Abstract
Most of us have a ritual for bringing a dried-out pen back to life. Having picked up a pen and tried to use it, only to find that the ink has run dry, we might shake it, tap it on the desk, or begin trying to write with it, hoping that the ink will flow. My own preferred method is to shake the pen and then to start making circles on some scrap paper, whipping the pen around and around in loops until something breaks loose and the inkless coiled indentations on the page turn into circles drawn by the ink of the pen. In his letters, Paul does something similar. If he doesn’t quite know how to say something, he will sometimes take a few runs at it, returning to the same idea several times in a row, circling back again until he has found the right way to put it. This iterative way of writing is visible in many of Paul’s writings, and in this passage from Romans 15, we can see it in action.
Although the Revised Common Lectionary groups Rom 15:4–6 with 15:7–13, many scholars and modern translations view these passages as belonging to separate sections. (The benediction in 15:5–6 is a giveaway that Paul is concluding a section and about to begin a new one). This passage, then, contains the end of one section—one loop of Paul’s thought—and then begins the section or loop that comes after it. In these two sections Paul is really taking two shots at the same idea, trying to get the ink flowing. He’s working on an idea that has dominated the letter to the Romans up to that point, an idea that is familiar to readers of other Pauline letters like 1 Corinthians and Galatians: the problem of togetherness across difference. While Paul wrote Romans to congregations he did not found and had not visited, he seems to have known some things about those groups of Jesus-followers in Rome. Whether he had heard about them through the grapevine or through the firsthand testimony of someone like Phoebe (16:1), Paul seems to have known that there were serious tensions between Jewish and gentile followers of Jesus within Roman congregations, and that his own identity and position as a Jewish apostle to the gentiles made him a controversial but potentially helpful figure within those tensions. He also might have understood that being clear about his own stances would be crucial to securing support from the Roman Jesus-followers for his planned mission to Spain (15:28–29).
Notice how the four scriptural citations in 15:9–12 (drawn from Psalm 18, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 117, and Isaiah 11) all relate to the same idea: proclamation to the gentiles (ethnē, or peoples or nations, in Greek) and the promise of inclusion of gentiles within the purview of the God of Israel. Paul is not arguing for an erasure or Israel or a gentile supersession over Jews as God’s people, as so many Christian interpreters have erroneously concluded. Instead, he is arguing that the tensions between Jews and gentiles in Roman communities of Jesus-followers should be understood within a long history of Israel’s outreach to and inclusion of gentiles, and he is suggesting to both Jews and gentiles that they should accommodate each other for the sake of unity. Notice the use of “with one voice” in 15:6 (literally “in one mouth” in Greek) paired with the “harmony” of 15:5; Paul is asking both Jews and gentiles in Rome to testify to God’s glory in harmony, as if they were speaking from the same mouth. In Romans 15 Paul is seeking togetherness across difference.
Much recent scholarship on Paul has recognized that this is one of the central concerns of Paul’s ministry and of his writings. As a Jewish apostle of a Jewish messiah who understood himself to have been sent by the God of Israel to gentiles, Paul often found himself negotiating the terms on which difference was managed. It is not only in the book of Romans that Paul returns to this problem, as if he were trying to revive a dried-out pen; most of Paul’s writings in the New Testament are loops around this problem in one way or another. It seems to have been the central struggle of Paul’s pastoral work: to reconcile gentiles and Jews to each other and to point them both toward a common purpose.
The past couple of generations of scholarship on Paul have produced enormous shifts in our understandings of Paul’s writings. For centuries, Martin Luther’s interpretation of Paul as concerned with individual salvation and the problem of sin has dominated readings of Paul, especially in Protestant circles. But in the late twentieth century and the first part of the twenty-first century, scholars have become increasingly aware to what extent Paul’s writings are centered on his own identity and experiences within Judaism and on his communities’ self-understanding as gentiles within the story of Israel. There was a time when these verses from Romans might have been passed over for sections that fit more easily in Luther’s interpretations, or when they might have been seen as part of the story of an individual person’s reconciliation with God. But these new perspectives on Paul open exciting new possibilities for interpretation and proclamation, especially as modern communities grapple with how to be together across difference. Protestant Christians have been slow to let go of the idea that Paul’s writings are all about the salvation of individuals and atonement theology, but reading Paul with these new perspectives can equip Christian proclamation to speak poignantly to the needs of the world in our own time.
The late New Testament scholar Robert Jewett saw table fellowship at the heart of many of Paul’s writings. The agape meals—often rendered “love feasts” in English—were a common fixture in early Christianity, and Jewett sees them in the background of this passage from Romans 15. 1 If common meals were one of the main places where the communities of Jesus-followers gathered, and if there were conflicts (including conflicts between Jews and gentiles) in those communities, then it makes sense that those conflicts would have played out during those meals. Indeed, Paul had just finished a lengthy discussion of different approaches to food in Romans 14, so his words in Romans 15 follow naturally: Paul is calling for a harmonious and unified expression of community at the love feasts, despite the differences of opinion that surrounded them. Paul wasn’t just living in the abstract here, and he wasn’t just thinking about differences of opinion. He was forcefully arguing that followers of Jesus should sit down to table with each other, even and especially when they disagree. Paul was insisting that the God of Israel had made room enough for community to flourish at the tables of the Roman congregations. In those days, it was common for shared fellowship to be conditioned on class, wealth, ethnicity, power, and status, with people sorting themselves accordingly into camps and rarely crossing over into any other spaces, especially at meals. Paul was arguing for something transgressive and brave: people who did not appear to belong together could be in community together anyway. The amount of ink that Paul spilled on food and meals (see 1 Cor 11:17–34, for example) shows us how important he thought it was for his communities to get that moment of shared fellowship right.
This is a hopeful word for our own time, both inside and outside of Christian communities. It may be comforting to hear that we are not the first ones to experience deep divisions and estrangement from our neighbors, and that there are ways to overcome our suspicions about each other and remain in community across difference. Not that this is easy—the fact that Paul was writing about it in Romans suggests that the Roman Jesus-followers were not very good at it, and subsequent history (including the history of gentile Christian anti-Judaism) tells us that Christians have not heeded Paul’s message of unity. But I suspect that if Paul could speak now, he would tell us that there is still time, and that it’s never too late to sit down together despite the ways we are supposed to stay apart, to make another loop of the pen. He might encourage us to accept each other for what we are, set the table for the ones we think we should exclude, and speak with one mouth about the God who has been calling us together. It is remarkable that this short passage from Romans has not lost its challenging edge, even twenty centuries later. We still find it hard to be in community across difference and across the many wounds that we have inflicted on each other. Paul’s transgressive and brave proclamation to the Romans can be a transgressive and brave proclamation to us as well, if we are willing to speak it and hear it: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
