Lay Down Your Opinions, a sermon based on Romans 14: 1-12 preached on September 10, 2023

This morning, our first hymn was one we sing often: “How Great Thou Art.” It’s a beautiful hymn. I love to sing it. I love to hear it sung. It’s one that has been sung in this church so often that many know the words without having to look down at their hymnals (or up at the screens). They know it by heart. The line I want to emphasize this morning is in the third stanza: And when I think That God, his Son not sparing, Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in, That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died, to take a way my sin. That’s good news worth singing about. And this good news, that we are not condemned nor are we destined to carry our burdens around for all eternity, is at the very foundation of our faith. We sing of how He takes our heavy burdens upon Himself because this quality of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Gospel, and so the church where I preached in Columbia, Tennessee has a brass plaque on the front steps, declaring, “Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That verse is from the Gospel of Matthew, and it points to whom we know Jesus to be. He is One who not only helps us to bear our heavy burdens, but who takes them away. That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died, to take a way my sin. The Apostle Paul believed all that. In fact, he experienced it personally. This morning, we turn our attention, again, to his letter to the church in Rome. Paul, I remind you, met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Jesus called him by name, changed his life, and made him one of His disciples. The heavy burden of guilt that Paul carried after being complicit in Stephen’s death, Jesus lifts. The heavy burden of perfectionism that he inherited and was enslaved by, he laid down before the God of grace. This morning, remembering the burden that we are invited to lay down, the burden Christ lifted from us, Paul reminds us that for you and me to live in community, we must not only lay down our heavy burdens before the Lord, but sometimes, our opinions as well. In our second Scripture lesson, we read: Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. In our world of division, this is a crucial point that Paul is making. He writes to the church in Rome, which, like the church in the United States of America, was full of conflict. In that ancient Roman church, some wanted to eat meat, others were sure that the righteous were vegetarian. It reminds me of Thanksgiving dinner. Years ago, I remember sitting around the table with the entire family, only Elizabeth had been off to college and had heard about the chicken processing plant. After learning how those hens were treated, she’d sworn off meat, which her grandfather thought was ridiculous. “Did you know that during the Great Depressio, we were lucky to have meat once a week,” he said, as though her choice not to eat meat was downright unpatriotic. Unfortunately, she felt just as offended by his opinion as he was of hers, so this argument became more reason to stay on campus for Christmas rather than return to the battleground that the holiday dinner table or any other assembly of strong, opinioned Christians can turn into. Paul’s point to us this morning is that community sometimes requires us to lay down our opinions. He doesn’t care if you’re right and she’s wrong. If Jesus were as worried as we can be about who’s right and who’s wrong, we’d all be in trouble. At the heart of this religion of ours is the conviction that Jesus must save us. We cannot save ourselves. We are not capable of getting it all right on our own. Why, then, do we get self-righteous about our opinions and convinced that it’s our job to straighten out everyone around us whom we think has it wrong? This morning, I hear the Apostle Paul calling us to lay down not just our burdens. I hear him calling us also to lay down our opinions. One of the greatest speeches I’ve ever heard was delivered in April of 1952 by a young Mississippi legislator named Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr. The state house had been debating prohibition, and the state’s representatives were divided. Any one person could have changed the majority, so when Representative Soggy Sweat stepped to the lectern, everyone was listening as he expressed his opinion. There in April of 1952, he delivered his famous Whiskey Speech, which goes like this: My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey. If when you say "whiskey" you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. But if when you say "whiskey" you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our pitiful aged and infirm, to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise. Now why would a Presbyterian minister in Marietta, Georgia quote this speech to you? It’s because whether the issue is abortion, evolution, creationism, ordination of women, universalism, authority of Scripture, divorce, homosexuality, who gets invited to communion, or what color the poinsettias should be at Christmas time, our world is divided. Sometimes, we are not even of one mind inside our own mind. Therefore, at times, we must lay down our opinions to welcome all. If we cling so tightly to our opinions that our opinions jeopardize our relationships, we may be missing the point of the Gospel. That’s the message I have for you this morning. That’s the message I hear from the Scripture lessons for today. When Almighty God, through the prophet Ezekiel, says: Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people. Say to the Israelites: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live,” I recognize that as a preacher, it’s my job to tell the wicked to turn from their ways. It’s my duty to read this Bible and to speak the truth from it, so hear me say that a great wickedness in our world today is a growing inability to show hospitality to people who think differently. It's as though we think division is OK. Let me tell you something – the Bible says otherwise. Scripture lifts up the theme of showing hospitality again and again and again. More than any other issue that has divided the church and our country, the Bible emphasizes showing hospitality to people we don’t even know, so hear me calling you and me and this entire world to let go of division that you might love your neighbor as yourself. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard was told in an article about Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. In this article, Bishop Robinson talked about a fellow priest named Ron Prinn, who had a serious issue with his denomination naming a gay man as bishop. The two priests worked for several months on a committee, yet Robinson and Prinn were always on opposing sides of every debate. Once the committee’s work came to an end, Bishop Robinson invited the committee to his home for dinner. Prinn answered the invitation with silence. Life continued for the two of them. They interacted at various conferences. Prinn continued to struggle with Bishop Robinson’s identity, yet every chance he got, Bishop Robinson kept inviting Prinn to his home, yet Prinn never accepted the invitation. By the time Prinn finally accepted one of the Bishop’s lunch invitations, Parkinson’s disease had ravaged Prinn’s body. He could no longer walk. Another of the guests ushered Prinn and his wife, Barbara, through the garage, where the Bishop and his husband, Mark, had installed a handicap lift years before. When Prinn rolled his walker into the kitchen, Prinn beheld the Bishop with a bewildered look. Ron Prinn wanted to know who in Bishop Robinson’s family is handicapped. “No one,” the Bishop responded. “Whom did you build that lift for?” Prinn asked. “We built it for you,” the Bishop responded. Friends, we can’t allow division to distract us from love. When you read the paper and see coverage and commentary on all these issues that divide us, when you read about the school board taking sides on which books should be in the school library, and then you read about how at one local elementary school, last year only 37% of 3rd graders were reading at grade level, ask yourself, “How can I love my neighbor better?” By adding fuel to the division? That’s a temptation, but if the kids can’t read, the books in the library don’t matter. Remember that the issues that divide us may be distracting us from the main thing, which Jesus and the Apostle Paul were both clear about. Jesus says it then Paul repeats it in the second Scripture lesson I was supposed to preach on: The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the main thing. The main thing is love. Remember that when the burden to get things right gets so heavy. At the end of my days, I want to hear the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and I know you want to hear the same thing. The day is coming. The Apostle Paul is clear about that, saying: We will stand before the judgment seat of God. In preparation for that day, the Apostle asks: Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or why do you despise your brother or sister? For the whole law is summed up in this one thing: Have you loved your neighbor as yourself? There are many ways to be a Christian, so don’t get so tied up in your opinions that you fail to be a Christian. I’ve told you before that I love to sing. I love hymns. I really do. I love the obscure ones, and I love the hymns we sing all the time. I really love the ones Mrs. Vivian Stephens taught us in Sunday school years ago. Way back, when I was 8 or 9 years old, we’d always sing this one hymn that has forever informed my faith. It was written in the 1960’s by a Romans Catholic priest who served on the South Side of Chicago. We’re going to sing it at the end of the service, but I want to quote just a portion of it for you now. It goes like this: We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity may one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Do you know that one? It’s easy to sing, but in our world of division, where one side makes the other out to be a little more evil every news cycle, it’s a hard song to live. In humility, lay down your opinions that you might bear one another’s burdens, and so live the faith of the One who bore our burdens, who bled and died to take away our sin. Amen.