WALKING OUR TALK
Matthew 7:1-5; Romans 14:1-12
February 27, 2005
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper

I don’t see myself the way you see me. It’s taken me a while to really get that, but I’ve learned something about myself. Whenever I stand in front of my mirror, I do two things, just automatically. One is that I suck my tummy in and stand up real straight. The other is that I open my eyes up wide. I don’t do it consciously. I just do it, automatically. So I walk around the world thinking that I’m wide-eyed and tight-bellied, when you all see me looking more droop-eyed and soft all the time.

Isn’t it hard, to learn that other people see us so much more clearly than we sometimes see ourselves? Over time, I’ve learned, as I suppose you have as well, that I can’t “manage� my image, for there I am, out in the world for all to see even when I’m not thinking about what I look like, about how I appear in the world. And of course, that applies to all kinds of things beyond what we look like, you or I. People see what we do day by day, how we really behave, not how we want them—or ourselves—to think we behave. This is true of each of us, individually, and it’s true of us as a community of faith. What we do is so much more important than what we say we do.

And the difference between the two, between our teachings and our practices, between our self-images and the way we are in the world, the difference between the two is the source of the charge so often levied at religious folk: “Hypocrites!�

That is the word Jesus used in our reading for today. Who was he addressing? The religious leaders of his day. They were driving the poor and the outcast away from the faith because they were so self-righteous about diet, cleanliness and the practice of tithing. “Why, you even tithe from your dill and mint crops,� he said, “being careful to donate a tenth of everything you have and judging those who don’t or can’t do as much, judging those who can’t keep themselves as clean, judging those who have to take whatever food they can get without worrying about dietary laws. Hypocrites! How can you call yourselves righteous when you underpay your laborers? How can you call yourselves faithful to God’s realm when you drive people away from God’s presence? Don’t you know that God wants welcome, compassion and justice more than cumin, mint or dill! Look to your own monstrous sins before you go criticizing others for being poor, unrighteous and unkempt.�

When I listen to people who grew up in a church and left it at some point, to people who have little use for religion, one of the descriptions I hear most often is “Hypocrites!� People see what we do, we people of faith, when we celebrate Jesus’ welcome in one breath and criticize teens, or gays, or immigrants, or skateboarders, or our fellow Christians in the next. Simplistic blanket judgments highlight how far short we fall of the image we’d like to pretend that we project. They are as visible to the world as a soft belly, and will not be hidden by garments of explanation or rationalization.

Now, it’s easy for us to point to some of the most obvious examples of our denominational spiritual unfitness—the spiritual and rational conflict between the United Methodist advertising slogan, “Open Minds. Open Hearts. Open Doors.� and the denominational practice of slamming the doors of polity in the faces of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered is but one wrenching example of a church pretending that we can’t see the emperor underneath the clothing. Sometimes it’s pretty embarrassing to watch us parading down the avenues of inclusion as though no one can see the gaping holes in our institutional robes.

And yet, there’s the other part of the message that we must take seriously, take the log out of your own eye before you offer to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye. Oh, that’s the harder part, to understand that we might be walking around with droopier eyes than we want to acknowledge.

This is what we advertise and want to believe about ourselves:

UPUMC is small, diverse, growing, laughing, committed, caring, serious, warm and REAL! We are a community that encourages each other as we grow in faith, in knowledge, in service, and in love of self, God and neighbor. At University Park we not only respect but welcome diversity in race, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical and mental ability, economic status and profession. We believe all people are equal before God and entitled to God’s grace and abundance.

It’s a great vision. We often live up to it. Yes, we do. But sometimes, it’s a whole lot easier to love our brothers and sisters in theory than it is in practice. Sometimes, some of us are immature, boundaryless, irritable, over-eager, sensitive, critical or bossy. And it matters, a great deal, how we behave in the face of our difficulties with one another.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans illustrates what I’m talking about. For all the talk about eating and food and faith to make any sense, we have to remember that food issues were as definitive within First century Jewish culture as issues of sexuality are in Twenty-first century United States culture.

We live in a time where people buy Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Polish foods from neighboring vendors at Saturday market. It’s hard, from our perspective to remind ourselves that cultural diversity in diet was an immense issue for early Christians.

When Paul carried the message of Jesus to Rome, he went as a Jew, but as a Jew who believed that Jesus’ death and resurrection had set Christians free from the requirements of law, who believed that God had done a new thing in Jesus, replacing Law with Love, obedience to Torah with forgiveness through Christ. As the community grew, some Christians argued that Christians need not observe the dietary rules, that continuing to observe the dietary laws showed a weakness of faith, a sort of hedging of spiritual bets. If you really trust in Christ, they said, you’d understand that God’s love and forgiveness transcends diet.

Others, of course, believed differently. Whether they felt it was important to refrain from meats available in the public market because that was their long-time custom, or whether they believed that a libertine attitude towards how food was prepared would drive away potential new recruits, they were clear that it was unnecessary and rude to flaunt dietary freedom in the face of the community.

This was a serious issue, for one of the things that characterized these Roman Christians was gathering for shared meals, sort of like we gather for potlucks and Wednesday dinners. So if one person, perhaps the converted wife of a Roman official, brought a favorite kind of meat to the meal and another person, someone who had never ever eaten food that wasn’t kosher, refused to eat the food and condemned her for bringing it, well, you can see that such tension could rip a community apart. And so people wrote to Paul to ask what they should do. And Paul replied [in the translation by Eugene Peterson]:

Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume that all Christians should be vegetarians and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.

What’s important in all this is that 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. None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It is God we are answerable to—all the way form life to death and everything in between—not each other. . . .

So where does that leave you when you criticize a brother? And where does that leave you when you condescend to a sister? I’d say it leaves you looking pretty silly—or worse. Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God. Your critical and condescending ways aren’t going to improve your position there one bit. . . . So tend to your knitting. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God. Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is.

In real life, even in communities of faith, people disagree. In real life, people irritate each other. In the world, people who have not learned how to disagree and still respect each other find themselves building walls, isolating or killing each other. The hardest part of creating a community that nurtures the growth of all is learning how to live in love and respect when we don’t like or agree with one another. The hard part is learning, as author Wayne Dwyer has put it, that we usually have a choice between being “right� and being kind, and that choosing to be kind is the better part. This applies in our individual lives, in our community of faith, and in the world.

Do we long for peace in the world, in our denomination, in our neighborhoods, in our families? Can we think of a better time and place to learn how to be builders of peace than right now, right here?

God, we pray that we may learn to walk our talk, and that those who see us will know we are Christians by our love.

Amen.

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