Pentecost 16A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​Paul’s letter to the church in Rome is densely packed with theological arguments regarding the relationship between Christian and Jewish believers. While it’s obvious which side of that debate Paul lands on, he also is an active part of both sides, that is, if sides are actually warranted. 

Today’s lesson from that letter raises a few questions, primarily as to why Paul even broaches the topic. Is he referring to Jewish dietary law and tradition? Is the meat offered at dinner part of a sacrifice made to an idol? Or does he really just crave a bacon cheeseburger? 

For a while I worked as the music director in a large Roman Catholic parish and taught in its schools. There were those who maintained the “no meat on Fridays” rule, even though that restriction had been relaxed except during Lent. The high school football team got energized every Friday when they went to their cars after school on game days and found dead fish on them. While they blamed players from opposing teams, they didn’t stop to think that they, too, were in class when it happened. Their own coaches owned up to the prank, but not before they retired. 

Keeping the rules helps us orient our lives. We learn discipline and structure. We might also learn a feeling of superiority for being faithful to them. That is Paul’s reason for addressing the issue, and his words might result in both a raising up and a lowering down, depending on individual senses of their own ways of life. 

All this goes back to the beginning of the letter. Paul spends a lot of time debating the idea that salvation comes through faithfulness to the law as opposed to salvation being a free gift that came before the law ever existed. Yet, we continue to this day to hear that we must obey certain rules and follow set traditions in order to be “saved” and a part of the family of the faithful. 

And, indeed, we tend to subscribe to that ethos. We just call them nice acceptable words like "constitutions" and "canons" and "bylaws," and my favorite, “we’ve always done it this way.” These documents, and sometimes the traditions, help us maintain some order to our communal lives. They also help us understand where authority and responsibility lie, both for those who are held responsible and for those who might desire to usurp authority. 

But there is one overarching aspect of Paul’s teaching that governs everything else. That is that our life together is governed by one thing—unity in Christ in faithful fellowship, understanding that it is solely by God’s grace that we are saved. Nothing else can usurp that grace, and no demand for adherence to laws and traditions can substitute for God’s faithfulness toward us.

To believe otherwise is to somehow try to replace God with ourselves. To insist that others adhere to our ways of life is to possibly deny not just Paul’s teaching but also the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, where he tells his disciples that the Spirit will reveal more of God’s truth to them “when they are ready.” And, sometimes, it’s ready or not; here it comes anyway, because our selfish stubbornness wants to strangely inhibit God. We have yet to learn how exhausting those exercises in futility can become. 

The bottom line of all this is that we are not capable of judging others, even though we can point out behaviors and customs that don’t necessarily seem to fit our own. That distinction then leads to a discussion about merging old customs with new expressions while also maintaining the fruitful life of the community. When we judge, we supplant God. When we do that, we risk being atheist in some way, although we more often put ourselves in God’s place without giving it a second thought. 

In our relationship with God, we are all weak. In God’s relationship with us, we are made strong enough to accept our weakness, and the same weaknesses in others. We make no claim to superiority, exorcised of our need to control the behavior of others, even as we meet them so we might learn from each other the benefit of our life together in Christ. 

That life is made more abundant as much by our differences as by our similarities. After all, which one of us can contain the fullness of God, the One who was and is and ever shall be part of all of it? 

Our rules, written and otherwise, might help determine whether we fit in a particular group, parish, or denomination. They do not and cannot determine whether we or anyone else happen to be Christian. The constitutions and canons and bylaws serve to help define and protect the institutional church. At times it seems that they also try to protect God, when, in fact, our rigid boundaries and idolatrous grip on our rule books might instead try to protect us from God’s ongoing creation of new life. 

God will have no part of that, and probably just moves on to plant the seeds of the Spirit in more fertile ground. All of Paul’s letters, and the Gospels that come a bit later, point us to that fact. Read them again with that in mind, and give thanks that, like today’s Gospel tries to teach us, God’s number of times to forgive is as infinite as God’s grace. Just don’t take that for granted. Go and do it yourselves, because that's what God does for us. ​