Daily Lesson for November 30, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Romans chapter 15 verses 7 through 13:

7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. 8For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

‘Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles,

   and sing praises to your name’; 

10and again he says,

‘Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people’; 

11and again,

‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,

   and let all the peoples praise him’; 

12and again Isaiah says,

‘The root of Jesse shall come,

   the one who rises to rule the Gentiles;

in him the Gentiles shall hope.’ 

13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The early Christians were known — and often despised — for their welcome and treatment of outsiders. They went against the ways and customs of their own communities as they welcomed the stranger and embraced the foreigner.  This often earned them charges of treachery amidst their own people. 

Justin Martyr, the early Church father who was put to death for not following Roman customs, protested his treatment and the treatment of other Christians in an apology to the Emperor:

“Formerly we hated and killed one another because of a difference in nationality or custom and refused to let strangers into our gates. Now since the coming of Christ, we all live in peace. We pray for our enemies and seek to convert those who hate us unjustly. So that, by living according to the noble precepts of Christ, they may partake with us in the same joyful hope of obtaining our reward from God, the Lord of all.”

God is LORD of all. Christ opens our eyes to see God in all. And it is “the glory of God,” Paul says, when we “welcome one another . . . just as Christ has welcomed [us].

This kind of moral imagination may make us different in the world. It may not sit well with our neighbors or communities or our national policies. But “since the coming of Christ” into our own lives, we understand what it means to be welcomed as aliens and strangers and know the transformative power of love and embrace. It is the gift we were given in Christ — an open door; and it is one we must keep open for others. 

It is one of the grave evils of our time that such a spirit of racism and xenophobia now pervade our land. But God is Lord of all; and we Christians, of all people, have to say so.