Isn’t it astounding, the power of the group? Isn’t it amazing that an otherwise normal, there, healthy, together person can be in a group and feel so wrong? Have you ever been in a group that was sending out such negative vibes that you just wanted to get out of there? Somehow you even felt ashamed to be there?
In May I went to Detroit for a conference. The opening session was to be a banquet. When I arrived in the room, there were a number of other people standing around in small groups, and a few already seated at tables. Naturally, I looked around to find a familiar face, but saw no one that I knew. I waited; I looked for some cue as to what to do. But nothing. Everybody in the room seemed to have a friend or a place to be but me.
Now when you are essentially a very shy person, as I am, you use tricks to get you through. The printed program suddenly became very absorbing, a good place to bury my face. The view from one of the windows became most fascinating. A little later there was suddenly a need to go wash my hands again. I’m saying that when you feel very alone, you find ways to pretend to be busy.
But then I thought, "This is ridiculous. So what if I don’t know anybody. There’s nobody dangerous here. Well, on the other hand, everybody here is a Baptist! But they are to attend this conference. Bless Pete, I’m OK, and they have to take me in."
That’s when I spotted my opportunity. Across the room, there was a man sitting by himself at a table, diligently reading his program and sometimes looking up and staring out the window. Aha! Another one! Just like me, alone and pretending to be busy. So I hurried over before he needed to go wash his hands. I sat down and introduced myself. He was very cordial, and I felt good. I felt accepted, connected, and assured. Now I had someone to belong to and so did he.
Until five minutes later and his six friends filled up the rest of the table and the seven of them spent the rest of the evening talking insider talk and leaving me out! Ouch! I wanted to be out of there! I felt awkward, excluded, half ashamed to just be at their table. No, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they communicated distance and difference and negativity.
Groups have such power over us! And we so much need to feel accepted. We need the assurance that we matter. If the group we’re in doesn’t assure us, we want out of it. We won’t stay. We’ll run. We feel ashamed.
The apostle Paul had wanted for a long time to go to Rome. He had visions not only of seeing the imperial city and of preaching there, but also of going beyond Rome. He hoped that he could go as far west as Spain and establish churches there. But in order to get to Spain he would need a base of support from the Christians in Rome; he would need acceptance.
Understand that, except for a few people, he didn’t know many of the Roman Christians. He had not started the church in Rome. As far as we know, he had never even been to the city.
That meant that when he would come to Rome, he would need to feel at home with them, and they with him. That’s really why he wrote this magnificent letter we call Romans – to introduce himself and his thinking to folks who did not know him and who knew nothing more than hearsay about him.
In the very beginning of his letter, Paul wisely adopted some strategies that helped prepare the way. Paul adopted some attitudes that I believe made sure that when he would find an atmosphere of assurance in Rome.
These strategies can help us live with assurance out in the world and in the church, especially in our kind of church. Here are some things which will help us create on this corner what I’m calling a mutual assurance company. Not a mutual insurance company, but a mutual assurance company.
I
First, a mutual assurance company, that is, a church where all persons feel accepted and assured, begins with something very simple and yet very profound: it begins with a prayerful approach. A prayerful approach. If we in this church are going to live with our differences, we must begin with a prayerful approach to one another.
Look with me at verses 9-10. "I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you."
Seize on that phrase a little while. "In coming to you." Not only is Paul talking about the geography – having to cross the Mediterranean to get to Rome – but he is also talking about the psychology. Will I succeed in coming to you? Will you accept me? Roman Christians, do I threaten you? Is my reputation a problem for you? Is my image too severe, is my theology too strange? What can I do, Romans, to help you accept me?
Now when you gather with me on Wednesday nights to study the Roman letter, we’ll learn about Paul’s theology and how some in the early church didn’t’ t accept it. We’ll learn about his reputation for being difficult. You didn’t get cheers out of every first-century Christian when you told them Paul was coming to visit!
And so Paul says, "I want to succeed in approaching you. And so I will begin by praying for you. I will pave my approach by lifting you up in my prayer."
The most fundamental step toward our making this church a mutual assurance company, where everyone feels accepted and assured, is a covenant to pray for one another. If we in this church are going to approach one another across our various differences, it will happen only if we are at the place of praying for and with one another.
Why? What will prayer do to make us more comfortable with each another? Well, the central issue in the church is trust. Trust. Do we trust the persons sitting with us in the pew? If we have some trouble with that, then is it really that we do not trust others, or is it that we do not trust ourselves? We are not sure of our own hearts. We are ashamed.
And then go a step further. If we are not sure we can trust others, and if that means we are have a hard time trusting ourselves, doesn’t that, in the last analysis, mean that we have a hard time trusting God? The issue is trust; and the core issue is trusting God.
That means we begin to solve the assurance problem with prayer. That means that we begin to get over feeling alone and rejected and unworthy by praying for those whom we want to accept us. "I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you."
Let me tell you, it is a struggle to feel assured. I struggle with this myself. For me to go visit someone I don’ t know very well; for me to break into a group of strangers, especially if they are of a different race or a different age or a different lifestyle ... that is really tough. And my mind will find a hundred excuses for not going. It threatens me to have to meet new and different people.
But guess what? I probably threaten them too! I don’t know whether to trust them and they don’ t know whether to trust me! Aren’t we in a mess?! But there is one simple thing to do, and it works: as I go to the places where I am to engage people, I pray for the people I will be meeting and for their needs. I pray for the words to say when I arrive. And because prayer is an act of trust in God, the Spirit begins to go to work, the Spirit helps me trust myself and then trust others. I’m on the way to assurance.
I still remember what it felt like about 18 years ago when I first walked on to the campus of Howard University. I was to be the Baptist chaplain there. I had already guessed that as a white minister I would be viewed with some suspicion; but I got that fully confirmed the day that somebody admitted to me that people were asking what terrible sin I had committed to have been assigned to Howard! Of course that told me something about their own self-esteem as well as my own! Do you see how complicated this thing is? If we are ashamed, we will not succeed. But in prayer, in trust, we shall overcome.
It is never going to be easy for this church to eliminate distance and discomfort. But if we will follow Paul, and pray for those who are different, the Lord will give us success in approaching one another. We can start a mutual assurance company.
II
But there’s a second step in creating a mutual assurance company. There’s another attitude we have to adopt in order for our church to become truly inclusive. And that is the attitude of encouragement, mutual sharing of gifts. If we are really going to become a church where all of us can feel welcomed and assured and not ashamed, then we must learn not only how to give, but also how to receive.
What Paul does next in this passage is intriguing. Paul almost makes a huge mistake. Paul almost makes the mistake of relating to the Roman Christians from a top-down position, an over-under position.
Fortunately, he catches himself, and fixes the problem. Listen.
Let me get the tone in this for you. "I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you." How does that grab you?! Hold still, babies, so that I can pour this medicine down your throat! Shut up, church folks, while I’m preaching, so that I can tell you what to think! Stand aside, you empty vessels, so that I can fill you up! Top down attitude! Over-under thinking!
But, praise the Lord, Paul catches himself right in mid-sentence. I’m glad for this! "Or rather … or rather ... so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine." Mutual encouragement, mutual sharing of gifts. That’s essential for a mutual assurance company. That’s critical for an inclusive church.
During my study leave I attended a seminar in New York, a seminar on preaching and worship leadership in multiracial churches. In the very first session we began to think about the problem of planning worship for a diverse congregation. The problem is, as you well know, that everybody thinks he or she knows how to worship, and if only these other folks would hold still, we could teach them something. "You all sing too slow!" "You all sing too fast!"
Well, then we began to make some additional discoveries. We discovered in our seminar that it is not only a racial issue, where whites and blacks each bring traditions and impose them on others; it is also a gender issue, where men expect to tell women how to be; and an age issue, where older people consider it their right to instruct the younger; and a social issue, where people with college degrees think they know more about everything than people who walked out of high school and never looked back. And just when we thought we had identified all of the differences that make church difficult, somebody even suggested that it’s a personality thing, and those extroverts just think they can tell us introverts how to behave! Wow! I ask you again, do you see just how complicated this whole thing is? Do you understand how big a bite we’ve bitten off when we try to sustain a truly inclusive church at Takoma Park?
The key to our success will be receiving from each other. Learning to learn from each other. Not top down, but together. Not over-under, but side by side. Not some of us imposing our will on others, but all of us discerning the gifts we have to give each other. Not the pastor, who happens to be white and male and middle-aged and seminary trained, feeling that he has the right to tell you what you ought to know; but your feeling confident that you too have gifts and insights to share with one another. Most of us need to catch ourselves in the middle of our top-down attitudes and say with Paul, "or rather – or rather – so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine."
Then we’ll be on the way to a mutual assurance company, nothing to be ashamed of.
III
But finally, most of all, we will feel accepted, affirmed, and assured when we discover our debts to each other in the tasks of ministry. We will be able to build a truly inclusive church not only when we trust each other by praying for each another; and not only when we learn how to learn from one another. But also when we find out how to work together and minister together.
Paul says, in verses 13 and following, "I intended to come to you in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish – hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome."
When you look at the task of the church, when you think about what we are supposed to be doing, it soon becomes clear that none of us is smart enough to get it done alone. None of us is equipped on his own to accomplish all that should happen. None of us is as smart as all of us. When you’re out there on the cutting edge, you need somebody who knows what you don’t know.
Several years ago one of the leaders of the D. C. Baptist Convention got the idea that a Baptist seminary should do pastoral training here in Washington. This gentleman was a trustee of Southeastern Baptist Seminary, located down in the small town of Wake Forest, North Carolina. His idea was that Southeastern Seminary could start a branch up here in Washington and provide training for the many pastors, most of them African-American, who do not have seminary degrees; in his mind, at least, they were unprepared. Since I was the Convention’s higher education consultant, he brought me in on the planning.
An electric moment in those discussions came when Dr. Ernest Gibson, at that time Executive Director of the Council of Churches, looked my friend straight in the eye and said forcefully, "What does a Southern, white, rural seminary have to teach our black inner-city pastors? We ought to be teaching you!" Wow!
Did I hear an Amen from a graduate of Southeastern Seminary sitting near by?! When we are about the business of serving others, we find we need some very unusual teachers. And just as the best teacher learns from her students and the best parent learns from her children, so also the best Christians learn from the world.
I am convinced that the best days of our church are ahead of us, because we are going to work together to create new ministries and serve new needs. The more needs we serve, the more risks we will take. The more risks we take, the more we will ourselves be taught. And we will find ourselves learning from people we didn’t know could teach us; we will find ourselves debtors, if not to Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, as Paul mentions, then certainly debtors to children, debtors to the frail elderly, debtors to single parents, debtors to the emotionally disturbed, debtors to all sorts of people, to whom we thought we were giving something. And we were. But in giving we also received. And we will become church, real church, a mutual assurance company.
Conclusion
And so let the days come when we can stand and say to this city, "I am not ashamed of my church, for there everyone is worth something. I am not ashamed of my church."
Let the days come when we may know, “I am not ashamed of my church’s leaders, for they listen, care, learn. I am not ashamed of my church’s leaders.”
Let the days come when we feel, "I am not ashamed to invite others to worship at my church, for they will be treated with respect. I am not ashamed for others to come."
And most of all, let that great day come when we, with Paul, will stand and sing and shout, "I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew and to the Greek." No, I am not ashamed. I am assured.
