Alan Adams - Return to Simple Church

JUST AS CHRIST ACCEPTED YOU

We gathered by boat to an open pavilion on the eastern shores of Georgian Bay for the Honey Harbour Summer church service. I had been invited to speak during the morning worship program. What to say?

The only Scripture I could get peace about was Romans 15:7 – “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”

I asked myself the question, which I shared with the lakeside congregation: How Did Christ Accept People? And that question opened some interesting lines of thought.

For example, Christ accepted individuals with a touch. He touched the leper and healed him. He put his fingers in the ears of a deaf man and the man was able to hear. He took a dead little girl by the hand and raised her back to life. He even took the calloused and filthy feet of his disciples in his hands. washed them and dried them with a towel. Maybe we need to learn afresh the art of Christian touch.

Jesus Christ made people welcome with words. “Neither do I condemn you,” he announced to a women caught in adultery. To another a very sick man he declared, “Your sins are forgiven.” And to that repentant thief crucified next to him, who asked to be remembered in some future kingdom, Christ promised, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Do we accept each other with the appropriate words just as Christ accepted us?

Finally, I reflected on the fact that Jesus Christ manifested his acceptance of people by eating with them. “This man receives sinners,” the do-gooders complained, “and he eats with them.” Even when a religious leader invited him to dinner, Jesus gladly shared a meal with him and his cronies in order to challenge him with the grand message of forgiveness. He still pleads, “If anyone hears my voice and opens their door to my knocking, I will come in and eat with them and they will eat with me.” The simple sharing of a meal, breaking bread together, offers the great welcome of “table fellowship.” With whom have you broken bread recently as an act of acceptance across racial, cultural, denominational or social barriers?

Christians are supposed to be disciples, clones of Christ Jesus. I’m convicted by Romans 15:7. Aren’t you?