Essay #8. The Weak and the Strong - Putting Love into Practice
This
essay is the last in our series on Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It seems
appropriate that these words act not only as a way of engaging with the
scripture in new ways, but also as an encouragement to meditation on how we can
take the complex ideas that we’ve heard from the lectern over the last 16
weeks and incorporate them into our lives. Ultimately, we are called to
“rejoice in the power of the Spirit”. To do so is to put love into practice.
The letter to the Romans is an excellent source of guidance for how this might
be accomplished, in addition to addressing why rejoicing in community can be
such a challenge. It is with the openness of those who sacrifice their whole
selves in Christ that we must approach the discussion of division and the need
for healing relationships that Paul pursues in the last part of his epistle.
As
Mark Nanos identifies in The Mystery of Romans, there are several
tensions in the Roman communities that Paul addresses:
The
interpretation of the last two relationships is significantly different from the
traditional understanding. Keeping in mind that the word “Christian” is used
here as shorthand for “Christ-believer” due to the totally different context
and experience of those in first century Rome, a reframing of the six tensions
above is essential to deepening our insight into Paul’s arguments. The
traditional interpretation of the strong and the weak assumes that Christian and
Jew had already separated from each other when the letter to Rome was written.
The strong are traditionally assumed to be those who see freedom from the law as
the essence of freedom in Christ. The weak are traditionally assumed to be those
who believe but cannot separate belief from ritual, assuming that to be saved,
we must “follow the rules”. In the year 57, the church had not yet separated
from Judaism. The letter to Rome is not even written to a 'church' (1:7). Paul's
mandate as apostle is to call the gentiles to worship the God of Israel. He is
gathering in the nations to the one God, not creating another religion.
The
argument in the letter is remarkably consistent from this point of view. Paul
introduces the difference between weak and strong when he describes Abraham's
faith that God would fulfill his promise of a child (4:19). Note how Abraham's
faith is strengthened (4:20) indicating time for growth. So Paul is encouraging
those who think they are strong like Abraham to respect the weaker who have not
yet had time to consider and believe in the promises of God as fulfilled in
Jesus’ resurrection. One might expect Paul to exhort the weak, but he gives
only one instruction to the weak: not to judge the strong for God has accepted
them. Most of the instruction is to the strong. If we are strong, we do not need
to insist that we are also right, but can afford to be deferential to the
scruples of others (15:1) and even to their authority (13:1-7). Christian
gentiles (the strong) need to "adopt proper behaviour so that they would
not cause the further stumbling of the weak, who were the non-Christian Jews in
the Roman Synagogues" (Nanos, p.292). If the strong and the weak can
coexist in a worshipping community as partners in the love of God, then conflict
ceases. However, one of the major challenges in the Roman synagogues was the
need for learning among the strong, gentiles who committed themselves to Christ
without understanding that their newfound faith fit historically and divinely
with the practices and beliefs of the weak. Ironically, there is a lack of
clarity in the communities that their tightest spiritual alliances are with the
very people they cannot comprehend or even tolerate. Those who stumble over the
grace that the strong have accepted can easily be regarded as enemies and
obstacles themselves. If instead of engaging in conflict, the strong submit to
the synagogue authorities, it opens the way for acceptance on both sides. The
strong see the weak as brethren and beloved, and the weak see the strong as
cooperative in faith.
Chapter
13, verses 1-7 have been traditionally interpreted as instructions for
submission to the government of the empire. However, the passage makes much more
sense in the context of the rest of the letter if it’s read as an explanation
to the gentiles regarding how they preserve the unity of the body through
respecting the existing governing structures. Paul identifies four
“payments” that apply to Diaspora synagogue structure: tax due to the
servants, custom due to the ministers, fear due to the rulers, and honour due to
the higher authorities. To express this, Paul uses a kind of poetic pattern,
called a chiastic structure that can be expressed as a-b-c-d-d-c-b-a. Within
this structure, the message is clear: the acceptance of synagogue authority
allows for a kind of dynamic dialogue to flow between all of its members, as
they all become the beloved to one another in upholding a connected series of
symbiotic relationships.
The crux of Paul’s discussion of the weak and the strong in
community relations and in the synagogues of Rome immediately follows 13:1-7.
“Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the
law.” (13:10) Love, Paul assures us, is never wrong, and calls us to an active
caring for one another. If each member of a dynamic faith community commits to
God with his/her whole heart, then it becomes clear that “we do not live to
ourselves and we do not die to ourselves … so then each one of us will be
accountable to God” (14:7, 12). While it is often far more challenging, the
greatest joy resides in worship among a diverse collection of God’s beloved.
[Ayla Lepine and Bob MacDonald]