"Life Together”

                             

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 15: 1-7

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   November 16th, 2014

“A young Rabbi found a serious problem in his congregation.  During the Friday service, half of the congregation stood for the prayers and half remained seated, and each side shouted at the other, insisting that theirs was the true tradition.  Nothing the Rabbi said or did moved toward solving the impasse.  Finally, in desperation, the young rabbi sought out the synagogue’s 99 year-old founder.  He met the old rabbi in the nursing home and poured out his troubles.  “So tell me,” he pleaded, “was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?”  “No,” answered the old rabbi.  “Ah,” responded the younger man, “then it was the tradition to sit during the prayers?”  “No,”answered the old rabbi.  “Well,” the young rabbi responded, “what we have is complete chaos! Half of the people stand and shout, and the other half sit and scream.”   “Ah,” said the old man, “that was the tradition.”¹

CAN WE ACCEPT ONE ANOTHER at church, even when we see things differently?  In his letter to the Roman Church, the apostle Paul raises this 25 thousand dollar question.  In fact, Paul does not pose this as a question, but gives a word of instruction so that church might truly happens. He says: “Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you.”  (Romans 15:7)²  

When Paul first raised this issue, the situation was not all bad.  The church was growing.   Due to Paul’s persistent evangelistic efforts among Gentiles, an influx of outsiders, that is pagans, were coming to church.  Surprisingly, Paul found less resistance among them than among the more traditional Jewish sectors.  This was good news.

Now comes the bad news.  As Gentile converts came into the churches, they certainly brought new opportunities, but they also brought baggage from their own culture as non- Jews.  For one thing, Gentile Christians weren’t raised in the strict Kosher traditions of Judaism.  Gentiles enjoyed pork and other meats and saw nothing insulting about their diets.   Gentile Christians also saw nothing wrong with reinterpreting the 4^th commandment, moving worship from Sabbath to Sunday.  This was much more convenient for their work schedules and it was a good way to commemorate the Resurrection, which took place on Sunday morning.   As innocent as those differences seem to us today, these “strange ways” of the Gentile Christians caused great disruption among early congregations.

I recall in one of my previous pastorates how the church council decided we needed to reach out to people who lived in mobile homes in our area.  Several of our members owned mobile home parks and had sincere concerns for the spiritual condition of their tenants.  Everything went well until I, actually lead one lady to Christ and brought her to church.  To see this woman, sitting in the pew with them, with all of her personal problems and emotional baggage unnerved us.  We saw that she had been converted to Christ, but she was still far from being “one of us”.    Its one thing to talk about winning the world to Christ, but it’s quite another thing when the world actually shows up.   It’s one thing to send missionaries out, but it’s something different when the mission is in your own church community.  Although differences among Christians have changed through the years, the challenge of accepting one another is very much the same.  

This is why Paul’s word to the church is timeless: If you want to be a church that brings a witness to Christ and is not a stumbling block to him, then you must master the logic of accepting each other just like Christ has accepted you.  Paul says that this is the only way God will be glorified (15:7).  It is the only way that we all can join together with “one voice, giving praise and glory to God.” (15:6). 

Of course, THIS IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE, ISN’T IT?  We know what the biblical word is, but we wonder: isn’t there is a limit to what we should and should not accept?  Besides, we live in a day of decaying morals with a downward spiral of human civility.  People seem too accepting and over tolerant.  Aren’t we prone to believe that this kind of permissive attitude got us into our moral mess anyway?   Sometimes religious conservatives warn : “Beware of the slippery slope.”  They capitalized on this logic, telling us that all one has to do is compromise on one point, accept one person we shouldn’t or one proposition we shouldn’t, and we are already sliding off into the bottomless chasm of no return.  Such dramatic, fear-based rhetoric, leads only to an increased climate of suspicion, conflict and division, not reconciliation.  

Of course, being Christian does not mean that since Jesus accepts us we ought to accept anything and everything that is called Christian.  Being Christian does mean that some things are not Christian.  Reinhold Niebuhr, after realizing what tolerance of the Nazis did to Germany, said prophetically: “God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a Kingdom without judgement, through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”   Certainly and especially in our kind of slippery world, the logic of acceptance cannot mean that we are to be accepting of anything and everything.             

Unfortunately, this is as far as many go. We go just far enough to define what we think God can or can’t accept, majoring on what we are against, rather than remembering what we are for.  In this day of moral decline, culture wars, and political polarization, many are wondering if we in the church can offer any help in overcoming our cultural confusion, our human prejudice and our political divisiveness, instead of adding to it.  Do we have a word beyond defining who is right and what is wrong?  What kind of world can we expect when we, even we in the church, find it easier to draw lines between us, rather than draw circles around us?  Would our line-drawn-world really be a more perfect world?    

Naturally, when something threatens us, we defensively focus on what is right about us and what is wrong about others.  That is human nature.  But PAUL CHALLENGES US TO go a step further-- to go to the level of a HIGHER LOGIC of accepting, a logic based not upon human nature, but upon the divine nature revealed in Jesus Christ.  Paul wants us to move to this more personal and more constructive level human relationships.  Let’s quickly review what this means.

First, in Romans 14:1, Paul’s logic of acceptance says, “Accept Christians who are weak in faith, and DON’T ARGUE with them about what they think is right or wrong.”   How many friends are made with arguments?  How many people are won to your position when you prove them wrong and prove yourself correct?  Whether the issue is food, style of worship, day of worship, music, or moral lifestyle, Paul says, that when we underline or accentuate our differences we are doing unnecessary harm to our spiritual fellowship.  

Furthermore, we should be RELUCTANT TO PROVE OURSELVES BETTER than others.  “Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God,” Paul says (14:10).   Here is the ultimate reason not to press every issue within our fellowship: Nothing is finally settled by us, but will only be settled by God at his judgment. What logic is there in condemning or putting down each other when the Bible says, “there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1)?   I once asked my Father why he was such a quiet man; never gossiping or putting down anyone.  He answered: “Son, have you not read that the Bible says we will give an account of every idle word we speak?”  In that moment I wondered what God would say about my stupid question.

The next part of Paul’s logic of acceptance is most profound.  In Romans 14:20 he tells the church: “Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat.”  At the heart of Paul’s logic, we are reminded that when we there are differences of religious “taste” or viewpoints among believers, we must make sure we don’t tear up the main thing we all want by attempting to get rid of the lesser thing that offends some of us now.  Let me ask: how many have ruined a sweater by pulling at single loose thread?  Is fixing that thread worth all the damage it might do, if we pull carelessly.   How many have pulled up a tender plant when attempting pull up a stubborn weed?  “Let the weeds and wheat grow together,” Jesus says.   The Kingdom of God does not come by fixing all the little things, but the Kingdom of God comes as we all work toward the big things that are the same for us all: living the goodness we know, keeping the peace with each other, and living out of the joy of the Spirit (14:17). We must make sure we keep the main thing the main thing, for God’s concern is for the attitude of our faith; not the exactitude of it.  Our aim in explaining our differences should be ‘clarity’ not ‘victory, as Bill Hull has rightly said.

The final word in Paul’s logic of acceptance in found in 15:1,2: “We must be considerate of the doubts and fears of others...We should please others.”   Fellowship doesn’t happen when we live for ourselves.  Consideration of others needs and sensitivities, especially those of the “weaker sibling”, is what finally creates the atmosphere of Christian fellowship.   Who is the weaker sibling?   At some time or other, it will be any of us. This does not mean we will are always able to accommodate the weaker ones around us, but it does mean that we should always try.  At least at church, it is should be the Spirit that counts the most.  

Do you see the implications for us?  Whereas it is natural and needful to point out what we can or can’t accept, Paul’s logic of acceptance urges us to go a step further. He tells us to dwell upon who we should accept because God has accepted us. If we want to glorify God in the church, we will go beyond arguing over what is right or wrong and become a people working together toward acceptance in Christ. 

In a scene from the movie Ironweed, the characters played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep stumble across an old Eskimo woman lying in the snow, probably drunk.  Besotted themselves, the two debate what they should do about her.  “Is she drunk or bum?” asks Nicholson.  “Just a bum.  Been one all her life.”  “And before that?”  “She was a whore in Alaska.”  “She hasn’t been a whore all her life. Before that?”  “I dunno.  Just a kid, I guess.”  “Well, a little kid’s something.  It’s not a bum and it’s not a whore.  It’s something.  Let’s take her in.”³  The two vagrants finally saw this Eskimo as God sees us all: “They are someone. I’ll take them in.”  

Maybe the example’s a bit extreme, but you get the message: “Accept each other, as Jesus Christ accepted you.”   This is how all Christian fellowship begins and ends.  Amen.

_________________________

¹ Barbara Lemmel, in Christian Century Magazine, January 6-13, 1999, p. 15.

² All Biblical quotes from the New Living Translation, (Wheaton Illinois, Tyndale House Publishers, 1996)

³ As told by Philip Yancy in, What’s So Amazing About Grace, (Grand Rapids, Michagin: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997, p. 280.