Mabel Williamson was a missionary to China in the middle of the 20th century. She wrote a book called Have We No Rights, in which she introduced the Chinese idiom of “eating loss.” She wrote of a missionary speaking:
‘You know,’ he began, ‘there’s a great deal of difference between eating bitterness (a Chinese idiom for “suffering hardship”), and eating loss (a Chinese idiom for “suffering the infringement of one’s rights”). Eating bitterness is easy enough. To go out with the preaching band, walk twenty or thirty miles to the place where you are to work, help set up the tent, placard the town with posters, and spend several weeks in a strenuous campaign of meetings and visitation—why, that’s a thrill! Your bed may be made of a couple of planks laid on saw-horses, and you may have to eat boiled rice, greens, and bean-curd three times a day. But that’s just the beauty of it! Why, it’s good for anyone to go back to the simple life! A little healthy “bitterness” is good for anybody!
‘When I came to China,’ he continued, ‘I was all ready to eat bitterness and like it. It takes a little while to get your palate and your digestion used to Chinese food, of course, but that was no harder than I had expected. Another thing, however’—and he paused significantly—‘another thing that I had never thought about came up to make trouble. I had to eat loss! I found that I couldn’t stand up for my rights—that I couldn’t even have any rights. I found that I had to give them up, every one, and that was the hardest thing of all.’
We see a bit of that concept here in the story of Jesus and the tax collectors. Jesus asks us how we respond to the world around us, and shows us how we are to follow Him in that response.
The most immediate takeaway is that we are adopted as children of God. He sets this up with the promise of His death and resurrection, but then it is followed up with this confrontation with the temple tax collectors. Most likely spurred by the pharisees, saduccees or other part brokers, they confront Peter about whether Jesus pays the temple tax. Peter immediately answers yes, but then apparently needs to confirm it with Jesus.
Jesus’ response clearly shows his own self awareness – he is greater than the temple. He is free, and those he has adopted are also free, as Paul writes about so eloquently in Romans.
Note that Jesus uses the term “sons” here, not to exclude women but to illustrate that we are together not only in the family but recipients of the inheritance. All the privileges of sonship are ours. We sometimes don’t properly recognize this – we call Christ the king but often do not reflect on what that means to our own identities. We are children of the king! We are not an embattled minority in the verge of being wiped out.
However, we are also not an entitled majority living a life of ease. We are a royal family with a mission to accomplish, and that is what Jesus explains to Peter here.
We have privileges, but those privileges are to be put aside when they conflict with our mission. Jesus does not want to give offense or become a stumbling block, even to the leaders of the temple who seek to kill him.
We, as Americans, as Christians and in many other ways, have myriad privileges. But we have all eternity to enjoy our privileges – we only have the now for our mission. Anything that creates a offense – a stumbling block or a scandal – must go when it comes up against our mission.
We live in a country built on self-determination and autonomy. We have rights, and Jesus does not can us to despise those rights. He calls us to put them aside for the sake of his kingdom. When we value our rights more than righteousness, we are on the wrong road. When we are more concerned with our liberties than with love, we are not following Christ. When we are more concerned with equality than with evangelism, we have lost the plot.
Paul writes to the Corinthians:
“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor… So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 31-33
We have a commission – a great one. Anything that creates a stumbling block must go. We are too quick to blow off accusations that the church is full of hypocrites – if that is creating a barrier to someone knowing Christ then we must take it very seriously.
Our tone matters, too. Jesus was never defensive, because he was confident in the truth. Sometimes we believe that the strength of our convictions is proven by the intensity of our communication. Instead, we demonstrate it by our ease of response.
Our mission is to reach the world for Jesus, and anything that gets in the way of that needs to go. Even if it is good, even if it is our right. There are things more important in life than our rights and privileges.
– Sermon Notes, Jeff Sickles, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, October 17, 2021
