2025-04-07 A Meditation on Equal Under the Law

“5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For 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. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Rom 14:5-12 ESV)

All of us are equal under the law, be it rebellion, refusal to submit, fright about taking the trust fall: we all feel an avalanche of rather simplistic or insufficient thoughts when facing the pressure-cooker, facing the rebuke, facing the accidental (so often) hurt against our person, against what we’ve done or been doing, against what we thought was so logical.

The simplistic thoughts, these are a surface treatment of Christianity: “you mean, I’m denying Christ like Peter did?”; “You mean, I’m a scribe or a Pharisee, like those who beleaguered Christ?”; “You mean, I am the manifestly wayward, bullheaded, son or daughter (the prodigal; the demon-possessed)?”. On some better scale, some retrospective, some real affinity at the marriage banquet, these things come less harsh and less delineated: we are all of us able to laugh as we answer “Yes” to all three charges. Because of a time of mourning that has renewed (come morning: Psalm 30) the “it just fits” Experience. We Experience, the glove that fits, the armor that ascertains, the cap that soothes, the boots that affirm. It is, after all, a point-blank Healthy bullet-wound as to our pride and our self-composure: even as our thoughts veer so simplistic, the healthsome wound puts Paid to our debt, Done to our pride, Emptied to our weak-kneed failure to testify.

We fail to testify, because in the furtive marriage banquet the joy and blessing of a friendly face—for the room is full of dynamics, engagements, huddled masses—alleviates the sense of having failed our people. Having failed our testimony. Having forgotten our job. We mutter and bumble about, but this is not our Place. Our place is a post-dying Decision: that all are wrapped up in sin, all are pleading for some Vacancy, all are after all Old Friends, though seen across the room askance, with glance meets harried stance, how to present ourselves to strangers. And present ourselves… we are after all finding that Gospel Truth, this is the Major Leagues for those we speak with. Grace is abundant. The long-anticipated Celebration is actually taking place! And our field of vision, our horizon, is now admittedly—though formerly it was This, as in, what we’re literally doing now—the next thing. We look forward to something “later” rather than being peace and Engaged Here and Now.

The wound that Dies the self to Sin, was rather stupefying at first, our clever sister or brother in the faith Overcoming all failure to feel one “Belongs” with a gladsome exchange and welcoming email. Only here does the Great Physician Work: to work on that blanket Acceptance that brightens the countenance. And here, the rebuke or the hazardous Intervention, this serves to lance the corpuscle of sin, to make us New Creations; Oh, that we could write a pastoral email to all who might feel left out! But, no, that is done: our brother or sister in the Faith has already made the pleasantry, lit up the joke, calmed the Situation.