Thoughts on Romans - Day 43

                                    Romans 15:7-12
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. ⁸ 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 ⁹ 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.”

¹⁰ Again, it says,

“Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people.”

¹¹ And again,

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles;
    let all the peoples extol him.”

¹² 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.”

 

 

    I wonder what would be our oil and water in the church today like the 1st century Jews and Gentiles. Suddenly 2 different groups of people , who prior had nothing to do with each other, were told to not just coexist but embrace, love, fellowship with - basically become family with each other when the only thing they had in common was Christ.

  

    The obvious answer to how this relates to us today is race - blacks and whites worshipping together. We could probably exclude Hispanics because they are segregated by language but if that weren't the case, they would have a natural division also. I do believe that with the freedom of religion and the choices we have in America, believers don't have to assimilate culturally like they did in the early church. We have "black" churches and we have "white" churches available even in a small town like mine. Is this bad? In a sense yes because we don't get the privilege of learning about and loving people different than us. It hampers our spiritual growth and we miss out on the opportunity to demonstrate to the world that a relationship with Christ, transcends and ends races and racism. Yet, in a sense it is a good thing that there are so many believers and such religious freedom that we can gather together with people that share a common culture. For example, I have visited churches where people are your prototypical "hillbillies". The pastor yells, the people yell, and I'm thinking,"I will shout hallelujah if he says anything number 1 that I can understand and number 2 that is meaningful. And then they break out some kind of music with 4 square harmony or something like that and I hug everyone as I leave as brothers and sisters in the Lord but I am under my breath saying I can't wait to get back to my hipster praise and worship band where they wear scarfs in the winter up on stage even though the temperature indoors is 72 degrees. The same relative "out-of-placeness" can be said for African - Americans coming to my church or vice versa. My partner at work diagnoses the relative health or "spiritfilled-ness" of a church based on its diversity. I'm just not sure about that. I do think, however, that any chance we get to join hands with that church that is culturally different from ours on community projects or activism, etc. we should jump all over that to demonstrate to our brothers and sisters and to an on-looking world that we are one.