What if people aren’t receptive?
Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/peace-romans-12-9-21/
Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week we talked about peace, specifically being peacemakers with those around us, kind of bringing the temperature down on the outrage that we all seem to face right now. Building bridges, reconciling with those where there might be division, elevating those around us, empathizing with those around us, honoring everybody around us above ourselves, you know, recognizing them, really welcoming them into the community, including them, promoting them on and on. So the question comes in this week, what if somebody doesn’t seem receptive to that at all?
It’s not really like there’s division per se.
You know, the other person isn’t attacking us back in any kind of outrage, but there just seems to be some relational awkwardness there. You know, in years past, I’ve shared in sermons Beth and I’s experiences around our neighborhood. We wave at people and they don’t wave back as they might do in other places in the country. And so let’s say you wave at somebody and let’s say you keep waving at them every Sunday, and every time they see you wave, they just kind of turn and go the other direction. What are you supposed to do with that?
You’re like, I’m trying to be hospitable here, and the other person just isn’t receptive. Well, you know, Paul actually, in our Romans, twelve verses accommodates for that, or accounts for that. He says, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with everyone. And so we can’t control, we can’t control the other person. And it’s, there is only so much that we can do on our side.
And if they’re going to turn and walk away every time we’re hospitable or welcoming or, you know, they, maybe we heard something’s going on in their lives. And so we’re, we’re either celebrating with them or weeping with them and we try, we go over, we’re like, hey, I heard you got a new job. Congrats. Hey, I heard you lost somebody, one of your loved ones. I’m so sorry.
And if they just kind of turn and walk away, those kind of things can happen.
We’re not going to have, we’re not going to be as connected with people in those situations. But we really do have to listen to Paul. We can’t really let ourselves off the hook because he says, as far as it depends on you, which means go as far as you can, keep going. You don’t continue pursuing the other person, even if it’s been 100 times. Keep going.
And our leadership here at church, in terms of welcoming people, we’ve had discussions about, like, okay, we don’t want to be too, you know, overtly welcoming, that we might scare somebody away who doesn’t want to be, you know, welcomed as much. You know, if ten people tell somebody hello on a Sunday morning, that might be too much, and they don’t, you know, they may not come back. And so we’ve decided to. We’re like, please let that be the reason they don’t come back. If they don’t come back because we were too welcoming, that’s fine with us.
That is, as far as it depends on us. What we would hate is if somebody doesn’t come back because we weren’t welcoming enough. And really, honestly, we are probably not the best evaluators. If we have gone as far as possible to welcome, promote, elevate, honor others, because we could easily let ourselves off the hook, we could say, oh, I’ve done enough as far as it depends on me. I did everything I could.
Of course we’re going to evaluate ourselves that way. We probably really need to be listening to the other person if we have welcomed, if we really have done everything we possibly could, but we’d much rather somebody not come back here, not stick with us because we cared too much about them. We’d much rather that be the case than if we didn’t care enough or we didn’t welcome enough. So keep going further is the answer. But again, sometimes, even if we do all we possibly can, there will be some people that we just can’t connect with.
So thanks for the question and we’ll see you next time.
