Becoming members of All.

Romans in Lent.

Zyanya Citlalli on Unsplash

Lent 1A - Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

It’s hard to imagine a world in which “self-esteem” doesn’t matter. In our culture, it is a sign of mental health or even wisdom to value only our own opinion of ourselves. “Who cares what they think?”

But to someone from an “honor-shame” culture, what they think is all that matters.¹ One’s value as a person, “even in his or her own eyes depends ultimately on recognition from significant others in society.”²

First-century Rome was an “honor-shame” culture. Honor came with wealth, privilege or the right lineage. The emperor, somewhat divine, mediated and dispensed those things. It was honorable to be loyal to the source of one’s privilege, wealth and power. It was shameful not to be.

The background of Paul’s letter to the Romans is that Christ-following communities in the city were at odds with one another. Some communities enjoyed status, privilege and honor. They looked down on those without honor — on Christ-followers who survived at the bottom of Rome’s social structure, the poor or powerless or enslaved.³

We don’t live in an “honor-shame” culture, but we can still be tempted to put our trust in or direct our loyalty toward any number of things that promise to confer honor or privilege. Things that seem to make us different, better or more secure: skin color, gender, wealth, nationality.

Paul wrote to all of the Christ-followers in Rome. He did not side with those who enjoyed honor, or with those who were poor. He did not side with Jew or Gentile. He said that all had fallen and become subject to sin and the powers of death. All.

As members of “all” we are not as different from one another as we might want to think. Or as much as we might fear. Becoming members of “all” opens to us the possibility of a life more meaningful and abundant in the things that are of God, surpassing any honor that an emperor, or our skin color, gender or wealth might confer.

Peace.

1. The “honor-shame” culture is a concept popularized in anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s 1946 book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She explained that “honor-shame” and “guilt-fear” cultures understood the world, personhood and moral duty very differently. A member of one culture would find the behavior of someone from the other culture strange and even incomprehensible. New Testament scholars (e.g. N.T. Wright, Robert Jewett) describe 1^st century Rome as an “honor-shame” culture. Very different from ours. Reading New Testament texts as products of that culture can change or nuance how we understand them. Good news for those not entirely comfortable with some traditional understandings of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

2. Moxnes, Halvor. Honor and Shame. Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology. 23. (1993) 167-176.

3. Another source of discord among Christ-following communities was that some were primarily Jewish and Law-observant while most were predominantly Gentile. They questioned each other’s legitimacy.