Words to Live By: The Right Way to Live - Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Romans 14:1-12
a sermon preached by Fred A. Holbrook, August 11, 2024
Her name is Mary Lou. She is a member of the Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church in Tampa, FL. When Mary Lou came to church, she would always bring a tattered collapsible chair with her. Whether she didn’t think she could see as well from the pews or it felt too crowded or the seats were uncomfortable, no one could really tell. But as the actions of this adult with intellectual disability began to raise emotions, the issue was on the agenda at the next Worship Team meeting.
“I want to know what we should do with Mary Lou?” one of the team members asked. “I don’t know why we haven’t talked about it before! Something needs to be done.” Heads nodded in agreement. Ideas were batted around.
Then one of the deacons said, “Maybe we could provide Mary Lou with a special chair. I’d be glad to offer to carry the chair down the aisle to wherever she wants to go. We could even put her name on it.”
God is so good when speaking through the hearts of faithful servants. It worked. Mary Lou was absolutely delighted. Her own chair with her own name on it. Now, every Sunday, she is seated in the aisle in her own special place. And she feels so accepted.
In our New Testament text for today, Paul challenges Christians to be careful about judging others too quickly. We are so prone to make quick decisions about whether or not we like someone or something. “Oh, I don’t like her. She’s just moved here and they’ve parked their camper in the driveway. Don’t they know our neighborhood covenants and restrictions disallow that?”
Or, “Have you seen their house? You talk about a rat’s nest. Why don’t they fix it up? At least they could mow the grass. It is such an eyesore! Our property values are going to go down!”
Or, “She calls herself a Christian. Hah! Did you see her picture on Facebook when she was working on that Habitat for Humanity house? She looked so smug and haughty…. What? Where was I the day they were building that house? Well, I was invited to go shopping in northern Virginia. Look at the new shoes I got. Aren’t they beautiful?”
The Apostle Paul warns us to watch out, to be careful about judging others. Some people in the church at Rome were judging each other because one group ate meat and another group was vegetarian. Some observed Saturday as the Sabbath, others Sunday. Scripture commands us to stop judging, for each person makes decisions based on what we believe to be pleasing to God. The decisions are made in order to honor God. No one should be out there blasting those who are different from themselves.
I love Eugene Peterson’s The Message version of Romans 14, verse 6: “What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli.”
I once read Susan Isaacs’ novel Red, White, and Blue. It is set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where the two main characters, an FBI agent and a reporter, fall in love. They are in Wyoming to find out more about a white supremacist group called “Wrath.” The group’s leader teaches that black people and all people of color are the offspring of a sexual relation between Eve and the serpent in Genesis chapter 3. Whites are the supreme race and all others are judged unworthy in light of that fact.
I wish I could say that this attitude was only found in a fictional novel. But there are cases of extreme hatred in our world today. Some have even carried it into the church. There is one sect who identify as Christians who are founded on the supremacy of the white race. Its leader said on NPR that if a black woman was raped, he would not even report it because she was nothing more than an animal.
Sin has driven our world to this depth of depravity. Judging others, thinking we are better than someone else, is dangerous and can be deadly. It happens because we presume that we live all by ourselves in this great big world, that we don’t have to be in relationship to others. Paul says in verses 7 and 8: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live in relationship to the Lord. And if we die, we die in relationship to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
The natural application of this scripture is that we are a people in relationship with God and with the world God has created, including male and female and those who are non-binary, black and white, Muslim and Christian, conservative and liberal, gay and straight, American and Asian. We need to celebrate our dependence on one another—learning to live and love and work and worship among a nation where citizens and neighbors are different, look different, speak different, eat different.
At Walmart this week in Louisa County, I was in the produce aisle near a family speaking Russian, walked by a woman from Africa, said “hello” to a man from India, and was in line behind a family who looked to be from the Mayan people near Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Right in Zion Crossroads at Exit 136 on I-64!
In Romans 14:10, Paul asks, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” Why do we? It is because we are broken, we sin. I don’t know about you, but I still struggle with the issue of judgment. I am so quick to judge others. I wish I could blame it on someone else—my upbringing, my religion, my class, my skin color, my rights. But I can’t.
Maybe you struggle too. Do you ever make quick judgments about someone else? About some decision they have made? Does it feel wrong the moment you do it and you wish you could take back what you said or thought?
God knows we struggle and God is no doubt delighted that we are at least aware of our inclination to judge so quickly.
Some support the Trump-Vance ticket. Some support the Harris-Walz ticket. Some are undecided. Whose party’s platform is right?
“What is the right way” is REALLY the wrong question. The right question is: “For whom am I doing this?” Each one of us is ultimately accountable to God. Not to a political party. Not to the Session or the presbytery, not to our Mission and Advocacy Committee or our Budget and Finance Committee, not to the pastor or associate pastor or staff. Certainly we are accountable to one another, but we are ultimately accountable to God.
So, how does this affect you and me? Radically. It means that God’s Spirit is working within us constantly to get our judgy inclination under control.
What do I feel about interfaith marriage?
How do I approach family or friends or neighbors who are lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender or queer or questioning or intersex or asexual?
How about friends or family or neighbors who are Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim or atheist or agnostic? Do I, as a Presbyterian, treat my Baptist or non-denominational next-door neighbors with respect and love?
What do I feel about children in worship? Or clapping in worship? Or drums in worship? Or casual clothing in worship? Or wine versus grape juice in worship?
When the Apostle Paul was confronted with issues related to eating certain foods and honoring certain days, he concluded that, in the scheme of life, it really doesn’t make one bit of difference! His only question was this: “Is what you are doing being done to honor God or are you doing it to bring attention to yourself?”
The pastor of LaSalle Street Church, a congregation in inner-city Chicago, didn’t have any idea that preaching and football had such close connections. At least it did in the mind of one of their church members named Pierre. Maybe he had some special notions like Mary Lou and her collapsible chair, but Pierre was very sly about slipping into worship with a football hidden somewhere under his coat. Sometimes it was regulation size. Sometimes it was junior size. But somehow Pierre would get it into the sanctuary.
The pastor said the first time was an absolute shock. Right in the middle of the sermon, Pierre hopped up and threw a perfect spiral at the pulpit. The pastor ducked when she saw it coming.
Several weeks later, it happened again. Right in the middle of the sermon, another football. This time, the pastor caught it and set it under the pulpit, continuing to deliver the sermon.
The church board met. The elders, with their beautiful spirit of service, decided to cover Pierre in worship like a gentle linebacker, if there is such a thing. Whatever it was that inspired him to toss the ball, they chose not to toss Pierre out of the church, but to sit beside him, one elder on each side.
The next time Pierre started to move, they touched his hand and he calmed down, delighted to have two friends pay so much attention to him. He continues to attend LaSalle Street Church and the pastor admires the congregation for not judging Pierre harshly but for keeping him right in the middle of the community with all the love and grace of Christ Jesus himself.
Please don’t get me wrong. I believe that, when faced with evil, like the brutal murder of children and teachers in Uvalde, TX or the assassination attempt on former President Trump or the continued killing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or in Sudan or the Russian bombing of a children’s hospital in Ukraine or the averted terror plot that would have cost hundreds of lives at a Taylor Swift concert in Austria this week, there is absolutely no doubt God judges those actions as evil and we should name them as such. But, in the day to day course of our lives, we’re bound to feel at times that there is a right way and a wrong way to approach certain issues and certain people. We might believe that our approach to the issue of abortion is the right way. Or the issue of same-gender marriage. Or the issue of war or poverty or justice. But through Christ, we can honestly say to someone who does not agree with us, “I respect your right to your opinion, but we don’t have to agree with each other.” That is appropriate and sometimes the only conclusion we can make.
But in every judgment call, and we make them daily, we should not focus on whether ours is the right way. If we focus only on that, we will begin to believe that anyone who disagrees with us is wrong and shortsighted and, as our view of them deteriorates, that they are stupid and idiots and all those words that my parents taught their five children were as bad as curse words.
At a meeting some years ago in Shenandoah Presbytery, a pastor was trying to lead his church out of our denomination. In one of his letters to the congregation, the pastor called the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) “the antichrist, ungodly, perverted, devoid of the Holy Spirit.” All because he didn’t agree and decided that judging was his divine right and privilege.
At another meeting that same year, an elder in a neighboring church, holding his King James Bible high in the air, declared that the Presbyterian Church was going straight to Hell. This, too, was because he did not agree with certain actions and decided that judging was his divine right and privilege.
Dear friends of Second Pres and those dear friends seeing this online, we may disagree with one another, but we need to be careful about judging. Jesus said in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not that you be not judged.” God is the judge.
My wife’s father, Bob Wells, was a retired Presbyterian pastor. He passionately loved our Lord Jesus Christ and loved others unselfishly. Bob once said, “We must live with one another in such a way that our love for them is not going to be harmed by our love for our own ideas. Christ’s love must be stronger.”
Friends, you and I are ultimately held accountable to God for our decisions, our judgments, our actions, particularly in regard to our neighbors. Who are we to judge them? God alone is the judge. We are called to love, encourage, and support one another in Christ—collapsible chairs, footballs, Swifties, and all.
Let us pray: Lord, for today’s encounters with all who are in need, who hunger for acceptance, for justice and for bread, we need new eyes for seeing, new hands for holding on; renew us with your Spirit; Lord, free us; make us one! Amen.