Reformation Sunday
Pentecost 21
26 October 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
HOW CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?
Philippians 1.27-2:11
Paul Thorn is the son-of-a-preacher man as well as a former boxer turned singer-songwriter. Paul was at a family reunion when the realization hit him and the song came to him:
I don’t like half the folks I love.
I know they’ve got good qualities
but the bad ones cover them up.
I don’t like half the folks I love.1
Ever sung that tune?
Jesus’ call to love our neighbors and enemies doesn’t mean we have to like them. The call of Paul in his letter to the Philippians to love and live together in unity can be quite the challenge.
I heard of one man who was having difficulty making the unity thing work in his marriage. He came in for counseling about six months after the wedding and said, “Preacher, I know that we pledged back then to be one, but I didn’t know that she would be the one.”
Country music artist Shania Twain, sounds like the one he married when she sings:
Any man of mine better be proud of me,
even when I’m ugly he still better love me.
I can be late for a date, that’s fine, but he better be on time.
Any man of mine’ll say it fits just right
when last year’s dress is just a little too tight.
Anything I do or say better be okay when I have a bad hair day.
Any man of mine better disagree
when I say another woman’s lookin’ better than me.
And when I cook him dinner and I burn it black
he better say “Mmmmm, I like it like that.”
And if I change my mind a million times
I wanna hear him say, “Yeah, I like it that way.”2
Her philosophy is clear: “My way or the highway.” It’s become the predominant voice in our politics. It’s voice is even raised from time to time in the church. If we’re not careful, we can feel so certain about the rightness of our own perspective that we fail to allow room for our own human error and the truth in another’s perspective.
That’s much different than Paul’s biblical vision of the church, we read earlier about living
together in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the sake of the gospel. And I think it’s more vital than ever for the church to live in this kind of unity. Because if brothers and sisters in Christ cannot get along, what hope is there for the world outside our walls!
While our country grows more and more diverse, we are growing less and less tolerant of differences. We label those who differ from us as crazed idiots – or worse. And our hate speech often leads to violence. We should understand that words are never just words. They carry force. They can empower people to act violently and in cruelty, or sacrificially and compassionately. Whether you consider yourself a conservative or a liberal (labels that only keep us from honest conversation about the issues that matter) or whether you find yourself somewhere in between those unhelpful labels, if you’re a follower of Jesus the violent hatred stirring in our country should break your heart. Our inability to live with difference seen in our cruelty toward those who are different is threatening to tear us apart.
A month ago a former Marine who identifies as a Christian opened fire and then set fire to a Mormon church killing and injuring worshipers who were gathered inside. He said Mormons represented the anti-Christ. A week earlier Charlie Kirk was killed. He had strong opinions about that were racist and false, cruel and insulting, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to be killed. Back in June a Minnesota state representative and her husband were shot to death in their home by a man who held different political views than they did.
Now before we paint these killers with an evil brush, let us realize that the disdain toward those who are different lives in certain dark shades inside each of us and has often been fueled by the language of the church and its arrogant self-righteousness, equating our thoughts with God’s thoughts, believing God hates the same people we do.
There will always be people who believe differently than we do about any issue under the sun. The solution to those differences must never be violence. Under no circumstance can Christians celebrate violence toward other human beings. We do not have to agree with the racist or sexist or political views of others. And we should not be silent in the face of harmful words or cruel injustice toward other human beings. But we cannot resort to violence in the name of Jesus. The gospel will not allow it!
So how do we live together amidst so much diversity? Learning to do so must begin in the church. On this Reformation Sunday, let us ask what reform is required of us in order to be God’s reconciling agents in the world. To start with, the Jesus way of peace and non-violence that must be taught and embodied inside these walls must then spill out over these walls spreading the bright light of God’s love in the dark brokenness of the world’s cruelty.
In his letter to the Philippians Paul says there are some very basic essential actions and attitudes that must be a part of any Christian community, and that while being mocked as weak by the powers of this twisted world can serve as a profound witness to a kingdom not from this world. Godly actions and attitudes like: compassion and sympathy, encouragement and humility, comforting one another with love, considering the needs of others as more important than our own, doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility considering others better than ourselves, looking not to our own interests but to the interests of others, having the mind of Christ among us.
Researcher Robert Bellah and his friends wrote a book 40 years ago entitled Habits of the Heart, in which they issued a warning to all Americans. It is a warning we did not heed, so we still need to hear it. They said that our country has been great because we have held in tension two ideals. One of them being what sociologists have called expressive individualism: doing what seems best to us, letting the individual thrive and prosper. The second ideal is that of duty: a commitment to the common good, a dedication to family and community and our neighbors. They warn us that we have made an idol of the first and neglected the second. We have rampant expressive individualism and almost no sense of duty to the common good or to community. Christ calls us, along with Paul, to monitor our expressive individualism so that it does not eclipse duty to others or run roughshod over community.4
This week I attended a symposium at Mercer University on “The New Macon: Becoming the Beloved Community.” We talked about the things that divide our community racially, educationally, and economically.
On Tuesday night I met a man named Sam Oney. Most of you know him. He was the first black student admitted to Mercer University. He also found a church home in the only white church that would welcome him: Vineville Baptist Church.
At this symposium he had been recognized earlier in the evening, so around dinner time I made my way over to his table. I pardoned myself for interrupting his dinner, then told him I had been wanting to meet him ever since I arrived in Macon last December. And then I told him I was the new pastor at Vineville Baptist Church. He slowly put his fork down and took hold of the table with both hands and sat for a few moments literally unable to speak. It was crowded and noisy so we really couldn’t talk in that moment. But I told him I would love to meet with him sometime. And with tears in his eyes, still unable to speak, he looked up at me and smiled, nodded his head, then reached out and shook my hand.
It was a sacred moment made possible by your welcome of a black student into this congregation when it was quite dangerous to do so. And while I am sure it did not sit well with everyone, Dr. Moore kept his job as pastor and even got a building named after him because at the heart of this congregation is a spirit of compassionate welcome, a desire for Christian unity, and the mind of Jesus Christ.
As Paul seeks to describe the mind of Christ he cannot help but sing what many scholars believe to have been a hymn to Christ from the early church: (Christ) who, though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. A slave, one who serves in such a way that he lets himself into the hands of others. Being born in human likeness, found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross. The ultimate humiliation. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Can you hear the waters of baptism? Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. There it is, the mind of Christ.
When we ask ourselves the question “What is the mind of Christ in this moment?” the beginning of an answer will always have a downward bent, a cruciform shape, a servant heart. For such was the manner of Christ with: Hands that washed feet and touched lepers. Eyes that never looked down upon another. Arms that freely embraced. A smile that broke wide at table with others so that people were made to feel bigger and better than they had ever felt before. His voice was the voice of pure mercy that forgave his enemies even from a cross. His was a heart that broke with sin, sin that he saw devastating people’s lives, tearing apart communities. And his was a heart that restored sinners to dignity and worth and hope. His was a way that refused to play power games to gain advantage. His considerable power he used to lift people up. He sought to build a community of followers where the only thing unwelcome was unwelcome and where the only thing excluded was exclusion. Such is the mind of Christ.
The Christian motto is not: My way or the highway, but Christ’s way above our ways. We are made one as we lift up Christ as Lord of our life together. Sometimes that involves the humility to say, “You know, I was wrong on that one and you were right.”
Two former Tennessee governors – one a Democrat, the other a Republican – have a podcast together called “You May Be Right.” They are seeking to bring decency and humility to our national political conversation.
In the church, a mutual humility happens when we acknowledge those moments when someone may have a better grasp of the mind of Christ on a certain issue and we follow. At another time what we have to offer may be better. Mutual humility and selflessness in pursuit of the mind of Christ – that is our aim. Humility requires the acknowledgment that we cannot fully know the mind of Christ on our own.
“To live” – as the Bible calls us – “a life worthy of the gospel of Christ,”is to live with
compassion and sympathy, encouragement and humility, comforting one another with love, considering the needs of others as more important than our own, doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regarding others as better than ourselves.
Can we agree on that? I pray we can for the sake of God’s beautiful yet broken world – a world that desperately needs that kind of church. Amen.
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- Paul Thorn, “I Don’t Like Half the Folks I Love,” Pimps and Preachers, 2010
- Shania Twain and R. J. “Mutt” Lange, “Any Man of Mine,” The Woman in Me, 1995
- Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Harper and Row, 1985