After making an urgent appeal to love at the end of chapter 13, Paul begins chapter 14 with a deceptively simple command: “Welcome those who are weak in faith”—and welcome them “not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions.”
For Paul, welcome is not a strategy for correcting people. It is not hospitality offered on the condition that others eventually become more like us. Yet, if we are truthful, much Christian welcome remains conditional: you are welcome if you worship in the proper way, use the right language, interpret Scripture as we do, or conform to our customs.
The differences within the church in Rome were not trivial to those involved. Some ate only vegetables, perhaps to avoid meat they considered religiously unacceptable; others ate everything. Some regarded particular days as holy; others regarded all days alike. Many scholars see here tensions between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus – people whose different histories had shaped different understandings of faithful discipleship.
Paul does not resolve the conflict by deciding which group is the “real” church. Nor does he demand uniformity. Instead, he relocates the centre of the community: “Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” Their unity does not depend upon agreement about every practice. It rests in their shared belonging to Christ – and in Christ’s welcome of them all.
This offers a profoundly ecumenical vision. Christian unity is not achieved by erasing the histories, convictions and gifts of our different traditions. Nor does it require us to pretend that our differences are unimportant. It asks whether we can hold our convictions without despising those who differ, and receive one another without appointing ourselves as judges.
Paul’s counsel does not mean that every disagreement is merely a matter of personal opinion. Questions of injustice, exclusion and harm cannot be dismissed as differences in taste. Indeed, later in the chapter Paul places particular responsibility upon those who consider themselves strong: freedom must be governed by love, and love refuses to become a stumbling block to another.
Perhaps the invitation for the ecumenical church today is not simply to welcome one another into our buildings, meetings or worship services, but to welcome one another’s lives: our stories, wounds, wisdom, practices and encounters with God. In such welcome, we may discover that the tradition different from our own is not a threat to the body of Christ, but a gift within it.
We do not create Christian unity. Christ has already received us and made us one. Unity is not something we manufacture through uniformity, but something we learn to inhabit because Christ has already welcomed us. Our calling is to live as though that were true: not demanding sameness, not passing judgement, but making room for one another at the table of grace.
Prayer for Our Life Together
Welcoming God,
you have received us in Christ –
not because we have found the correct words,
observed the same traditions,
or reached agreement on every question,
but because your grace has made room for us.
Forgive us when our welcome has carried conditions;
when we have mistaken our customs for your commandments,
our convictions for the whole of truth,
and our way of worshipping for the only faithful way.
Free us from the desire to judge
those whom you have already welcomed.
Give us humility in our convictions,
patience in our differences,
and generosity towards traditions not our own.
Teach us to bear one another’s burdens,
to use our freedom with love,
and to seek not uniformity,
but communion centred in Christ.
Gather your diverse Church
around the table of grace,
where no tradition possesses the whole feast
and every guest is received as your beloved.
Make visible among us
the unity you have already given:
a unity spacious enough for difference,
strong enough for honest conversation,
and loving enough to honour the conscience of another.
For we do not live to ourselves,
and we do not die to ourselves.
In life and in death,
in agreement and in difference,
we belong to Christ.
May our common life bear witness
to the welcome we have received
and the reconciling love
you intend for all the world.
Amen.