Romans 14 - 16 The Stone on My Dryer —01/20/09

Prayer
In the words of the Psalmist we pray, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved..." (Ps 46:4-5) We come today asking for the river of your love, for your presence in our midst, that we as a body of believers shall not be moved, but that we should rather move the world with power and love. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen.

I want to tell you a story about a stone.

It's not too small, not too large. It's oblong and uniform like a very large egg. It fits fully in the palm of my hand and is surprisingly heavy. My stone is grey, but not the boring kind of grey one finds in a run-of-the-mill backyard stone. It is luminescent gray, pushing ever so slightly towards blue, with white sparkles. It's not too rough, but not too smooth either.

I like my stone. I got it on Sunday. Right now, it's sitting on my dryer, and it made me happy all day yesterday, every time I went to the basement to put another load in the wash.

I was not supposed to take my stone home. I was supposed to put it in a pile at the front of the church. To make a memorial of sorts, like the memorial that the Israelites made when they crossed the Jordon on dry land, taking 12 stones from the center of the riverbed, one for each tribe and setting it up as a story starter.

"... so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' (Josh 4:6) then you shall let your children know, 'Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.' For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and so that you may fear the LORD your God forever." (Josh 4:22-24)

I can't remember what I was supposed to do if indeed I were to put my stone in the pile. Maybe assign it some kind of meaning. I don't remember. I was busy touching and admiring my stone, knowing I would take it home. Because I knew the church memorial would be dismantled before the week was up. I knew that it wasn't going to serve as a story starter for my children. In fact, my children wouldn't even know about the event because, as it was stated from the front, "Now that the kids are gone, we're going to do something fun. We're going to give each of you a stone." And so on. Anyway, considering the temporary status of the memorial, I made an executive decision. I took my stone home. It's probably still warm from sitting on the dryer.

Now, we interrupt this stone story for a recital of the 1st-Century Church Composition System:

Phoebe, sister, wealthy business woman. Woman? Woman. Rich. Business, business woman. Priscilla and Aquila. Married. Adventurers. Risked their necks. Blue-collar, makers-of-tents. Sometimes refugees. Priscilla and Aquila. Woman, man. (Woman? Named first? What this? Woman honored before man. Refugee, blue collar, adventurer woman.) Epaenetus. Mary. Andronicus and Junia. Andronicus and Junia, prisoners. Prisoners? Prisoners, in the 1st Century Church Composition System. Amplias. Urbanus. Stachys. Apelles. Aristobulus. Herodian. Narcissus. Tryphena and Tryphosa. Women, women. Persis, Rufus. Rufus from Cyrene. African? African. Asyncritus, Plegon, Hermas Patrobas, Hermes, Philogus and Julia. Nerueus and sister. Olympas. Olympas, named for home of heathen gods. 1st-Century Church Compostion System. Rich, poor, laborers, refugees, prisoners, women, men, Jews, Greeks, Africans, Bearers of names of heathen gods. The 1st-Century Church Composition System.

Why interrupt my stone story for this meandering recitation? Peter says this about us, the church, "you, too, as living stones, are building yourselves up into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, so that you may offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus, the Messiah." (1 Peter 2:5)

So, all those names in the long recital were living stones, being built up at the time of Paul. Living stones that were not raised and dismantled in a week. They serve us today as a story starter in Romans 14-16. What kind of story do they tell? What do those stones mean to us?

It's a terrible human habit, perhaps borne from the positive need to protect ourselves, to promote the "insider/outsider" condition. I think back to an example I included in my book Stone Crossings, about lepers. I wrote,

"I consider... the isolation of lepers in Europe from around A.D. 1100 to 1300. If it was discovered that a person had leprosy, life on the outside began in earnest. The sufferer was ushered into church, where a black tent stood like a cave at the altar. The leper was forced to kneel in the shadows of this tent while a priest intoned the burial mass. Then the leper journeyed outward to a leper house, where the priest threw a cascade of dirt at him, as if the leper were being lowered into his grave.

After this funereal sendoff, any foray into society was a grim reminder to the leper that he lived on the outside. He wore special clothes, was restricted from dipping in the local river, rang a bell to warn of his approach, spoke in a whisper (lest his breath caress another) and watched the children play without hope of ever holding them to his breast.

Some communities solved his problem with a simpler solution—they buried him alive." (p.60)

As I noted in Stone Crossings, that's a rather extreme example of insider/outsider conditions, condoned by the church. Today, our insider/outsider conditions seem far more benign: Subtly honor one gender over another. Quietly cater to rich above poor. Respect business person more than artisan. Separate ourselves like math manipulatives in an elementary classroom lesson... hundreds go here, tens there, ones in this pile, red at the end, yellow on that side... old versus young, conservative versus liberal, man versus woman, contemporary versus traditional, American versus foreigner, emergent versus... and so on and so on and so on.

Maybe we separate ourselves for good reasons. We think we're preserving some kind of orthodoxy, some kind of standard, some kind of accountability to God. I like this story to that effect from author A.J. Jacobs. Jacobs is a secular Jew who decided to try a year of living biblically. In other words, he tried living out all of the commandments and rules as he both understood them and was advised regarding them by a core group of spiritual advisors. For one year he tried living the life of orthodoxy, tried to preserve certain standards and accountability to God. Here's what happened just on a brief trip to the copy shop, as he began his project in earnest:

"I want to xerox a half dozen copies of the Ten Commandments so I can Scotch tape them up all over the apartment, figuring it'd be a good memory aid.

The Bible says, those with good sense are 'slow to anger' (Proverbs 19:11). So when I get there at the same time as this wiry fortyish woman and she practically sprints to the counter to beat me in line, I try not to be annoyed.

And when she tells the Mail Boxes Etc. employee to copy something on the one and only functioning Xerox machine, I try to shrug it off. And when she pulls out a stack of pages that looks like the collected works of J.K. Rowling and plunks it on the counter, I say to myself, 'Slow to anger, slow to anger.'

After which she asks some complicated question involving paper stock...

I remind myself: Remember what happened when the Israelites were waiting for Moses while he was up on the mountaintop for forty days? They got impatient, lost faith, and were struck with the plague.

Oh, and she pays by check. And asks for a receipt. And asks to get the receipt initialed. The Proverbs—a collection of wisdom in the Old Testament—say that smiling makes you happy. Which is actually backed up by psychological studies. So I stand there with a flight attendant-like grin frozen on my face. But inside, I am full of wrath.

I don't have time for this. I have a seventy-two-page-list of other biblical tasks to do.

I finally make it to the counter and give the cashier a dollar. She scoops my thirty-eight cents of change from the register and holds it out for me to take.

'Could you, uh, put the change on the counter?' I ask.

She glares at me. I'm not supposed to touch women—more on that later—so I am simply trying to avoid unnecessary finger-to-finger contact.

'I have a cold,' I say. 'I don't want to give it to you.'

A complete lie. In trying to avoid one sin, I committed another."

You see the complexity of trying to create a comprehensive list of do's and don'ts, touch this's and don't touch that's, associate with this person but not the other? And it gets trickier when, as Paul reminds us, there is not necessarily agreement about a master list amongst believers, for "some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike." (Romans 14:5)

And some "believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables." Just an aside, he's not dealing with the question of meat-eating versus vegetarianism, interesting as that might be. He's dealing with the question of whether it's okay for a believer to eat meat that had been offered to idols, as virtually all meat in the marketplace had been during that time.

I'm not saying there are no standards at all. No list, no sense of right and wrong. Just a few sentences before, Paul has written, "Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light..." (Romans 13:12) But I'm observing that some of this is not as cut and dried as we make it out to be. And too often we separate ourselves one from another for the sake of causes and underlying values that aren't so critical or helpful after all.

Which is why Paul says this, "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. For it is written, 'As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.' So then, each of us will be accountable to God." (Romans 14:10-12)

In other words, according to Paul, we can relax a bit, stop throwing stones at one another and simply be living stones built up into a welcoming, life-giving church. As he says, "Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." (Romans 15:7)

This is the kind of story we see laid out in the 1st-Century Church recital—a potentially welcoming group that had already made great strides simply by virtue of its composition: rich, poor, white-collar, blue-collar, man, woman, prisoner, free, settled, refugee, national and international.

And Paul wants that fledgling welcoming-story to become a lasting harmony-story, so he urges them to continue to live in harmony, so that "together [they] may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 15:6). I like how he cleverly promotes the lasting story of harmony not just through rhetoric, discussing the issues that have been dividing them—Sabbath observance, Festival Days, meat offered to idols—but through the telling of story to promote story.

In chapter 15, verses 25-27, he tells a story of one group folding in another, not casting them aside because they are different, but drawing them in with concrete love and care. Paul says, "... I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints; for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things. "

At the heart of this brief story is a wonderful idea... when we are blessed by others, we can turn and bless them in concrete ways, with both pleasure and a sense of urgent obligation. Gratitude breeds generosity and connection.

Maybe this is the key to a story of harmony. We see in the Other how they've blessed us or the world and instead of casting stones at them for how we differ, we become living stones willing to rub shoulder to shoulder in a holy building project. We become willing to support the weight of another in one season and be supported by their strength in another season.

But how do we see blessing in the "Other" when we feel so different, maybe even righteously superior to the "Other"? I always liked this little "nurturing fondness and admiration" exercise from John Gottman, author of 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work. Once, when I was feeling extremely disconnected from my spouse, I tried it out. The effect felt nothing short of miraculous.

Whereas I began the exercise feeling all sorts of contempt, I finished it feeling a sense of blessing that this man is part of my life. The exercise is fairly simple. From a list of positive adjectives like creative, bold, intelligent, clever, strong, and so on, you choose just three. Then you insert the name of the person in question. In our case we could insert the name of a group, if that applies. (The older generation in my church. Or, the younger generation in my church. Or, the committee member, etc.) Choose the name of the person or group in question. Then choose a positive adjective that describes them. Then give just one concrete example of how you've seen them embody this adjective. You are telling yourself a little story.

One of my little stories sounded like this. "My husband is generous. He offered to help his father clean his study." After I told three little stories like this, I felt so inspired that I told three little stories about each of my children too. It became an exercise in gratitude.

I'm not sure it matters whether or not I took my stone home this past Sunday. It was going back to the rock pile as far as I know. It was not going to stand as a memorial to my children. It was not going to serve as a long-term story starter. It makes me happy just looking at it there on my dryer, in an otherwise dark and dreary basement.

In fact, when I look at that stone, maybe I will use it as an opportunity, the way the clever boy in the story Stone Soup used a rock to eventually cull enough vegetables to warm his belly and his journey. Maybe when I look at my stone, I will remind myself to tell a story or two. Of how someone or some group has blessed me or others. Maybe I will make it a living stone, by letting it inspire living stories. Stories that will help me live in harmony with others, so that, with one welcoming, convincing voice we might glorify God, bringing joy and warmth to a sometimes dark and dreary world.

Prayer
Lord of Unity and Peace, we pray a simple request today, similar to the words of Paul to the Romans, By your will may we come to others with gratitude, that we and they might find "joy and refreshment" in one other's company. And may this joy and refreshment overflow as a gift of peace to the world. In Jesus' name, amen.

© L.L. Barkat 2009. Do not reproduce without permission.