Friday, May 15, 2009

Conflicting Consciences

Friday, May 15, 2009 -- Week of 5 Easter, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 962)
Psalms 106:1-18 (morning) 106:19-48 (evening)
Wisdom* 16:15 - 17:1
Romans 14:13-23
Luke 8:40-56 *found in the Apocrypha

At the heart of Paul's gospel is his experience of liberation. He was freed from a kind of performance anxiety that came from scrupulosity. He had tried to follow the religious law with such thorough attentiveness that he could know himself to be right with God. If I follow all of the laws and do everything right, I'll be okay. Only, he never felt okay; he could never be sure. He just felt anxious. Am I doing everything right? I don't know. How can I be sure?

Paul was liberated by the realization that God gives him that right relationship as a gift. All he had to do was accept the gift -- justification by faith through grace. Accept the fact that God accepts you. Relax. You are accepted. You are loved. Live confidently, with loving energy, instead of anxiously, worrying about earning your acceptance.

So Paul was free. Free from so many things that had bothered his conscience earlier. He quit worrying about eating kosher. All food is just food. What about meat that has been dedicated to Apollo in the public marketplace? Doesn't matter. I don't believe in Apollo.

But within the community of the church were others who weren't so free. Their conscience and their scruples were injured by some of the old beliefs. They worried about eating meat dedicated to Apollo. They felt it compromised their faith, or implied their participation in idolatry, or somehow defiled them.

Be gentle with them, Paul advised. I can limit my personal freedom out of respect for their tender consciences. When I am at table with those bothered by such things, I can refrain from eating the marketplace meat so I don't offend them. Tomorrow I'll be back home with family. We'll enjoy an Apollo-burger. Won't bother us.

It is a generous attitude, and one that Paul consistently advises for his congregations that included people who came into community from so many different lifestyles. There were Jewish Christians who still treasured so many of the values they had grown up with -- kosher foods, circumcision, rituals, sabbath and the calendar of holy days, purity laws. There were Gentile Christians who grew up in the Hellenized Roman world with very different perspectives. How do we all get along? Paul advised them to go the extra mile not to offend the other's conscience, even if that means limiting your own liberty from time to time.

But he drew a line: You may continue to engage in your meaningless, scrupulous practices, but don't you dare require them of others. Don't shackle the freedom of others with your scruples. We see that line in the circumcision debate. Circumcision gives you no status, and you will not require it of others. I'll watch myself when I am with you, and I will voluntarily avoid offending your sense of purity, but you may not impose your purity code on me and on your other brothers and sisters.

We see Jesus facing some similar tensions between doing something that is life-giving and violating the scruples of purity codes. In today's story Jesus participates in two events of ritual defilement. He consents to the touch of a woman with a hemorrhage so that she may be healed. He takes a apparent corpse by the hand so that the child may be raised. Jewish sensibilities were shocked. A person with a discharge is unclean. A corpse is unclean. Do not touch. The rule was, if you think it might be a corpse, do not touch. But for the sake of life, abundant life, Jesus violates the rules.

The church is trying to figure out how we can live in community when our members come from many different perspectives and world views. We still have issues of conscience and purity at the forefront of our controversies.

How can those of us who are free limit our freedom so as not to offend the conscience of those who are more scrupulous? When do we need to act for the sake of abundant life regardless of the shocked sensibilities of others? Those old questions become new over and over again in every generation.

Lowell
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About Morning Reflections
Morning Reflections is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.


Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

Visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life
We aspire to...
worship weekly
pray daily
learn constantly
serve joyfully
live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

10 Comments:

At 1:19 PM, Blogger Pearl said...

Wow. Beautiful magnified frash explanation of scripture. Thanks.
Pearl

 
At 3:47 PM, Blogger HumbleHumanity said...

Jesus "violated the rules" with the purpose of healing the infirmity. His touch was a touch of healing, not of I accept you as a "discharging" or dead person. If you are insinuating that we embrace homosexuals, then our intent should be the same as Christ's intent. Healing.

 
At 8:02 PM, Blogger George said...

Lowell,
I was facing a busy day today with 3 meetings - got to work early but for some reason decided to take the time to read your Morning Reflection and was so glad I did. I didn't know it, but I was dealing with "performance anxiety," although on a much lesser scale than Paul. Your comment helped calm me down, even though I had a flat tire on the interstate my way to my first meeting. Thank you.
George

 
At 7:56 AM, Blogger Lowell said...

Thanks for the comments Pearl, HumbleHumanity and George.

Those of us who accept gay people and recognize their loving commitments have discovered that acceptance to be wonderfully healing -- for those we have oppressed with our scruples and for the suffering and pain that our community has suffered from hurtful divisions.

In fact, the experience of healing and reunion is much like what the Pauline community experienced when the Christians of the circumcision party ceased insisting that their Greek brothers be circumcised. They discovered comparable grace and holiness among those whom they thought to be unclean.

Lowell

 
At 1:14 PM, Blogger HumbleHumanity said...

Jesus wouldn't accept the rich man unless he gave up his riches.

I don't think the woman or dead person came to Jesus to "feel good" about their ailment. They came to have to it fixed.

Who is oppressed?

 
At 9:29 PM, Blogger Lowell said...

Very often gay people are oppressed by the false guilt they receive from their churches. I visited today with a man who went through three different ex-gay ministries to try to repress the sexual orientation that God gave him. He finally nearly killed himself with alcohol and drugs, trying to deaden what he had been told was sinful, shameful, and condemned.

Thanks to AA he is beginning to find sobriety and liberation, and he is learning about a God of love and about how to live responsibly and wholesomely. He is experiencing healing and the damaging symptomatic behaviors -- alcohol, promiscuity -- are losing their power.

Sexual orientation is not a disease, a sin, or a distortion. I know so many mature, holy gay people whose lives manifest the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things." (Gal. 5:22-23)

Lowell

 
At 8:50 AM, Blogger HumbleHumanity said...

How sad.

Gal. 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

Even if your interpretation of Gal. 5:22-23 were a pass, 5:19 clearly states that fornication (unmarried sex) is works of the flesh.

You are now endorsing sin. Marriage is between a man and a woman in Arkansas.

 
At 7:42 AM, Blogger Lowell said...

No, I am not endorsing sin.

You might read a letter that a Baptist pastor from Ozark, Arkansas wrote to one of his members when she asked him about her brother. She was worried because her brother was gay. The pastor realized that he had not really studied about homosexuality and had read into the Bible what he presumed it ought to say instead of reading what it did say. He studied, and wrote a helpful piece. Google "Letter to Louise" and you'll find it.

Lowell

 
At 8:31 PM, Blogger HumbleHumanity said...

So you believe that homosexuals are born that way and God created the same sex attraction?

 
At 3:01 PM, Blogger Lowell said...

Have you read "Letter to Louise"?

Google it, read it, and then we can discuss its relative merits.

Lowell

 

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