When we read Paul’s letters (along with the rest of the New Testament) while keeping in mind that the Gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God was being preached in a world that was shaped by glaring and pronounced social divisions (and we are by no means reducing the message of the Gospel to merely a social gospel), in which the lines of demarcation (ethnic, religious, economic, etc…) between peoples were carefully drawn and tacitly enforced, we are not surprised to find Paul hitting on this problematic theme of divisiveness in the church on more than one occasion.
Chances are, however, because most of us that find ourselves in the western world are so far removed from a societal context that would allow us to easily recognize this (which means that many of us are terribly handicapped, with this made even more problematic because we believe ourselves to be in a position of superiority in Scripture interpretation), we have read over Paul’s treatment of similar situations without ever considering the world into which it was delivered. Just like we have so often done with the Corinthian letter, we have heard Paul’s words in the context of the cultivation of an individual spirituality and focused pursuit of personal holiness that will result in our achieving heaven (and avoiding hell) at our deaths rather than hearing Paul in the context of our responsibility to cause God’s will to be done on earth.
In fact, if we can find ourselves believing that the problem that Paul is addressing in Corinth is not exactly an uncommon problem in the early church (and let us not forget that Paul addresses and has dealings with the church at Laodicea as well), then we will also find ourselves hearing echoes of the words to the Corinthians in other letters by Paul. Unsurprisingly then (and without concern for chronological order, as Romans most likely followed the first letter to the Corinthians), we can turn to the letter that is often looked to as Paul’s crowning achievement and hear words that our evocative of the words to Corinth that we have been dissecting.
Turning to chapter twelve of Romans, we can easily imagine ourselves at a table that is replete with Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, grappling with the same types of issues with which the Corinthian church struggled, though apparently not at the same disastrous level. There, we hear Paul saying “Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2a). A meal table at which distinctions were evident and celebrated would be a conformity to the world, whereas the kingdom of God demands a transformation. Are we over-extending ourselves in a reach for a suitable analogy by attempting to view chapter twelve of Romans through this lens and from a position at the meal table? Not at all! We simply consider what follows from within the web of meal table, messianic banquet, powerful societal force, and symposium shaped understanding that we have been spinning for ourselves. When we do so, we venture forth into an enlightening world of comprehension, with fresh attunement to the new norm of the hierarchy-flattening world of the kingdom of God, as we hear Paul saying “For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober discernment, as God has distributed to each of you a measure of faith” (12:3). With these words, the issues at hand in Corinth, pre-eminently revealed at the church’s meal table, though apparently not quite as severe (for they were not in need of a stern correction), ring through quite loudly.
With words strikingly similar to that which we have already encountered, Paul continues, saying “For just as in one body we have many members, and not all the members serve the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another” (12:4-5). Certainly, Paul’s insistence that there is “one body” calls attention to the possibility of divisive forces, while the use of “members who belong to one another” indicates a radical and unheard of notion of self-sacrifice for the well-being of another, apart from any consideration of their social standing or any personal benefit to be derived from such sacrifice, which would have been a radical and possibly disturbing notion in that day. Because of the profundity of the meal table, and its significance for social location, a meal table at which all share equally, without regard for standing outside the church, would serve as a strong reinforcement of such radical and world-changing ideas.
In a repetition of that which Paul had communicated to Corinth, which, again, leads us to believe that, at the very least, the meal table carried a tremendous amount of importance in the early church, Paul continues, writing “And we have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If this gift is prophecy, that individual must use it in proportion to his faith. If it is service, he must serve; if it is teaching, he must teach; if it is exhortation, he must exhort; if it is contributing, he must do so with sincerity; if it is leadership, he must do so with diligence; if it is showing mercy, he must do so with cheerfulness” (12:6-8).
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