Today as we sit around these tables together (worship this day was in the Fellowship Hall with the round tables set up for the picnic which followed immediately after the service) and worship, we’re experiencing a different view of worship. First of all we’re not all just looking at the backs of each other’s heads! We’re seeing each other face to face as together, with one heart, we worship Christ. This face to face view gives us a chance to look around and see who’s here. We get to see who we’re worshipping God together with.
As we have this unique view I’d like you to do something. Look around and take note of who you are missing today. Just glance around and see who’s here and who isn’t. Let me ask you to write down one or maybe two names of the people you are missing being here. Now, perhaps you might give a call to the folks you’ve written down to let them know that you missed them today. No, I’m not asking you to be the worship police but this is a way of looking out for each other.
As Christians we’re called together to travel this path through life. Like in the gospel lesson today, Jesus sent His disciples out in pairs. The pairs of disciples that Jesus sent out are why I suggested you write down just one or two names. Those disciples in the gospel lesson were sent out together so they could encourage and help each other on the journey. Well, we too can look out for each other. And like today in this unique setting when you notice somebody missing, your giving them a call to let them know they were missed can be a help and a support to them.
As we travel the path through this life together as Christians we do so because that’s one of the things that this gospel lesson teaches us – we are not alone on this path. That not alone has been our theme for sometime now. And in the newsletter for this month we looked at a new theme from Romans 15:6 with one heart; with one heart and mouth we glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is with one heart that today we sit together, that we see each others faces and we join together in giving glory to God. So our new theme for the next 6 months will be with one heart.
Now another thing about this journey together as Christians is that we are to bear one another’s burdens. That’s what Paul tells us that in the Galatians passage today. This bearing with one another – I want us to unpack that idea a bit.
On one hand it could mean that I as a Christian, am to take on the cares of the other person. That it’s up to me to remove a burden from their shoulders and put it on mine. But I think after doing some reading in Luther’s writings I think there’s another way to look at this idea of bearing with one another’s burdens.
I think that it has to do with the grace that God first gives us. As we said, we journey together with one heart in Christ and that’s because Christ has called us together and made us His own by grace through faith alone. Bearing one another burdens isn’t so much about my taking on your problems but rather has to do with forgiving one another. It has to do with looking past those things that make it difficult to get along together.
It seems that since God, for Christ sake, has made a way to look past my faults and difficulties, it seems that we should rely on His grace to guide us in overlooking each other’s faults as well.
So I think that this bearing one another’s burdens has to do with how my outlook on life should reflect what God has chosen to do for me. God for Christ’s sake has chosen to live with me, to have a relationship with me, to bear with me though my sins make me a burden. Well, in the same way as He bears with me, I’m to reflect that same grace to others. God for Christ’s sake sees past my burden of sin, in fact, in Christ, He has removed it. I think it is, in that ‘looking past’ that we bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ as Paul says today.
We are to overlook the shortcomings and faults of others just as God for the sake of Jesus blood, looks past our own. That’s the only way we’re able to get through our days isn’t it? Otherwise our guilt would overwhelm us. So we rely on God's grace to get us past our sin. As we understand it, God’s grace renews and refreshes us day-by day and moment by moment as we rely on Him.
And, by the way, we need to be stubborn about claiming the forgiveness that’s ours in Jesus Christ. We need be stubborn about leaving our sins at His cross because Christ has died to take them from us. So we each need to see ourselves as truly forgiven. As often as we see our sin reflected to us, like in a mirror, we need to come back to the cross. Every time. We need to be as persistent in receiving God's grace, as Satan is in throwing our sins in our face.
That daily grace of God is the source of our ability to bear with one another –we do so with others, because God does so with us. Bearing one another’s burdens is central to the idea that we live together with one heart in Christ. With one heart we live together in the sight of God. With one heart we care for one another and look out for one another. With one heart we’re reminded that others are bearing with us through our faults, foibles and shortcomings.
So let me tell you a story about overlooking things in each other. At her Golden Wedding celebration, one grandmother told her guests the secret of her happy marriage: “On my wedding day,” she said, “I decided to make a list of 10 of my husband’s faults which, for the sake of our marriage, I would overlook.”
As the guests were leaving, a young woman whose marriage had recently been in difficulty and was hoping it might help, asked the grandmother what some of the faults were that she had seen fit to overlook. Grandmother said, "To tell you the truth, my dear, I never did get around to listing them. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, 'Lucky for him that’s one of the 10!' "
Like grandmother, we do not blindly overlook the faults in each other. But we do it for the sake of love as she did. Only for us it is for the sake of the love that God has shown us. We look past the faults of others deliberately as God does… for the sake of the blood of Jesus Christ. We look past the faults of others as He looks past our sins.
And that, by the way, is the message we have to tell others; that God looks past everyone’s sins, faults and errors because, and only because, of the blood of Jesus. For that reason alone God sees His creation as pure, clean and sinless.
So, as we Christians journey on the road of life together we’re to live as though the grace that God has shown us individually really means something. We are to live that forgiveness with each other. In that way we bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
OK then, how do we practice that? How do you apply looking past each others faults and getting along together? Well first is, we don’t go comparing ourselves to others to see how we measure up; that’s the wrong standard. Like Paul said in the 4th and 5th verses, we’re to test our own actions and bear our own load. We can’t bear with one another if we are trying to feel superior to one another.
No, we’re to be compared to just what’s in our own mirror – so to speak. We get measured by ourselves before God. When we test ourselves in this way and not by comparing ourselves to each other, we know that we fail. And that drives us again, stubbornly, back to the cross for forgiveness.
But here’s a thought: let’s use our real mirrors. Use your mirror to see yourself as forgiven and not condemned and in that way we can learn to look at others the same way. Put these words up on your mirror at home: "For Christ’s sake, I see myself as forgiven". Put that on the mirror you look at each morning. Put those words, 'For Christ’s sake I see myself as forgiven', and then take that as your attitude into the day ahead.
That then becomes a way of not comparing yourself to others. So we’re going to look in the mirror and see a person who, for Christ’s sake, is forgiven. That person, you, then sees others as forgiven also. That mirror teaches you to look past the other person’s faults and in so doing, you are able to bear one another’s burdens as God tells us today.
That knowledge of daily forgiveness will change your view of the people in your day. Because you know you are welcome into the throne room of heaven to stand before God, pure and spotless, so are they. On this journey we do bear each others' burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Let’s engage in that as we engage each other. Let’s, as the disciples were sent out, support each other and care for each other - together with one heart in Christ.