Romans 14:1-12 page 1

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I trained for the ministry at a Methodist college in an ecumenical federation in Manchester. Those of us who were single and lived in the hall of residence had to eat dinner there seven days a week, but from Monday to Thursday the married students joined us. On any night vegetarians could have a vegetarian meal, but on Monday evenings it was 'Veggie Night' and everyone had to eat a meat-free meal. This was not popular among some of the more militant carnivores. Famously it was immortalised in a song during a Christmas concert with the line, 'The bottom fell out of my world and the world fell out of my bottom'.

Every year in May we also held a Christian Aid auction. All sorts of things would be put up for auction. A student who was a biker would sell rides on his rather expensive motorbike. The college laundry room would be raided on a certain day and all clothes not claimed before the set time would be auctioned - a particular embarrassment for a friend of mine who still had name tags in his clothes like a schoolboy.

But one year the kitchen staff put up a very special item for auction: roast beef with all the trimmings for one person only on Veggie Night. The bidding was fierce, especially between two friends of mine called David and Stuart. I remember the winner openly gloating as his feast was publicly served to him the following Monday evening.

All of which brings me round to Romans 14:2:

Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.

The disagreements among Christians in first century Rome between the meat-eaters and the vegetarians were not about diet or animal rights as they might be today, but about whether you could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. Nevertheless, they were Christians who were one in Christ and yet who passionately disagreed with one another.

It wasn't the only argument they had, going by this chapter. In verse 5 we hear Paul observe that

Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.

Maybe that's a bit like the differences between Christians who observe saints' days, feast days and a liturgical calendar, and others who don't find that helpful. Jane told me that today apparently is Holy Cross Day. I had to look that up on the Internet to have the foggiest idea what it was, but for others of you it has a deep and special meaning in your faith.

And so these themes in Romans 14 (which is the Epistle for today in the Revised Common Lectionary) are quite relevant ones as I begin to share in the spiritual journey of St Augustine's today. I have a very different approach to the Christian faith from Ken Nicholls, and indeed from Jane, and perhaps from several of you, too. You may be quite liberal and high church in your faith: I am fairly conservative (though not a fundamentalist) and in the words of one friend I am 'not so much low church, more like subterranean'!

So I thought we could use this passage this morning to set out the attitudes we can take in order that we may not simply hold together our unity in diversity, but more than that, flourish together. I observe two important attitudes of heart and mind that the Apostle Paul brings before our attention here.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.