, and injustice, in our world where faith in Christ is often seen as a reason to exclude, judge, and dehumanise others, we need the Advent message of peace more than ever. But as all the Lectionary readings show, finding Christ’s “peace that exceeds all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) begins within us, and then, as we begin to embrace God’s shalom within us, so we are able to become peacemakers in our relationships and world.
From our earliest years, most of us are taught to fear the other. ”Stranger danger” is real, and we need to learn that there are harmful people in our world. But we also need to recognise that there is a great cost to ourselves and our society when our default response to others is to keep them at bay and set up defences to protect ourselves from the threat of their difference. Nowhere in the Bible is such self-protective fear taught as an appropriate way to live. Rather, the Scriptures consistently call us to adopt the attitude and actions of Christ, which are the antithesis of our increasingly other-fearing culture. And this brings us to Romans 15:4-13, which is the epistle reading for Advent 2A in the Lectionary.
Philippians 2:1-11 instructs believers to “adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus” (CEB) and then, in what was probably an early hymn,2 describes Jesus’ orientation to the world as one of servanthood, self-giving, and love. Romans 15 contains an abbreviated version of Paul’s teaching, but is no less direct in its impact. After praying that God would give the Roman community the same attitude toward one another that was in Jesus, the writer challenges the believers to “welcome each other, in the same way that Christ also welcomed you, for God’s glory” (Romans 15:7 CEB). For Paul, there was no question that Jesus’ default attitude of welcome and love was also to be the default for his followers.
The Roman community of Christians consisted of both Jewish and Gentile people,3 and it seems that there were likely some divisions as a result.4 Paul’s letter spoke into this situation and called the believers to unity and mutual hospitality. In other words, the apostle was urging his readers to change their default approach to one another from suspicion, fear, and rejection to trust, love, and welcome. And to do this, they were to adopt the attitude—and the resulting behaviours—of Christ. But how did Paul understand the way of Christ? In practical terms, what did it mean for the believers to adopt Christ’s attitude and actions?
EMBODYING CHRIST’S WAY
While Romans 15 (or the hymn of Philippians 2) may seem to offer a fairly clear picture of how Paul understood what Jesus thought and did, Christians through the centuries have found it challenging or even impossible to embody Christ’s way. Some of this may have been a wilful refusal to put love over fear, but it is probably also because following the way of Christ is not easy. It can be uncomfortable or even painful, risky, vulnerable, costly, and complicated, and so, it is far easier to put limits and conditions on the message of these readings. But in doing so, we miss out on the rich, flourishing life that we can only find together in community, and we keep ourselves from the only way that truly brings peace personally and in our world. And so it is worth taking another look at Paul’s words and what they mean for us.
The Apostle begins with the call to “welcome each other” and then goes on to unpack what that looks like, both in terms of their understanding of God’s purposes, and with regard to how they treat one another. As Jennifer Vija Pietz explains, “The ’welcome’ Paul describes in Romans 15:7 (NRSV) connotes something deeper than exchanging pleasantries or a general appearance of hospitality. The Greek verb behind it, proslambanō, can also be translated as ‘accept’ (NIV) or ’receive’ (NKJV).” This welcome, acceptance, or receiving of each other is rooted in Christ’s welcome, acceptance, and receiving of us—unconditionally, graciously, and infinitely lovingly. The love of Christ is such that he became a slave of both the Jews and the Gentiles, so that together they could create the kind of community that would reveal God’s reign of love and justice to the world (15:9). And then, Paul goes on to quote (or misquote) a collection of passages from the Hebrew Bible (Psalm 18:49, Deuteronomy 32:43, Psalm 117:1, Isiah 11:10) to show that the unity of God’s diverse people was always God’s plan. Keith Giles and Matthew Distefano describe the Apostle’s use of these passages in this way:
…all the above references following the phrases, “As it is written…” are creatively misquoted by Paul to emphasize the mercy of God to the Gentiles while intentionally editing out all references to the wrath and vengeance of God against the Gentiles…
…This audacious retelling of the story to prioritize God’s goodness over all references to God’s wrath in those passages is justified by what Paul has concluded in the previous chapters: that God’s plan is to save everyone, everywhere.5
