Saturday, August 13 - Romans 15:1-13

Paul reframes the advice of mutual accommodation in matters of piety and practice with the rhetoric of ‘we who are strong’ should not just please ourselves, at the expense of others who are weak. That might be condescending toward those others – yet effective.

How much diversity of practice and piety can we accommodate in any community? How much slack can we cut each other to be a United church, without becoming an ‘Untied’ church? Ours is surely a denomination that pushes a lot toward permissiveness.

Perhaps the argument always has to end, as it began, with doxology, echoing the hymns of the ancients, to remind us of unity and diversity in the context of something that’s older and better than any of us, and promises much more than it delivers.