Romans 15:1-13
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing the praises of your name.” Again, it says, “Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people.” And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples extol him.” And again, Isaiah says, “The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; in him the Gentiles will hope.” May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
This morning we are starting a series looking at some of the “one another” sayings in the Bible. There are around sixty of these directions as to how we should live in relationship with one another, although a good number of those are repetitions of or variations on “love one another”. We will come to look at that one more explicitly towards the end of the series, but I mention it now because I think it is worth holding in the background of our thoughts that “love one another” is the clearest and strongest command in scripture when it comes to how we relate to one another, and so it is not unreasonable to suggest that everything else is an outworking of that.
I vaguely remember my church back in Skipton doing a preaching series on the “one another” verses, which I think is what planted the seed of the idea, although I was heavily involved in the youth work at the time, so I don’t think I actually heard any of the sermons. I have thought about doing a similar series a couple of times before and then decided in favour of something else, but now seems a good time, because I think our sense of community - and I’m speaking here in broad terms - has taken a bit of a battering. When lockdown first hit, we were forced apart but found every way we could to pull together. And then as measures were lifted, we were able to gather again in public spaces but told it was all about personal responsibility. Pushed and pulled in all ways, how are we to know what we are to each other? I hope this exploration of what scripture has to say will help us to answer the question with greater confidence, and deepen and enrich all of our relationships and the communities of which we are a part.
We are starting with the call to “accept one another”, or “welcome one other” as some translations have it, which we heard in verse seven of the passage from Romans. Those with long memories may recall that this was the headline verse for my first preaching series, which feels like a lifetime ago now. In fact it is more than a lifetime for the youngest member of our congregation. That series focused on welcome, looking in particular at welcoming difference (because hospitality opens us to diversity and disagreement), welcoming all ages (because my family's arrival immediately widened our age range to nine decades), welcoming the outcast (because a wider welcome may make us sanctuary for those who have been excluded), and welcoming the stranger (because it is not just about those we meet in church).
I took that verse as a springboard but didn’t explore it very much, so it seems good to return to it now, and not in isolation but as part of a longer section of teaching. Romans 15 is the penultimate chapter of the book, but this passage is really the end of the main body of the letter. After this there are only some words about Paul’s calling and plan to visit Rome, and a series of greetings to friends in the Roman church from Paul and his companions. Because this is not an academic essay, we don’t know how Paul structured his thoughts, and so it’s impossible to say if this is the main point he was leading to or a final message before drawing his missive to a close, but either way it is something he felt was worth saying to the church at the centre of the known world, the church which Paul and his strategic missionary mind must have known needed to set a good example to the empire.
So let’s take a look at what he has to say, starting from verse one. “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.” I feel there is a considerable amount of unspoken and unhelpful judgment in the references to the strong and the weak. Sometimes things get lost or added in translation, but the dominant culture has long praised strength and pitied weakness, and so it is difficult to read those words without bringing across some of those same value judgments. It is perhaps worth noting here that this verse follows on from rather a lot of judgment in Romans 14, where Paul somewhat undermines his call to treat each other well by insulting vegetarians using similar language, so perhaps those associations were intentional and it is Paul we need to be raising the issue with. This is all to say that I appreciate the sentiment but am a little uncomfortable with this verse, and the way it seems to appeal to the strong by patronising the weak, but I hope it will not cause too much scandal to say that as Paul was not infallible I believe we are allowed to disagree with him.
As I wrestled with this I decided to look back at the original Greek, and an equally valid but more neutral translation would be “we who have power ought to bear the weakness of those who do not have power and not please ourselves”. The changes may be subtle, but I think it gives a very different message, and one that feels truer to the heart of the one who casts down the mighty and raises the humble. The imbalance of power that runs through society is named in a way that allows for criticism and correction rather than complicity. One group is asked to bear the other rather than bear with the other so that there is a sense of tending rather than tolerating. And ultimately it says that those who have position or wealth or influence, or any of the other things that the world says confer power, should use them for the good of those who don’t, rather than to further their own interests.
Paul’s words may have been tainted by those unspoken and unhelpful judgments, but I think this idea that we should act for the good of others is the core of truth within them, and the message I want to bring out. We do not live by or for ourselves alone, but we live with and for others, and so as Paul goes on to say, “each of us should please our neighbours for their good, to build them up”. I think there can be a fear that if we put everyone else before ourselves then we come last, but surely the point is that everyone else is putting us first at the same time. Instead of only caring for ourselves and only being cared for by ourselves, we care for everyone and are cared for by everyone.
This might be a good moment to remind ourselves that Paul was writing to the church in Rome. This was the centre of the most powerful empire the world had yet seen, built on slavery and conquest. I imagine it was a brutal place, and while I’m certain there will have been pockets of genuine community even there, I imagine there will also have been places where this would have been a pretty radical and perhaps even laughable message. There are places in our own society where this will still be a pretty radical and perhaps even laughable message, but that should push us on to live as an example rather than discourage us. The last few years have made it clearer than ever that individualism does not serve us well, and we desperately need another way. We have to be willing to make sacrifices and compromises for the good of others, to make decisions not only for ourselves but for those our lives intersect with.
So how do we do that? Paul suggests that our example must be based on the examples of the past, including the example of Jesus who acted not for his own good but for ours. In reading around this passage, it was brought to my attention that Jesus worked this out in different ways. Sometimes he stuck to his principles even when this brought him into conflict, for example healing on the Sabbath even though it angered the religious authorities, because it was what the people needed. Sometimes he held back from pushing a point, for example sending Peter to catch a fish with a coin in its mouth which would pay for their temple taxes when the collectors came calling, so as not to cause unnecessary offence. And sometimes he acknowledged there was no pleasing everyone, for example when he said that “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard.’”, because even the incarnate God has to be pragmatic about things. It seems acting for the good of others will often be complicated, and will need a fine sense of discernment and a strong will.
Paul also prays that “the God who gives endurance and encouragement [may] give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. So what attitude of mind does Christ Jesus have towards us? Well as I laid out in my first sermon here, he loves us openly and indiscriminately and compassionately and generously, with a love that liberates and challenges and serves and sacrifices. It seems acting for the good of others unites us in a cause beyond any of us, and while we have to be realistic that we won’t always agree with one another, perhaps if we can strive to love one another as Jesus loves us, we may do well enough to build one another up and bring glory to God.
And here at last we come to the instruction to “accept one another”. We also return again to the example of Jesus, as Paul says specifically that his readers must “accept one another as Christ accepted you”, before going on to emphasise that Jesus came not only to fulfil God’s promise to the Jews but also to reveal God’s glory to the Gentiles. The Hebrew scriptures are full of declarations that all nations will worship God, so this should not have come as a surprise, but such division had grown between Jews and Gentiles that it must have seemed a radical kind of acceptance, like a bringing together of oil and water. It seems acting for the good of others is something that is best done not at a remove but in relationship with them, and that means we must live with open arms and open hearts.
Of course none of this is easy, but in Christ we are a people who hope for impossible things. And so I end by speaking Paul’s closing blessing over you now. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.
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