Pay It Forward
In Brainerd, Minnesota, at the height of the COVID pandemic, a man came to the drive-through window of a Dairy Queen. He asked to pay for his meal and for the person behind him. As each new car pulled up, over 900 drivers continued the chain, for two days. When people like us do something for us, we often feel obligated to pay it forward.
It is no surprise that Paul saw himself as indebted to Greeks and the wise. In Roman society, the Greeks were cultured, and the wise were the educated. You were part of high society when you treated one another as equals: you owed them favors, and they owed you the same. But the barbarians and fools represented people who were seen as sub-human. Robert Jewett explains, "For the safety of the world and of civilization itself, barbarians had to be subjugated by Rome, which received this appointed task from the gods." Likewise, anyone outside the cultured class was dismissed as a "fool." In both cases, Jewett explains, these groups were seen as "inherently incapable of constructive contributions to the human enterprise." There are people I look down on like that. Sometimes I have a snobbish view of those who didn't graduate from high school. I can judge people whose houses aren't well-maintained, or have offensive lawn decorations. In a sense, these are the 'fools' and 'barbarians' that I look down on. The difference is that I think it's wrong to think about people this way, but in Paul's day, it would seem wrong to care about them at all. Paul was following the teaching of Jesus. When Jesus' disciples fought over who would get the seats of greatest honor in his kingdom, he told them, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:26-28). As Paul Minear explains, "Obligation to him who died [i.e., Christ] produces obligation to those for whom he died." Paul was indebted to proclaim the gospel to his brothers and sisters in Christ. That included any disciple of Jesus, without regard to any other social status. But is that all that we owe each other? By no means! As he tells the Romans in 15:25-29, the Christians in Macedonia and Achaia understood they were indebted to serve their poor brothers and sisters in Christ in Jerusalem. So Paul was bringing their contribution to Jerusalem to meet the needs of the poor before he headed to see them in Rome. The early Christians started a social revolution that continues to ripple through the world today. Instead of feeling loyal only to our own family or clan, we feel a responsibility for 'others' around the world. We not only pay it forward to people who like Dairy Queen blizzards, but we donate to relieve the suffering of people we've never met.
Have you ever experienced a pay-it-forward chain? What was it like?
What kinds of people do you tend to look down on?
Jesus came not to be served but to serve. What has he given to you that you could give to someone else?
Pray, "Jesus, please help me to see my prejudices. Remind me that you gave your life for these people as much as you came to save me. Show me how I can love them as you have loved me. Amen." Then do one small act of kindness to serve someone you normally wouldn't.