This text invites you and your people to see in the Christ not only the welcome but the inspiration to welcome the other, indeed the enemy, not simply to put up with, but to love.
Welcoming, accepting, receiving one another (Romans 15:7), living in harmony with one another, and having one heart and one mind (Romans 15:5), these are the commands included in Paul’s closing thoughts of Romans. And the Christ is the centerpiece of his message, just as it should be for yours.
What prompts us, inspires us to welcome and accept others? The fact that Christ first welcomed, first accepted you. But let us think about the relative valance of that vocabulary. There are different connotations to the various ways in which you can translate these words. Do we accept one another? Receive? Welcome? Which one gets best to the point about edification that Paul is punching up in Romans 15? Which one best confesses the Christ you are going to deliver? Think about this, think about the context of your congregation. Think about hospitality, think about conflict. Think about differences. Paul certainly was, particularly those between Jew and Gentile. Where is the gap that needs to be healed by the Gospel in your own context, preacher? Apply the text and recognize that the Jesus of Advent, the root of Jesse (Romans 15:12), the sun of righteousness arisen with healing in His wings is the Messiah who healed the breach between Jew and Gentile in His body, broke down the dividing wall, becoming our peace (Ephesians 2:14), and is the only hope of a preacher like you if your cracks would be healed, if your divisions would be solved, if your people would be saved. So, pray the text as you prepare this week: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Romans 15:13).
There is a difference between tolerance and love. Do not get me wrong. I am a citizen of a prosperous western nation whose civic values were forged in the European Enlightenment. We do not enjoy the particular freedoms and life under reasonable law that we do, we do not and cannot value equality and liberty, without the attendant necessity of tolerating the opinions, alternate perspectives, and ways of life of fellow citizens with whom we may disagree. It is possible to consider tolerance as a virtue in this respect. It may even be possible to hear Paul elevating tolerance as an action that promotes peace. For example, in Philippians 4 as he entreats Euodia and Syntyche to get along and then instructs the church to “let your reasonableness (Greek - epieikēs) be evident to all. The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:2-5). That Greek vocabulary could well be translated as “toleration” for one another, as much as it could be rendered gentleness or forgiveness without losing as much in translation as the English Standard Version’s choice of “reasonableness.” I am really not certain what “reasonableness” even means in this context.
But, as I say, tolerance and love are not the same thing; apples and oranges. I like to illustrate this point for folks with a culinary example, since it is not often we get the sense of smell and taste engaged in a sermon. Think of something you know the smell and taste of, something lovely and inviting, and run the illustration that way. I use McDonald’s french fries. Think of them. Fresh. Hot. You know the way they smell? Can you smell them right now? Maybe not just the sort of question to get people ready for proper reception of the Lord’s Supper, but I will bet you they can smell them, and you will have some nods in the pews! So, here is the question: If I have McDonald’s french fries on my plate, do I tolerate them? The answer is no. I do not tolerate them. I enjoy them! I like them. I love them! Point being, we do not tolerate things that we like. We put up with things we have to put up with. That is what broccoli is for (just kidding, I like broccoli; kale on the other hand is a product of the fall).
It is important to hear the difference between those two, toleration and love, whenever we get a text like the epistle for this Sunday, which commands the saints to welcome one another (Romans 15:7). The command comes on the heels of the immediate context just before verse 4, where the Apostle tells the church to put up with the weakness of others, not aiming to please ourselves, but, rather, to build up the neighbor, just as Christ did. That kind action is less about toleration and more about love. It is the kind of love Christ alone is author of, the love not of the loveable but of people like me; the weak and the unlovable. The broccoli instead of the french fry? More like the blind, dead, enemy of God rather than the friend of God, the apple of His eye. The love of enemy, the Christ-ethic, radically changes what you are used to thinking about, whether it is on your dinner plate or part of your civil righteousness or in your church.
Love for enemy means actually caring about enemy.
That kind of Christ love is not about some sort of open-minded, potato-potahto, let’s call the whole thing off, different strokes for different folks, takes all kinds to make the world go round, and what a funny old world it would be, live-and-let-live kind of attitude. No, love for enemy means actually caring about enemy. Love for the other means acknowledging the actual humanity of the other. It means they matter, that you need them as they need you. Indeed, that you are obligated to them with ties that bind, not to please them as in make them happy, but to be in harmony with them, to be one with them, to bear the weaknesses of their inabilities and disabilities, to make it right with them in Christ.
Making things right in Christ is not a matter of live and let live, because it is Christ, and He shows you the best way to live is to die. After all, He died that you might live.
And that is the centerpiece of this pericope and your message, preacher. The Christ who welcomed you (Romans 15:7), who became a servant (Greek - diakonos) to the circumcised in order to save both Jews and Gentiles, that we might all see His mercy, that great mystery finally revealed in Christ’s death and resurrection, that even those on the outs, including Gentiles, those on the outs, including enemies (including you and me!), those on the outs are in in Christ.
Christ who is the root of Jesse. Christ the Advent King who rules over Jew and Gentile, great David’s greater son. He is the one who ushers in His Kingdom by dying. He welcomes you by spreading His arms in a welcoming gesture only to stretch them out on an executioner’s cross.
Pointing up the penitential notes of Advent is a salutary thing, preacher, and this text invites you and your people to see in the Christ not only the welcome but the inspiration to welcome the other, indeed the enemy, not simply to put up with, but to love. And that requires a death. It is both the death of Christ and the death of the old self that matches Christ’s death, the call of the disciple to deny self, take up cross, and follow (Luke 9:23 among others). Death to self means more than mere mortification or special services and devotion in a penitential season. Death to self means dying to my rights, my privileges, my prerogatives, my liberties, and my freedoms. It means dying to my insistence on getting my way, getting my own, demanding my dessert, fair is fair, skin for skin, even stevens, getting what I deserve.
Because, on reflection, the significance of a penitential season is that what I deserve is rather, in fact, what Christ got. The reproaches of those who reproach you fell on Me sings the Psalmist, sings the Christ (Romans 15:3, the verse immediately preceding our pericope!). What I deserve, the end of “getting my way,” the whole consequence of me insisting on my own prerogative and privilege, living up to what I would want to boast about, what I deserve for my arrogance and folly, my sin and my whining, my weakness and backbiting, my gossip and my judgment? What I deserve? That is what Christ got.
Zeal for Your house will consume me; not to be served but to serve. The Lord Jesus, so jealous for His people, so jealous for the house He builds, lays Himself down first as the chief cornerstone, the scandalon rejected by men made the stone of the corner, showing each brick the way to build up into His Church. And the edifice that gets edified is not in something so facile as “being nice to people” or “being a leader.” It is not in being mannerly or polite. It is in putting others ahead of self, the alter before the ego. It is, as Paul writes in Romans 15, as simple (and as dreadfully insurmountable) as welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. The Christ love to overhear in Paul’s paraenesis here is not live and let live. It is die, so others might live. This is, in fact, the Jesus of Advent, the one who welcomed you, your hearers, that you and they in turn might welcome one another (and all!) to the Christ, the root of Jesse who rules the nations.
God bless you in your Advent preaching this week!
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 15:4-13.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 15:4-13.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
