Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Romans 14:19
.At your core, how is your heart after the roller coaster of a year and half of the pandemic, after a brief vaccination induced reprieve and now the rise of the Delta variant?
Tired, discouraged, dazed?
The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that 41% of adults are reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression disorder.
Given all we have been going through one thing we are all vulnerable to is feeling stuck.
Like a sailboat in irons we can feel like there is no wind in our sails.
The wind has been sucked out of us.
That can be true certainly of our faith that permeates all that we do and are.
It can seem like we were cruising down the highway in our Subaru of faith and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a demolition derby with our faith getting smacked and crunched on all sides.
We got rear-ended by Christian rhetoric and symbols being intertwined with the January 6th. insurrection in DC. By Christians operating out of fear and employing strong arm tactics, even though, the God they say to follow calls us to act out of love and works mightily through weakness.
We got bashed in on one side by vaccinations becoming a political issue more than a social responsibility and smashed on the other side by new demonstrations of racial injustice and global inequities. Then some of us were hit head on, by the death of family members and friends.
And that is not to mention the countless crunches and dings of family, school and work changes and supply chain disruptions.
We can feel surrounded by increasingly aggressive drivers who want to rewrite what is evil and what is good.
We are still in our car but maybe with a case of whiplash, a blown tire and a few fenders and engine parts missing.
No surprise we can feel our faith is diminished and stuck.
The lack of personal connections and the reduction of our relational infrastructure in this time hasn’t helped either.
And that is no small thing.
Life/reality is all about relationships.
Scripture says our being or our IS-ness, to quote Madeline L’Engle, is sourced from God who uses, “I am-I am”, the verb of existence, as a name.
How is that for a deep name?
It is in relation to that Source that we have our being and, as we have said many times before, central to that Source is relationship.
God in God’s very being exists as relationship: God/Jesus/Holy Spirit.
Even in subatomic particle theory it is evident that the essence of reality is not the tiniest individual particles of matter like quarks, Higgs boson and such but their relationship and interaction with one another that determines mass.
At the core of physical reality is relationship—as in all reality.
That is why the focus of this series we started three weeks ago is the One Another passages.
Life with one another is not just a warm fuzzy ideal; it is essential to being truly human.
Just as in the Great Divorce, CS Lewis portrays hell as place where people do whatever they want and grow less substantial and less real the more they choose to distance themselves from God so we get less and real and human the more we move away from one another—something that is becoming more evident as we experience the fruit of 300 years of Enlightenment-sparked emphasis on the rugged individual.
We enjoy increasing personalization of commodities, wonderful personal playlists, amazing gadget that increase self-sufficiency but also increased isolation, bubbles of homogeneity, less understanding of one another and the elevation of individual rights over personal responsibility for the common good.
We are tempted to settle for a lesser humanity.
Being in healthy relationship with one another is essential to growing into human fullness, getting unstuck and moving more into the image of Christ and it is essential to providing an image, a taste of God’s Dream that provides hope and plausibility for people longing for more, to take a step closer to Jesus.
Just as the lack of awareness of one another and divisiveness drives people away from thinking the gospel of Jesus is something to explore, people connected to one another encourages a community that raises curiosity as you have experienced at some time or you would not be a part of a church, even with its warts.
The importance of living with one another is revealed through the more than 100 times “allelon”, the Greek word for “one another” is found in New Testament.
The one another passage we are looking at today is from Romans 14: 19: “Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
Build up one another
Background to Romans 14
Paul is writing to the very diverse church in Rome that includes followers of Jesus with Jewish roots who cannot comprehend honoring God without practicing the food laws and holidays that are part and parcel of their faith from childhood; and it includes followers of Jesus with no Jewish background for whom observing food laws appear to impinge on their freedom they know is theirs by faith alone in Jesus.
Paul highlights that unity is not found in total agreement on every issue of faith but in one thing --recognizing Jesus as Lord.
Paul has confidence with that everything else will take care of itself.
So, Paul says, do not get caught up in judging one another or going to lengths to prove how right you are—instead walk in love and avoid doing things that become a stumbling block for others or destroy the work God has done in communicating their belovedness (that tears apart their faith)—after all these are people of such great worth that Christ died for them.
Just as Jesus did for us.
Amen? Amen!
But because relationships are vital to being fully human and a growing faith, it doesn’t work to just avoid being destructive.
Saying, “I do not like that person or I do not agree with this person so I am just going to ignore them” doesn’t cut it.
Neutrality is not an option.
We are to build up one another.
Some translations use the fancy word edification but if we go to the Greek, we find the word oikodomé—a compound word of oikos=house + domeo =to buid or to build a house.
The image evoked is not building a wall against something or a tower to be impressive but a house where lives come together, and life is enjoyed more richly.
Several of you have built a house – several of you with Renee and myself, have built a number of simple wood frame houses in Tijuana.
The first day you show up on the site can be a daunting feeling.
There are piles of materials, a cleared piece of land, the knowledge there is a family waiting to move into out of a cardboard shelter and you look around at your team and let it sink in: every one of you is a rank amateur—not a carpenter among you!
Some of us are holding a 4 oz hammer to hang pictures.
You think: Who am I to be building a house?
But we pray, look at the plans, talk to one another, nail some boards together, acknowledge our mistakes, pull the boards apart, pass on lessons learned, share life as you work, hand up supplies to the workers on the roof, celebrate finishing walls and new skills learned, deal with hurt feelings, laugh and after a few days there is a house—and a family moves in and their lives are totally changed and so is ours.
It is important to see that the phrase “one another” implies no hierarchy.
This doesn’t say, “you who are spiritually strong build up those who are weak—those who are mature build up the less mature” Nope.
We all get to build one another up.
So there is no place for arrogance or superiority either.
So how do we do build up one another?
There are lots of way and no formula but let me suggest a few ideas:
Draw near—move toward the other person instead of expecting them to come to you.
There may be body language that tells you there is discouragement but my experience is that often the most discouraged people are the ones best at concealing it.
Besides it says, build up one another –not only certain people.
The extroverts and introverts among us are likely hearing this differently but building up can take place as the Spirit leads you—it may be with a text or note that you draw near—it doesn’t matter.
Just connect.
We build up by listening.
What are you being told and not being told.
Have you noticed how much people want to talk?
We have been our own little worlds and as we have opportunity to talk the conversation just keeps going.
People feel validated as we listen.
We build up by expanding one another’s perspective.
So much around us can tell us we live in a world of only scarcity, performance, fear, little hope, materialism so much that we can begin to believe it.
We default to finding identity in accumulation and achievement leading to more dissatisfaction and fear.
We need one another to lift our eyes, remind us that that our identity is in being created in God’s image, known and beloved by Jesus who went to the cross for us, overcame death, gave us the Holy Spirit to be a part of God’s great renewal where justice flows and life flourishes.
That we live in an open universe not closed.
Sometimes questions help expand perspective.
I remember years ago bemoaning a demoralizing set of circumstances and a friend, who I knew loved me, kiddingly but pointedly asked, “And how big is your God, James B?” Enough said. Her words prompted me to remember I was not alone nor dependent on my own cleverness.
In asking friends the other night what builds them up, a theme that emerged: a friend to talk towho shared a world view that God was a part of life.
It did not have to be spiritual talk or spiritually-focused conversation but the natural interjection of perspective obviously influenced by faith as they grilled dinner or took a walk brought strength and perspective.
And we can build up one another by sharing what we observe.
“I appreciate your patience.
The grace you gave me was so healing.
You are so compassionate.”
People are often blind to their own traits and gifts because they are so close to them. Our calling them out can bring awareness and lead to more use of them—and be immensely encouraging when there are abundant messages of inadequacy all around.
Most all of us overwhelmed right now.
And we could all benefit from the being built up and experiencing the growth that comes from that. The call though, to us build up another, can just add to that feeling of being overwhelmed. To invoke that overused airplane oxygen mask analogy once again, maybe after I put my on my own first and take a few breaths I can eventually think about building up others.
But let me attempt to expand our thinking on that analogy because it can really mess us up. I am not saying there is not a place for rest. Scripture is big on Sabbath and rest—creating a sustainable rhythm.
But, what if your mask is already on and the wind of the Holy Spirit is already in your lungs and sourcing through your body?
What if we breathe deeply and in faith step out to encourage and build up one another, now?
My experience has been that as we build up one another we often experience refreshment and rejuvenation. Maybe it has something to do with Jesus’ paradoxical words, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”
This is a hard season.
We need each other.
We need to build up one another to keep our eyes open to see God’s activity and build up that house where God activity is encouragingly evident.
So lets breathe deep of Holy Spirit who empowers us and keep building up one another.
