October 9, 2011
Together with One Voice - Romans 15:1-6
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadMy two daughters are very much into the movie “Annie” right now. I must have seen that movie twenty times in the last month. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Annie and Daddy Warbucks visit Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s during the height of the Great Depression and Annie sings the theme song to the President, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” FDR is so enamored with Annie’s singing that he, as commander in chief, commands his friend, Oliver Warbucks, to sing, too, and then he commands his own wife to sing. Eleanor protests that she can’t sing, but he tells her to sing, anyway. And then, lo and behold, Franklin starts to sing himself. By the end of that scene, they’re singing “The Sun Will Come Out” beautifully, in harmony, like it’s a broadway musical, which of course it is.
It’s not real life. How likely is it that you could take four people with no musical training at all, not even a rehearsal, and tell them to sing a song they’d never heard before, and then they sing it like a Broadway musical? Singing anything at all together with one voice is not easy. I have tremendous respect for Tom and Sheila that they can make musicians out of just about anybody. I cannot sing well. You’ve heard me sing. You know that. To be honest, neither can most of you. To think that “together with one voice, we may glorify God,” is scary thought, unless God is deaf.
But that’s what Paul says, in verse 6 of Chapter 15. In fact, I’ve been studying Romans for four months now, clear back to early June. Paul’s letter to Rome is the most complete theology that we have in the whole Bible. The Protestant Reformation was built largely on Pauline theology out of Romans. “Justification by grace through faith” comes straight out of Romans. I’ve always thought that when Paul sat down to write Romans that he fully intended to write an exhaustive letter about what he believed about God. But we forget that Paul was writing to a certain people with a certain problem, and that problem was serious division. Paul was concerned about keeping it together. “Together with one voice, glorifying God” is largely what Paul wanted to do in Romans, not to mention 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Philippians. At the very least, you can’t claim to believe in one God who has saved us in Jesus Christ, and have a divided Church. In short, we as a Church had better start singing with one voice.
Now technically, Paul does not use the word “sing” in Romans. If you are not so musically inclined, then you’re off the hook. But what Paul is asking us to do makes singing look easy. Paul’s main message of Jesus Christ has to trump whatever else divides us. So if you profess Jesus Christ, then no other difference matters more than that. If you profess Christ, then you and are part of the same body. We are married, really, and I cannot divorce myself from you. If you profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then not only can we do Church together, we must.
I have decided that Sunday morning really is the most segregated hour in American life. Martin Luther King said that about race, and he was right about that, but it’s so much more than just race. We have rich suburban churches, rich urban churches, rural country churches, neighborhood churches, conservative churches, liberal churches, moderate churches, contemporary churches, traditional churches… The list goes on and on and on. Now to be honest with you, I’m not so sure that Paul would want us to negate all of those differences. “Together with one voice” is not blandness. Every congregation, and every person for that matter, has to find a unique way to follow Christ. God calls us all to be and to do unique things. It makes perfectly good sense that 1st Presbyterian downtown would be a little different that Central Steele Creek. We’re in different places and we have to learn to serve God where we are. So that would obviously lead to some differences. I also don’t think that Paul would want us to take “Presbyterian” off our name. We have a tremendous heritage as Presbyterians. We’re foolish, no we’re unfaithful, to ignore that. I don’t think it’s all bad that there’re Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists and Roman Catholics and Pentecostals and Greek Orthodox. We each come from different places, and we emphasize different things, and we each bring something invaluable to the Table of God. I don’t want the Baptists to go away. Presbyterians need Baptists, they need us.
Now obviously, some of those differences are significant. It’s not just that 1st Presbyterian uptown has a different feel to their worship than we do, or that Baptists stress the alter call more than we do, or that Methodists have bishops, or that Roman Catholics have a pope. Those are more than stylistic differences. Never once does Paul tell the early Church to disregard their differences, as if they don’t matter. Jewish Christians, for example, were insistent that Christians should keep Jewish dietary laws. Paul wrote all about that. Gentiles did not keep those laws. They wanted to keep eating their barbecue. That was a huge thing for Jewish Christians. If you say it’s okay to eat pork, which the Bible strictly forbids in Leviticus 11:7, then is it okay to commit adultery? How do you get past that difference? Never once did Paul tell Jewish Christians just to get over it. We’ve got some differences that we cannot deny. I think we have to own those differences, and yet still see that our unity in Christ is greater.
So, if it’s not tearing down all of our denominations into one big bland denomination with a sky-scraper headquarters in New York, if it’s not all singing “Kum By Ya” together every Sunday and ignoring our differences, then what is it? I don’t claim to have the exact answer, but I’ll take a stab. As most of you know, I grew up Southern Baptist. In fact, I preached in my home Church, First Baptist Campobello, just last week. I had forgotten how much I love that place. But I’ll have to tell you, there is a reason that I am a Presbyterian. There’s a reason that I am not Southern Baptist. Many if not most of you grew up Southern Baptist, and there’s a reason that you’re not Southern Baptist. I’m not being critical of Baptists at all, but it would be dishonest of me to say that it was just happen-stance, or that it was just God who made me Presbyterian. I chose to be Presbyterian, and for good reason. But I still have a lot to learn from Baptists. Not only does that make me a better Christian, it even makes me a better Presbyterian. So I keep in touch with my Baptist friends, and I can’t say how meaningful that is to me.
I also keep in touch with my friends at Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian. Caldwell Memorial is as liberal as many Southern Baptists are conservative. Now to be sure, I’ve got a few differences there, too. There’s no question about that. But there’s also no question that God is doing some incredible things in that congregation. That’s one of the few inner-city congregations in the country that came back from the brink of death into a growing and thriving Church. This growing and thriving congregation has devoted one of its wings to a bilingual preschool, the other wing to a women’s and children’s homeless shelter, and the other wing to an African American congregation that needs a place to meet. That says a great deal about them. As much as I need my Baptist roots, I need Caldwell Memorial, too. Whatever my own theology is and however deep my own differences are with certain branches of the Church, God is big enough to work through all of them. The minute that I no longer need them and can no longer break bread with them and at least engage in a conversation with them, is when I start singing badly out of tune in God’s choir. At least where I am right now in my life, I don’t think that “together with one voice” is as hard as it looks. Not that it’s easy, but I’ve come to realize that I’m not all that important. I and my theology and my generation and my denomination and my race and everything first person… God has spoken to me and has given me something to say. But God has given me a whole lot more to hear, and has given me a voice goes amazingly well with others, but terrible alone.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
