Accept One Another Romans 15__4-13 Advent2
Sun, Dec 9, 2007 Second Sunday in Advent(A) : Isaiah 11:1-10, Rom 15:4-13, Matt 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1-7
Invocation: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In verse Romans 15, verse 7 St. Paul wrote:
"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you."
These words, "accept one another" are exactly the words we need to hear. We need to hear these because we all come short of knowing how to accept the people God made in his own image.
Thankfully, we all know the acceptance of our Lord Jesus Christ. In these words from St. Paul we are assured, beyond any doubt, of Christ’s loving acceptance when he tells us to "accept one another just as Christ accepted you."
There is no question that Christ accepts each and every one of us, not because of who we are, but because of who he has made us to be in Holy Baptism: his holy people. There is no doubt that Christ has worked heavenly acceptance for us by shedding his blood on our behalf on the cross of Calvary. There is no doubt, that he has washed us in his blood and claimed us as his own in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Knowing we have been accepted in love and grace by our Lord Jesus Christ, today we are faced with the challenge of accepting one another.
Paul said, "Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you." Accept one another. He doesn’t ask us to change each other. God doesn’t ask us to ignore each other. There is no heavenly call to avoid one another or divide ourselves up into cliques or groups or factions. Certainly, God does not call on us to betray, belittle, and slander one another, and thereby reveal our hatred or distaste for other people of God.
And yet we do all these things. We break every law in the second table of the the ten commandments and we do not love one another as we love ourselves. How serious is this sin?
At this time, unlike the middle of the 19th century there is no large scale conflict among Americans. North and south no longer engage in a civil war. We know, after another year of banal war of words between the political parties, there will be relative peace even in the political arena.
Lucky for us since we are a small communion, the Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and the Orthodox are not beating down our doors or threatening us with guns. And for that we can all be thankful.
But there are divisions among Christians and they are serious even if there is no blood letting.
Someone looks a little different, or sounds different, and we just don’t talk to them. Someone makes you uncomfortable because you’ve had a confrontation with them in the past, well, we won’t be sitting on the same side of church they sit on, or sitting in the same church.
As you look through church ads, nearly every church trumpets the idea that they are "friendly" and describe themselves as a family. The Christian family, if a family at all, is dysfunctional. I can remember a decade or two when I thought it possible there would be reunion among Christians. Now I’m nearly in despair at my efforts to bring people in the Anglican tradition together.
The basic definition of sin is separation: separation from God and from the neighbor created in God’s image.
This sin, if left unchecked and unrepented, will lead us all to estrangement from God. That’s how serious this sin is. Every day the media news gives us graphic lessons in how separation, rejection, suspicion hatred erupts into open warfare and destruction. We feel smug when we see those things and think, "Thank God we are not like the Iraquis or the Afghanis. Thank God we are not like the Muslim partisans."
Yet, we don’t take baptism seriously. We congratulate ourselves for being baptized, think ourselves to be enlightened and charitable, but give scant credence to the baptism of others.
Every church suffers from this malady. It’s the same throughout all Christendom; we are a divided family, a divided congregation. We are a church divided by sin.
These sinful divisions keep us from accepting one another, and that’s exactly the way the devil wants it. He thinks, "If I can just get them to divide up into groups, my job is done. If I can tear them apart from one another, eventually they will bicker and fight and in the end they’ll devour themselves."
Unfortunately, this is how it has always been. That is why we have progressed from a simple baptismal creed that said, "Jesus Christ is the Son of God" to the dozens of long creeds and confessions the various factions in christendom have manufactured.
In Jesus’ time, among the people of God, there were Pharisees and Sadducees, competing with each other, instead of accepting one another for the sake of Christ. During the days of the infant church, there were all kinds of faction: Judaizers who would keep us under the yoke of the Law; antinomians who would obliterate the Law of God and advocate sinning all the more so that grace would abound; and then there were the true believers at odds with one another, just as there are now.
In the church at Galatia, just one generation after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christians fought with one another to such an extent that St. Paul wrote these words to them:
[Galatians 5:14-15] The entire law is summed up in a single command. "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting one another and devouring one another, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
This was the case in the Roman Church as well, at least to some degree. Why else would St. Paul write, [Romans 15:7] "Accept one another."?
It’s obvious, that our divisions are sinful. And they must stop, or as St. Paul says, we will indeed devour each other. You may be thinking, "What on earth is he talking about? We all get along. Everything is just fine. There’s no trouble here, is there?"
To get a complete answer to that question, we would have to interview every person who has visited this church in the last quarter century and not returned. We would need to interview every person with who has inquired, but not remained with the family. I suspect we would not like to hear the answers.
But beyond those who have visited a while and left, there are others who come in contact with us individually.
What must the people around us think when we act as if we don’t have time for them, are uninterested in them. If a person, whom we have snubbed, ignored or turned our backs on knows that we are Christian, how could they help but think, "If God’s people can’t accept me, how can God?"
We may think that we are not evangelists, that only the seminary trained, or the ordained clergy are qualified to tell the good news.
That is not how the Gospels unfold the growth of the Church. Just after his baptism, Jesus was making his way through Samaria and he met a woman at the Well of Samaria. She, like other daughters of Israel, expected Messiah to come and Areveal all things.@
She was used to being discriminated against by the Jews, and did not expect Jesus, a Jew, to have a conversation with her. After a period of time, Jesus informed her that she was talking to the Messiah. After being convinced, she returned to her people and told them the Good news. Messiah has come. She had no seminary training, no ordination, not even the witness of a good moral life, yet she was an effective evangelist, touched that a person from a different culture had taken time to talk with her.
A little later, Jesus went to Jerusalem to observe a feast day, and met a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus healed this man. After learning Jesus’ identity, the man went to the Jews and testified to them of his healing. He had no seminary, no indepth knowledge of theology, no ordination, just a testimony of his experience with a person who loved him and helped him.
There is no substitute for this sort of testimony. Our long traditions, our documents and degrees are no substitute for a simple explanation of how lives are changed and improved because God has visited his people.
I grant that it is difficult in this life to maintain self-esteem - to think well enough of oneself to function. We grow fearful of trying new things for fear we will fail. We lack courage. And perhaps that is the reason we don’t do more evangelism.
Just as well as Christ knows the pain and heartache brought about in your brothers and sisters by your refusal to acceptance them, so He is aware of your feelings, having himself been rejected by others.
What was true of the church in Rome and the church in Galatia, sadly is also true of the Church here. It’s true of you and me and all who gather here to hear God’s word and receive his gifts. We simply do not love one another as ourselves. We are weak as a result.
Not only do others feel put off when we aren’t
welcoming, so we also feel badly, unequiped and unable to say "God is good and He has been my helper."
We do not accept each other as Christ has accepted us. And for this sin, God calls us to repentance. The danger is clear. If we do not repent; if we do not reconcile with one another, we will not know the joys of heavenly unity with the Church in all eternity. And if we are not united in our acceptance of one another, how on earth can we give any kind of witness to the world that says Christ has reconciled us with God?
God calls on us now to lay this sin at his feet, to confess our hatred and division, and be reconciled once again with all the people of God. Take a moment, in the privacy of your own heart to examine yourself and reflect on those whom you have sinned against by refusing to wholly accept them as your brother or sister in Christ.
Search your memory of your soul for the faces of those who’ve refused to accept you and have brought you to sinfully harden your heart against them. Go ahead. Time for some soul searching. [Silence] Now, lay that sin at the feet of Jesus. Lay down your sinful refusal to accept ALL God’s people as your brothers and sisters in Christ. Lay down your sin of hardening your heart to those who have hurt you in the past. Look at Jesus and confess your sins. Look to Jesus on the cross, and see the one whom his own people would not accept. Look to Jesus and see the rejected Son of God Most High and see the only one who can forgive our sin. Let us look to Jesus, and be released from the burden of this hateful sin.
Now hear these words of grace and forgiveness from Christ our Lord. Listen to the words he prayed to God our Father in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest,
[St. John 17:11, 20-22] I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name-- the name you gave me-- so that they may be one as we are one.
20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.
Today Jesus, our great high priest, is praying those words, interceding before the Father on our behalf. And because of his sacrifice on the cross; because of his perfect fulfillment of the command to love your neighbor as yourself, we are forgiven. Christ’s blood flowing down from the cross washes us clean from the sinful refusal to accept one another.@
By his Holy Spirit, on behalf of Christ our Lord, God will bring this good work to completion within us, and we will indeed accept one another as true brothers and sisters, as faithful followers of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Because when we accept one another, God is glorified.
In our worship, and in all our lives, we show forth the glory that Christ has given us. Gathered as God’s holy people we proclaim to the world, we are one. We love one another. We accept one another. We have been joined in mystical union with our Lord Jesus Christ and we are one, just as there is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all. We have one Lord, and we are one, no matter what.
. In accepting one another we follow Christ’s example of acceptance for each of us. And we show our acceptance through serving one another, just as Christ did.
[Romans 15:8-12] For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name." Again, it says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." And again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to him, all you peoples." And again, Isaiah says, "The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him."
Christ has accepted us. Christ has forgiven us. And now he leads us by his Holy Spirit to accept one another.
Accept that former friend back into your life. Accept that person whose just weird enough to make you uncomfortable in church. Accept the people who may or may not have a more sinful past than you do. And also be willing to accept the love and service of those who have not accepted you in the past.
Accepting one another means there is no more gossip about anyone. There is no more refusal to speak to one another. No more divisions into small little groups and factions over anything, regardless of what it is. Accepting one another means loving our neighbor as ourselves, and loving them with a servant’s heart, just as Christ loves us.
By God’s grace, and his Holy Spirit, we strive to do so. By accepting one another, we all bring glory to God, and we will bring to an end the divisions that plague our families and our church. Christ himself will do this within us and among us, for he has united us in his body, and has promised not to lose any whom the Father has given him.
At the Festival of the Nativity of Our Lord we saw the glory of God’s acceptance shining forth in the star over Bethlehem. We heard the angels sing of the one who has accepted us into his heavenly home. We saw the glory of the promise of acceptance by our God on High. But our acceptance by God is concomitant with our acceptance of one another.
[Romans 15:7]Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
God grant it for Jesus’ sake. In his name. Amen.
Blessing: The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Charles Scott
Church of the Good Shepherd, Indianapolis
http://www.goodshepherdindy.org
