{"id":1982,"date":"2022-09-20T08:05:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-20T12:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1982"},"modified":"2022-09-20T08:06:17","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T12:06:17","slug":"a-sacrifice-for-someone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/20\/a-sacrifice-for-someone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sacrifice for Someone Else"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.

For most churches, Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday are the two annual high-water marks for attendance. 

Mother\u2019s Day often comes in third.  It has become an opportunity to celebrate the crucial role that parents (especially moms) play in raising up the next generation of Christian disciples.  Years ago I remember standing before our crowded sanctuary on the second Sunday morning of May.  About halfway through the sermon I asked three questions.

\u201cHow many of you are parents or grandparents?\u201d Almost every hand went up.  There were plenty of smiles. 

\u201cHow many of you would unhesitatingly sacrifice your own life to save your children or grandchildren?\u201d  The same hands went up again, but this time even higher.  The smiles morphed into looks of serious resolve.  My life for their life?  You bet I would do that.<\/em>

Then I posed the third question. \u201cHow many of you would sacrifice your favorite style of church music or your preferred worship time so it would be easier for your children or grandchildren to hear about Jesus?\u201d 

Nervous laughter. 

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to put your hand up for that one,\u201d I said. \u201cBut think about it.  Would you be willing to make some kind of sacrifice \u2013 not even approaching the ultimate sacrifice \u2013 if you knew it would bless somebody else for the sake of the Good News?\u201d

Truth be told, at any given moment a great many of us struggle with that third question.  We can become so wrapped up in our opinions about secondary issues \u2013 Does Jesus think it\u2019s OK to have a beer while watching a football game?  Do electric guitars belong in worship?  Is the cosmos billions of years old or has it only been around for a few thousand years? \u2013 that we lose our focus on spiritual essentials. 

Worse than that, we begin to see those who have different opinions on such questions as our opponents.  Christian circles can be tainted by a winner-takes-all mentality.  God wants me to come out on top because God has assured me that I am right.  And that means it\u2019s time for you to get in line with the truth \u2013 which means coming around to my way of seeing things.

The very idea that I should sacrifice my convictions to make life easier for people with less-than-ideal opinions seems ridiculous. 

But that is unquestionably what Scripture commands us to do. 

One of the most dramatic illustrations of this is reported in Acts 15, the account of what has come to be known as the Jerusalem Council.  It\u2019s easy for us to forget that the most urgent question for the early church is something that no longer even appears on our radar:  If Gentiles want to follow Jesus, do they first have to become Jews?   This was a spiritual question of volcanic explosiveness.  Within 20 years of the resurrection, the matter of where Gentiles stood with God had become a kind of magma chamber that threatened to blow the young church apart.

Jewish followers of Jesus had grown up knowing that the Messiah, who was himself a Jew, had been sent to the people of Israel.  Surely every Old Testament law and tradition remained supremely important, and ought to be a part of the life of every one of the Messiah\u2019s followers.

But that\u2019s not the message that Gentiles were hearing from missionaries like Paul.

Think about it:  If I\u2019m a Gentile male and I hear this news that is so wonderful I can hardly believe it\u2019s true \u2013 that the Creator of the universe loves me, and sent his Son to help me when I was powerless to help myself, and now he wants to bless me beyond all reason \u2013 do I first have to go and get myself circumcised (which doesn\u2019t sound like much fun) and then scrupulously keep all 613 Old Testament laws for the rest of my life? 

Paul said no.  A number of the Jewish Christians back in Judea said yes.  That was the issue.

The story of the Jerusalem Council is fascinating and well worth reading on your own.  What was the outcome?  The assembled leaders of the early church agreed that Gentiles did not have to jump through any religious hoops in order to become full-fledged followers of Jesus.   It was a spectacular victory for those delivering the Good News beyond the borders of Israel.  Acts 15 is one of the reasons that Christians meet on Sunday in a church instead of on Saturday in a synagogue. 

But there\u2019s a final twist to the story.  The members of the Council agreed to announce their conclusions and recommendations.  \u201cWe should write to [the Gentiles], telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood\u201d (Acts 15:20).

This seems baffling.  The prohibition of sexual immorality makes sense.  But do those other issues really matter?  After assuring the Gentiles they didn\u2019t have to become Jews, why turn around and tell them that they had to honor Jewish taboos about meat? 

The Council was making a plea:  Yes, you\u2019re free to eat whatever you want for dinner.  But please consider making a sacrifice.  Give up any behaviors that might make it hard for your Jewish neighbors to trust Jesus.  In a kosher butcher shop, you would never kill a chicken by wringing its neck.  Its blood had to be drained.  So if a Gentile is sitting down to chicken nuggets prepared in a non-kosher way, Jewish observers would likely be offended.

Yes, we know, said the Council, that you think you\u2019re \u201cright\u201d when it comes to this issue.  But isn\u2019t it better to surrender being right so that someone else might have a better shot at walking with God?

Whatever is on our dinner table isn\u2019t going to make or break our relationship with God.  Why?  Because, as Paul points out in Romans 14:3, food is of secondary importance \u2013 and God has accepted the people who advocate both<\/em>sides<\/em> of this question.   

So what do we do when we when have disagreements with others about non-essential issues?  We choose to do what God does:  We accept each other<\/em>.

The word \u201caccept\u201d comes from the Latin words ad capere<\/em>, which means, \u201cto take to oneself.\u201d  Strange as it may seem, offering acceptance to another human being is actually a form of receiving.  If I accept you, it doesn\u2019t mean that I agree with all of your opinions about every subject.  It does mean that I welcome you into my circle of care and concern.  I take you and your interests \u2013 even though you think differently \u2013 to myself. 

Paul wraps things up in Romans 14:13: \u201cTherefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another.  Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother or sister\u2019s way.\u201d

It\u2019s time to ditch the I\u2019m-right-and-I-know-it attitude when it comes to non-essential matters, and to consider the possibility of raising our hands when asked to sacrifice one of our preferences in order to make life easier for someone else. 

Does that mean we have to have drums in the sanctuary?

Not necessarily.  But then again, you can always say, \u201cPraise God and pass the earplugs!\u201d 
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. For most churches, Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday are the two annual high-water marks for attendance.  Mother\u2019s Day often comes in third.  It has become an opportunity to celebrate the crucial role that parents (especially moms) play in raising up the next generation of Christian disciples.  Years ago I remember standing… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[381,505],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acceptance","tag-non-essentials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1985,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions\/1985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}