I told you I was behind on posting pictures of our new grandsons. This is the official four-month-old picture on top of the giraffe thing that was taken on the 8th, and another one of the boys propped up in the recliner before we went out to run some errands. It’s been almost two weeks since they hit four months. Elliott rolled over this week for the first time and is now doing it constantly. One morning soon, Valerie is going to walk in and they’re going to be standing up in their cribs, holding on to the top rails, and laughing.

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There’s a question that’s been burning in my bones the past few weeks, and I can’t shake it. As we approach this Sunday’s annual “4 Midland” pulpit swap and Thanksgiving Service, I’m deeply bothered by the twin realities in my own congregation.

We do not expect the Presbyterians to change their minds about predestination. We do not insist that the Baptists alter their views on the salvation efficacy of baptism. We don’t demand that the Methodists start sharing the communion meal every week. Yet we easily and joyfully set those doctrinal issues aside for the sake of our Christian unity, for the sake of worshiping and serving together, and the powerful Gospel witness it is to our city. At the same time, some of us are arguing and even dividing with our brothers and sisters within our own congregation over much lesser things.

Why would we ever expect everybody at GCR to agree on everything? If you don’t agree with everybody at GCR, do you leave? You decide you can’t worship and serve with people in your own church family because a few of them don’t see a couple of things the same way you do? Does Romans 14-15 have anything to say about this?

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself.” ~Romans 15:1-3

As children of God and followers of Christ, we take our example from Jesus. The holy Son of God is the one who calls us and inspires us and empowers us to worship and serve and live together the way we do. We know that our Lord Jesus never did anything to please himself. Instead, he gave up everything, he sacrificed everything, to benefit and build up others. And by choosing to serve others instead of pleasing himself, Jesus sets the pattern that we have to make our own. Putting others first. Considering the needs of others more important than our own.

And the Bible puts this on the strong Christians. It’s up to the strong, not the weak, to make sure this happens. It’s up to the strong to make the sacrifices and concessions to our weaker brothers and sisters. That’s not easy. It’s much easier to be the weaker Christian, drawing the lines and insisting that other Christians cater to me.

Strong Christians–that should be Christians who’ve been following Jesus a long time; it’s not always, but it should be–with strong faith realize that the more you sacrifice and the more you give up for others, the more like Christ you are. The more you insist on your own way and the more you assert yourself for your own interests, the less like Christ you are.

So, if all of us decided today, to a person, that would put ourselves at the back of the line, that we would all bend over backwards to make everybody else happy and sacrifice our own feelings and opinions in order to build up others–if we all did that? Wow!

If we all accepted one another, just like Christ. If we all bore the failings of the weak, just like Christ. If we all pleased our neighbor for his good, just like Christ. It still won’t result in a perfect church. It won’t eliminate our differences of opinion. It won’t do away with the arguments and debates. But it would mean figuring out how to worship and serve and live together.

We know for sure that the Christ who unites us is greater by far than the differences that may divide us. And our grace-filled conversations and our mercy-full interactions with each other and our shared commitment to our Christian unity will reflect and bear witness to that conviction. It’ll prove it.

Peace,

Allan