Ask Dad…He Knows

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 17, 2012

Ask Dad…He Knows

Romans 14:1-4

Movies don’t get much better

than the perennial Christmas favorite,

“It’s A Wonderful Life”, with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed,

and Lionel Barrymore as the oily Mr. Potter.

Even in summer, the mere mention of the title for most of us

evokes images of Stewart as the guileless George Bailey

struggling against the greedy Potter.

You remember how the movie begins:

Angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody

has been summoned to help George,

but before Clarence can help him,

he has to learn about George, learn about his life,

going all the way back to his childhood.

And so there we are, just a few minutes into the movie

peering, so its seems, over Clarence’s shoulder

as we look at the young George Bailey,

all of 12 years old, full of himself, the world explorer,

working part-time for Mr. Gower at the Drug Store.

The year was 1919, and if you remember your history,

that was the year of the great global flu epidemic,

and sitting on the cash register is a telegram to Mr. Gower

informing him that his son had died from the flu.

George was probably too young to fully realize it,

but Mr. Gower had tried to drown his grief with alcohol;

and in his drunken stupor he had compounded some pills

for a prescription with a poisonous substance.

In the scene Mr. Gower hands George the pills

and tells him to deliver them.

George knows there is poison in them,

that if he delivers the pills they will kill, not cure.

He runs out of the back room into the front of the store,

frantic: what to do?

Then the answer comes to George

in the form of a sign,

a sign not from heaven,

but a sign up on the wall of the store,

a sign from a a company that back in those days

plastered the world with their slogan,

“Ask Dad…He Knows”

George runs out of the store and down the street,

off to find his father.

Off to find the one person with wisdom

who can help him,

help him find an answer.

It is a charming reminder

that life often presents us with problems,

struggles of all kinds,

and we won’t always have the answers,

that we need to turn to others for wisdom.

This is just as true when we are 40, 50, 60

as when we are 12.

It may be Dad;

it may be Mom;

it may be Grandad or teacher or friend;

and of course, it may be our Father in Heaven

whom Jesus wants to know as Abba.

                                                                                                                                                                                     Some 30 years following the crucifixion of our Lord,

the new Christians in Rome found themselves in turmoil

and they turned to Paul for an answer

to a question that had split their community:

was it acceptable to eat meat?

On its face it seems like an odd question.

even Leviticus doesn’t forbid eating meat;

the laws simply banned the eating of

certain kinds of creatures as food:

things like pork, lobster,… bugs.

In the formative years of Christianity,

many followers of Jesus were Jewish,

and still lived according to Jewish law and custom,

and those laws and customs included

the strict dietary laws found in Leviticus.

What the Jewish followers of Jesus struggled with

was the reality that in Rome

if a person was going to eat meat,

it was probably going to be meat that had been offered

as a sacrifice earlier in the day at a Roman temple

a sacrifice to a Roman god,

to a pagan god,

to an idol.

The Gentile Christians,

those who hailed from Italy, Greece, Asia, North Africa,

who had not been part of the Jewish community,

saw no problem in eating the meat.

They were not participating in the worship or sacrifice;

they were simply buying the meat left after the sacrifice.

To them, the meat was ordinary meat;

the fact that an hour earlier

it might have been part of a sacrifice to Jupiter

was unimportant;

it didn’t matter.

The two sides argued;

the Jewish followers of Christ

appalled at those who ate meat;

the Gentile followers of Christ looking down on those

who ate only vegetables

so they would not taint themselves with idolatrous meat.

And of course, each side believed

that they were acting more faithfully,

they were living more faithfully in accordance with Scripture,

in accordance with Jesus’ teachings.

Arguments that seem to split apart our community

aren’t anything new;

they have been with us right for 2,000 years.

Into this thicket waded Paul,

providing counsel grounded in

the wisdom of our Heavenly Father:

Those who eat must not despise those who abstain,

and those who abstain

must not pass judgment on those who eat;

for God has welcomed them.

Or, to put it in conversational terms:
live and let live, and let God.

But then Paul’s tone turned angry as he rebuked both sides:

Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another?”

In other words:

Who are you to think that you have the answer,

that you are in the right?

As Paul put it a few verses later:

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?

Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

(Romans 14:10)

How quick we are to forget

that we all stand before the judgment seat of God,

every one of us,

and none of us is in a position to judge,

much less condemn.

How quick we are to forget

what Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount,

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.

For with the judgment you make you will be judged,

and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s^* eye,

but do not notice the log in your own eye?

(Matthew 7:1)

Paul teaches the Roman Christians and us:

God has welcomed both the one who eats

and the one who abstains.

…Let us therefore no longer pass judgment

on one another,

but resolve instead never to put

a stumbling-block or hindrance

 in the way of another.

The great theologian Karl Barth

interpreted this passage as telling us:

“The … Christian does not complain of those

who hold opinions different from his own,

nor does he abuse them;

rather he stands behind them sympathetic,

believing that the other

must be permitted to follow his own road to the end.

There is no reason to disrupt the community;

on the contrary,

there is every reason to maintain fellowship.”

(Barth, The Epistle to the Romans)

Being right is less important than keeping community,

building community;

building up others

rather than trying to show them up.

If those who were buying and eating meat

were wrong to do so,

they’ll eventually have to answer to God

for their waywardness,

that’s the wisdom Paul shares with both sides.

Stop arguing, he says, and instead,

Outdo one another in showing honor

love one another with mutual affection   

…Do not be haughty;

do not claim to be wiser that you are.

(Romans 12)

This is the church we are called to build,

the church we are called to build for ourselves,

and even more important,

for Audrey, Hanna, Brendan,

the children, the generation who will follow us.

A church of unity, of community,

not one of dissension, quarreling,

squabbling, fighting.

Younger Christians of all denominations

are telling us they are sick of the fighting,

sick of the time, energy and resources wasted

when we should be feeding the hungry,

welcoming the stranger,

working for peace,

building up, rather than tearing down.

This younger generation doesn’t see wisdom

in dissension and division.

They seem to have a better understanding

than my own generation of Paul’s words:

God welcomes all believers;

the Lord will make them stand;

the Lord is the one before whom all is done;

The Lord is the one to whom we live or die

 and to whom we belong.

When we fight, when we squabble

when we hunker down so certain of ourselves,

our knowledge,

we tear down, break apart,

smash the community our Lord calls us to be part of,

to build.

But when we work together

when we live as Paul teaches us

living in the grace-filled wisdom

of our Father in Heaven,

honoring one another,

building up one another as we build community,

leaving judgment to God in Christ,

then as Anglican priest Austin Farrar put it so poetically:

“God walks in his temple,

and the house is peopled with cherubim;

then heaven descends to earth,

and earth is exalted to heaven,

in the praises of him from whom

all things everlastingly proceed,

and to whom they unfailingly return,

glory above glory,

light beyond light

love immortal.”

To God, our Heavenly Father,

our beloved Abba,

be the glory.

        

AMEN