Proper 19 Year A 9/13/2026
Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 103:1-13; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Our second reading comes from St. Paul’s letter to the church in Rome…
And our lectionary ride through the book of Romans concludes with today’s reading…
Next week the second reading begins to walk through the book of Philippians.
But today, we have Romans chapter 14.
Now the chapters that precede our text (in Romans 14) emphasize love…
In chapter 12, Romans talked about loving our enemies (12.9, 14, 17) …
In chapter 13, Romans emphasized loving our neighbors (13.8) …
And in the present reading, Paul gives practical examples of what it means to walk in love.
Loving our neighbors and loving our enemies sounds like a good idea…
Like a good Christian thing to do…
A Jesus-like thing to do…
But actually doing it…
Actually walking this love out is another ball game.
Paul begins to describe love in this practical way by mentioning two points of debate among Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.
The first is about eating.
The second is about honoring certain feast days.
Both food and holy days were things that brought division among people…
In the form of virtue signaling….
In the form of identification…
Many first century Jewish Christians kept their customary dietary laws…
Gentile Christians felt free to eat different sorts of meat.
Possibly even food that had been sacrificed to a false god in a temple…
Which was then sold to the public.
Jewish Christians felt the need to continue celebrating and honoring traditional Hebrew holy days.
Gentile Christians were not familiar with these days and did not keep the Jewish feast days…
Or even keeping Saturday as a Sabbath day.
All of this brought divisions…
Judgment between the brothers and sisters in Christ…
It brought distinctions between what Paul called people that are weak in faith and those that felt free not to be bound by certain rules regarding food and holy days.
Food and holy days can still bring some consternation in the church…
But not as much as it did in the first century…
But this does beg the question:
At what points in today’s church are we in danger of judging one another because of things that Paul would declare to be indifferent?
Where are we prone to build walls of division on cultural or ethnic lines?[1]
Perhaps we have social barriers that we are unwilling to cross…
Maybe it is racial or cultural stigmas that bring division…
Or maybe we refuse to interact with people because of financial status…
Or political differences that cause us to dislike certain people or declare those people as the enemy.
Some of this is developed through culture, the way we were raised, our media diet and other things in our society…
It also stems from an inflated self…
The idea of autonomy was first developed in Ancient Greece…
But it was made more tangible during the Enlightenment.
And one of the gifts of the Enlightenment is an organized idea of individual autonomy.
Self-law…
Individual Rights…
Things that our nation was founded on.
Eventually though the idea that I am my own person began to be coupled with the understanding that my ideas are just as valid as anyone else’s.
And when this autonomy is coupled with the narcissistic world we live in…
With this inflated sense of self… this super ego…
it becomes the start and finish of our identity…
We begin to understand the world we live in through individualism…
And this individualism surpasses the needs of the community…
Or the church…
Or the family.
To the declaration of I am my own person.
And we are often taught in our culture that self-expression, self-autonomy, and being our own person will make us happy…
Will bring fulfillment…
Satisfaction.
Purpose.
Listen to how St. Paul addresses this question of identity and division as it regards the Christian… the follower of Jesus Christ.
He writes:
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
You see as followers of Jesus…
Baptized in Christ…
We are in union with Christ in his death…
And alive in his resurrection…
We no longer live for ourselves.
The way Scholar James R. Edwards says it here in his commentary is helpful…
He writes:
Our culture may teach that individualism and self-fulfillment are the sole guarantors of happiness, but Paul exults not in who we are,
but in whose we are, for we belong to the Lord. [2]
The famous author from the turn of the early 19th century takes it a step further…
Scottish author and poet George MacDonald wrote in 1889:
The one principle of hell is—’I am my own’
MacDonald defined this “principle of hell” as treating oneself as the alpha and omega, acting as one’s own king and subject,
and measuring greatness by how little one acknowledges debt or obligation to God or others.
Every time I do a funeral in the church I am reminded of this text in Romans 14…
In our Burial liturgy in our Prayer Book (p. 469, 491) it paraphrases these verses.
It is in the opening anthems…
So, at the very beginning of the service honoring the person we are remembering… we hear these words…
The Prayer Book proclaims:
For none of us has life in himself,
and none becomes his own master when he dies.
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord’s possession.
This theme is also picked up in the proper preface during the penitential season of Lent (BCP, 379)…
When we are more intentional about paying attention to our own shortcomings and our spiritual needs…
We hear during the sacrament in the season of Lent:
By his grace we are able to triumph over every evil,
and to live no longer for ourselves alone,
but for him who died for us and rose again.
Paul ties the struggles we have in Christian community…
The walls of division that we build with people that we worship with…
To the false idea that we only live for ourselves.
That I belong to me.
The overarching point in our text is…
As Bishop N. T. Wright puts it:
That there is one Lord,
and it is before him and him alone that every Christian lives and dies, stands or falls. [3]
So where do we go from here?
Where does St. Paul take it?
He takes it through the cross of Jesus…
To the resurrection…
To the eschaton…
At the final judgment of our Lord…
Where we all stand before God… …
A sobering thought.
But it’s here that we find the promise…
It’s here we find the grace of God.
As the Promised One…
The Messiah…
Christ Jesus…
Steps up…
And says that “Our sins are forgiven.”
By his grace we by faith believe in the salvation of Jesus.
And our record…
Our score card…
All the shame…
The guilt…
The sin…
Has been wiped clean.
Because we have been bought with the blood of Christ.
We have been purchased by the sacrifice of our Lord.
And we are covered in his blood.
And it is in that grace that we walk… right now… in the here and now…
Not needing to build walls of division…
Not living in this world as only to ourselves…
But we live to the Lord,
and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord’s.
Let us walk in that grace and promise.
Amen.
[1] Questions come from N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 2 (Louisville: WJK, 2004), 98.
[2] James R. Edwards, Romans, NIBC (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1992), 323.
[3] N. T. Wright, 101.
