Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.—Romans 12:15–16a

This is what I want to say this morning: We are called to, and must therefore strive for, harmony. Rejoicing together, weeping together, living in harmony with one another. We’ll look at rejoicing, we’ll briefly touch on weeping (since I did that last year), and then we’ll look at living in harmony.This is what I want to say this morning: We are called to, and must therefore strive for, harmony. Rejoicing together, weeping together, living in harmony with one another. We’ll look at rejoicing, we’ll briefly touch on weeping (since I did that last year), and then we’ll look at living in harmony.

Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice

I’ll begin right away with something that I deeply regret. Last year, my daughter picked out a gift for her cousin. It was a stuffed animal with a long, winding tail that you could wear like a bracelet. For $15. She picked it out after 30 minutes of scrutinizing all the toys at Target within her price range. To her, it was the perfect gift and she we happy that she found it. But I, being a nasty brute, said to her, “That’s fine, you can get that. But I think it’s a waste of money.”

“Crestfallen” is a word that was coined just for that moment. My heart still aches over my crass stupidity.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice.” What a simple and delightful command. Aren’t you glad that we are commanded to rejoice? God wants us to rejoice.

But it’s not always so easy or enjoyable, is it? As humans, sometimes we’d rather sulk. We find more enjoyment in griping and complaining and gritting our teeth until they crack than we do in rejoicing. Sometimes we wish the command was, “Only go to the birthday parties that you wanna go to.”

What is rejoicing? Like weeping, the command to rejoice is both an internal and external command. Inside: Feel the joy. Outside: Clap your hands; jump around; shout with glee!

I’m not very good at rejoicing. I can’t dance because I’m too self conscious. I can’t clap in rhythm for very long. Some people clap on 2 and 4 like they’re supposed to. Others clap on 1 and 3. But I clap on 0 and sometimes 5. I love parties, but mostly I just like to eat all the expensive snacks and beat people at word games. 

The Bible doesn’t tell us exactly how to rejoice … so I’ve taken to making lots of food and watching people eat it. That’s how I rejoice. Other cultures are great at rejoicing. Carnival in Brazil lasts for nine days! Chinese New Year in Taiwan is celebrated for over three weeks. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth took only one day, but it took 14 months to prepare and cost an estimated $51 million dollars.

Pastor Matthew Westerholm leads the way for us each week as we rejoice together in the gospel. And I’d love to see our small groups, circles of friends, and families grow in learning how to rejoice. As Christians, we have so much to rejoice over!

Rejoicing is a natural response. When we experience a victory in our lives, we are naturally moved to rejoicing. Rejoicing is the response to gladness in our hearts. 

But what about rejoicing with others? When there is a victory or accomplishment in someone else’s life, how are our hearts moved?

What does it take to rejoice together? We hate to admit it, but sometimes our first reaction is envy or jealousy. 

• “Oh yay, you got engaged.”
• “Oh yay, you got a new job with better pay.”
• “Oh yay, you’re having a baby. Just like everybody else.”
• “Oh yay, you have enough money to buy a house.”

In all of these occasions to rejoice, we think first of ourselves. “What about me? When will something good happen to me?”

Rejoicing with those who rejoice is a costly command to obey. What does it cost us? It costs us our own selves, in at least two ways. 

1. Rejoicing with others costs us our isolation. 
Sometimes we just love to do our own thing. We love to make choices with our own best in mind. But intrinsic to the command to rejoice with those who rejoice is the command to live in community with one another. To share our lives deeply with each other. The command is not only to “Like” one another’s social media post or to “LOL” each others’ comments. New Testament rejoicing with one another requires that your life becomes  entwined with the lives of other believers. 

2. Rejoicing with others costs us our conceit. 
In order to be fully invested in the rejoicing of another person, you need to step into that person’s story. To feel the height of their excitement, you need to know the depths from which they are rising. To know the benefit of the gain they have received, you need to feel the lack that was in their life. To feast with them on the spoils of their victory, you need to experience with them the poverty of their losses. 

God does not call us to temper or minimize the rejoicing of another. In fact, he calls us to magnify their rejoicing by doubling the number of people who are rejoicing: from one person alone to two people together.

Now, before I turn a very joyful command into a laborious chore, let’s remember, God is calling us to deep mutual rejoicing. That’s a gracious and wonderful command from God.

In the kitchen last Sunday, I had the marvelous opportunity to work with members of the Hispanic Fellowship making pupusas in the kitchen. About 15 minutes into our work, Krista Coronado said, “We need some music!” So instead of turning on my usual choices — the lonesome twang of Johnny Cash or prophetic whinings of Bob Dylan — I turned on some Salsa. Everyone came alive! I was invited into their rejoicing while they made 500 pupusas for Sunday Brunch.

As a multi-ethnic church, we’ve got to learn how to rejoice with other people! Latinos open their homes and their kitchens and their hearts and stay up late! Taiwanese cook and eat and cook and eat and go out to eat when they’re done eating! (I once asked my Caucasian friend Jeanette, who attended a Chinese church for a few years, what her experience was like, and she said. “Well, they always talked about food and I didn’t know what to say.” I replied, “You had a true Asian experience!”) People that shop at Target rejoice by buying wooden plaques that say “Live, Laugh, Love!” Cameroonians will put on their best clothes and gather in a big hall and make you feel just like family way into the early hours of the morning.

As a church, let’s grow in learning all the different ways in which people rejoice with one another.

Weep With Those Who Weep

Though the second half of verse 15, “Weep with those who weep,” is a monumental commandment, I won’t say a lot about it today, since I’ve devoted an entire sermon to it last year. But I will say this. Just as “weeping with those who weep” is an act of love for one another, so is “rejoicing with those who rejoice.” As members of the same body, we are called to love one another in at least these two ways specifically. 

When it comes to knowing things about stuff, I am not the sharpest marble in the deck at Bethlehem, so this week I reached out to Richie Stark and Jason Meyer for some help on the Greek and the literary devices used in this passage.

Pastor Richie confirmed that we are indeed looking at imperatives, even though the Apostle Paul uses the infinitive forms. In other words, the commands “rejoice” and “weep” are actually more literally translated “to rejoice” and “to weep,” but it’s right to understand them as commandments. 

To Pastor Jason, I asked this question: “Is there a term for the idea of naming the two extremes of a situation to connote ‘the whole’? Specifically, I want to say that the commands ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ are put together in order to join both ends of the emotional spectrum together and communicate ‘All of life’.” 

Pastor Jason responded: “It is typically called synecdoche. A part stands for the whole or two parts stand for the whole — or in this case the high and the low represent all points in between or ‘all of life.’”

So what’s the conclusion?

Put together, these two commandments are really a reference to the fact that, whether we are feeling low, high, or anything in between, we should go through all of it together. In other words, we are commanded to live in harmony. And this brings us to verse 16.

Live in Harmony

Now, it’s worth saying here that our chosen translation of the Bible, the English Standard Version, translates the text for its essence, not its literal meaning. Literally, the text says, “The same, towards one another, agree in mind.” Now this may sound like the Bible that Yoda translated, but that would be a pretty literal translation. Is the ESV translation bad or untrustworthy? By no means! After studying these words over and over, round and round, I came to the same conclusion. Paul’s command to have the same mind among yourselves means, in essence, “Live in harmony with one another.”

So for this verse, I want us to look at the actual words that Paul wrote, and then I want us to consider how to live the essence of what he’s commanding.

What are Paul’s words? Paul is saying, “agree together, cherish the same views, savor the same things” with one another. Those are the definitions that are widely agreed upon for the verb that Paul uses.

Let’s begin with two denials about what Paul commands us to do. By calling us to have the same mind as one another, Paul is not calling us to have the same personal preferences or styles. Paul is not commanding us to be identical copies of one another. In fact, it’s the recognition of our differences that causes Paul to give us the commands of rejoicing and weeping with one another in the first place. Paul does not call or expect us to live the same experiences. The church is a remarkable entity precisely because it is unified despite its amazingly different members. 

Did you know that God saves people from all sorts of backgrounds?

In just these past three months, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a man who had been separated from his wife and children, living with another woman, even involved in witchcraft, when the Lord suddenly called him to Himself. The man walked away from his old life entirely—he’s now worshiping God and has even begun to repair his relationship with his wife, who has been waiting and patiently praying for him.

I’ve met another man who, in his early adult life, starting using drugs and alcohol and got mixed up with Satanists. One day he woke up in the hospital with a massive head injury, and he lost the control of his left eye. But God sent his aunt to him to pray for him, and God called that man to Himself. And he is now on fire for the Lord.

I’ve met a woman who was suddenly and inexplicably healed of a chronic autoimmune disease. She said to me, “I keep forgetting that I don’t have to deal with that any more.” 

I’ve met a dear sister who just this past year was fighting an addiction to meth, and the Lord freed her from addiction and brought her to Himself.

I’ve met a woman who rebelled against her family and insisted on marrying a man that everyone warned her about, who eventually became an abusive husband, and the Lord rescued her and her daughter from a dangerous situation. 

And each one of these glorious stories come to sit right here, in these seats, and worship at our side. And God is able to build one single, unified church from all of these different people!

So what does Paul call us to when he says “have a mind/think/feel” the “same” as one another? Yes, doctrine. But also love for God and one another. Compassion. Understanding. Empathy.

What Paul is calling us to is harmony. That’s why the ESV translated it this way. Though we are different, we are called to live in harmony with one another.

What is harmony? Can some of us weep while others dance? Are each of us expected to carry our own burden? Or rejoice alone? Should we sing “Happy Birthday” to ourselves? Or throw ourselves a huge graduation party and eat all 48 deviled eggs by ourselves? (As a portly Asian, I would feel responsible to do that.)

As a musician and worship pastor, Allan Wiltshire II says, “It’d be great to have everything sound good all the time, but, sometimes you have things that are dissonant, but the dissonance is never meant to be a stopping point. So we land on something dissonant, going to something that’s more consonant, or pleasant to hear. Putting these different things together, we end up with what we call a Progression. And using progressions of tensions, release, consonance, dissonance, is how we work through the whole idea of harmony.”

Do we want progress at Bethlehem in living in harmony with one another? Are we willing to go through tension and release with one another? We love the consonance; are we willing to keep going when we hit the dissonance? Do we really want harmony in our church?

Paul expects and therefore commands that there be harmony in God’s church. It is not okay to leave one another in a state of discord. If you’re not there yet with someone in the church, keep going! Press on until there is a place of mutual understanding with one another. Even if there is not agreement about the facts, let there be at least peace and understanding toward one another. 

Because God calls us to harmony, we must therefore strive for it. And it’s gonna take some work. That work begins with listening to one another and growing in what William R. Miller, in his book, Listening Well: The Art of Empathetic Listening, calls “accurate empathy” (which means “feeling in,” versus sympathy, which means “feeling with”). Accurate empathy is …

Getting a right understanding of what another person is thinking, feeling, experiencing, and meaning…. Once learned, accurate empathy really is a precious gift that you can give to others. For the speaker, this gift has several important values. First of all, it communicates the listener’s caring and respect even without directly saying it: “You matter to me. I want to understand what you mean and I am willing to take the time to know you better. What you say and mean is important to me.” Secondly, it helps the speaker feel heard and understood. There is no need to keep saying the same thing over and over again because the listener clearly gets it. And at least as important is a third value, that it helps speakers explore and more clearly understand their own experience.

I think that this accurately describes the kind of work that we need to do with and for one another at Bethlehem.

To help us take just one step in this direction, I’d like to share some of my own story with all of you. 

A few months ago, guest teacher Kyle J. Howard challenged a room full of Downtown Bethlehem leaders with the idea that largely white churches who deeply desire ethnic diversity in their church (that’s us, by the way) often fall into first requiring ethnic minorities to take on White cultural norms before they are accepted into the church.

As a Chinese man, who is really quite comfortable in a largely White church, I began to ask myself, “Did White society ever require me to be less Chinese and take on White cultural norms, before I could be accepted?”

Now, before I answer that, I wonder if you’d be willing to take a moment to examine your heart. What are you feeling right now? Does my question create dissonance in your heart and mind? Is there tension that needs to be released? If I’m honest with you, it was upsetting to me to have to think about this. But I think it’s a really important question. And I want you to enter with me into its answers in my life.

I believe that my very first encounter with White culture in America was when I was a preschooler at First Baptist Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was offered a cookie, which I declined by saying, “No.” The Sunday School teacher very kindly corrected me, “You should say, ‘No, thank you.’”

I remember this very clearly. I remember how the juxtaposition of those two ideas, “No” and “Thank you” felt so strange to me. So foreign. Unnatural. And I also remember feeling guilty that I had done something wrong. Like I stepped out of line and disrespected an adult when I didn’t try to do anything bad. 

You see, I didn’t grow up in a home where I was taught to say, “No, thank you.” We didn’t even really say “no.” There’s not a clean translation from Chinese into English for the word “no.” So my mom never taught me “manners” in a way that my wonderful White Sunday School teacher could understand. But I was held to those standards anyway. Understandably. That day, I began to be aware that I had to be prepared for the consequences of little cultural missteps everyday. It wasn’t enough to be my Chinese self in White American society. I needed to learn and grow. I needed to adapt.

The next year, I enrolled in kindergarten at Monte Vista Elementary School. On the first day that roll was called, the teacher read my name from the class list: Ming-Jinn Tong. The kids snickered. They would joke that Chinese parents kicked an empty can down the stairs and recorded the sound it made to name their kids. I was ashamed by the sound of my own name. So I named myself Michael to fit in. To hide my Chineseness. As an adult, I wear my Chinese heritage on the back of my head. 

But I wonder, when I’m face to face with you, if I’m still afraid to use the name that my own parents proudly gave me.

I enrolled in a new school near Washington DC in 5th grade. The administration hadn’t even met me, but it was determined that I was required to take an English proficiency test before I could begin classes. I remember being so nervous that I would fail and wouldn’t be able to participate in a normal classroom. I was so anxious that I called a feather a leaf and I thought, “I’m done for.” (It was a very ambiguous drawing, by the way.)

I remember being in 10th grade Biology when my teacher played “Name That Band” with our class. “Mick Jagger and ____________.” Then he added, “If you don’t know this one, you’re not even alive.” My family didn’t listen to American rock and roll. Did this mean that I was disqualified from being American? Or that I wasn’t alive? At that moment I didn’t feel very alive.

At Bethlehem, can we do the work of growing in accurate empathy together? Can you feel with me the things I felt, without trying to find a way to get out of it? I’d like for us to do that. As we listen and grow in mutual understanding with one another, we are obeying the command of Romans 12 to have the same mind. And that gives us the footing to begin to live in harmony with one another.

But maybe you’re thinking, “I am obeying this already. I don’t need to advance in living in harmony. I’m not harming anyone, I’m a peaceful person. This message is not for me.” 

I want to share one last story with you. This rock [showing a small stone as an illustration] isn’t big enough to illustrate my sin. Last week, God pulled this one [a boulder] from my heart.

I had taken some of my kids to the Mall of America to ride the rollercoasters. While in line, there was a group of 5–6 African American kids one lap behind us. But they didn’t walk through the line, they scooted along on top of the metal railing. They were laughing and leaning back and kind of blocking others from being able to stand in line in the aisles next to them. In my heart, I thought to myself, “These kids are being rude to those around them.”

Well, right next to them, the very next group, was a group of about 5–6 white girls, just a few years younger, doing the same exact thing and my first thought was, “Oh how cute, they’re having so much fun.” That’s when God pulled this rock right out of my chest [turning the boulder around to show what is written on it: “I am racist”].

How do I know that there is work to do in this church? Because there’s work to do in my own heart. What is the biggest problem in this church? I am.

Downtown Deacon Andrew Sheard writes: “The Bible gives a command. But our life experience tells us that those around us fail to constantly live in harmony, and (if we are honest) we ourselves constantly fail to live in harmony with others. So where does that leave us?”

That’s a good question, Andrew. There is help for us.

Paul’s command in Romans 12 is not unique; he gives us the same command, using the same exact verb in Philippians 2:2, “Make my joy complete by being of the same mind.” But in Philippians, it comes with some news: “This mind was also in Christ Jesus.”

So here’s our final question: How does the fact that Jesus had this same mind (that we are called to have with one another) help us in our pursuit of living in harmony?

1. Jesus is our example.
Jesus’ life fully illustrates the mind that we are called to have. Jesus’ mind had its sameness with God the Father. And his harmony with his father led him to live this life for us:

That though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.—Philippians 2:5–8

Jesus didn’t just practice accurate empathy, he lived actual embodiment. Far beyond just “feeling in,” Jesus “lived in” our experience. Let’s be like Jesus. Let’s humble ourselves fully in pursuit of rejoicing, weeping, and loving one another.

2. Jesus is our salvation. 
Jesus’ death and resurrection opens the door and invites us in to rejoice with those who rejoice.

The call to trust in Jesus’ death for the payment of our sin and to worship God is the call to enter into the most epic rejoicing that has ever existed: We are called to enter into the rejoicing of the Triune God. In other words, Jesus invites us to participate in the joy that God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit have with one another.

Jesus’ death paid the penalty for our sin [the boulder of sin is covered with a red cloth], and gives us the mind we need to live in harmony with one another.