August 24, 2025
As Christ Has Welcomed Us
Romans 15:1-13 & Genesis 18:1-15
When I left college, I went to work for a church on a one-year contract in Leesburg, VA, just outside of DC. It was a quick start, and when I first arrived, I needed a place to live while I figured out my next steps. A family from the church offered me a room in the lower-level of their home. I planned to be there for two months, but then 9/11 happened. And everything felt tenuous, and they offered that I could stay there for the whole year.
Living there became much than just renting the room. For a time, they became like family to me, meals, weekends, parties. Their home became a place to belong as I discerned my next steps. Recently, the couple sold the house to downsize, and when I saw the listing pictures online, I was remined how grateful I am that they welcomed me into their lives, literally made room for me, even when they had two children at home and plenty on their plate.
Making Room
Today we’re beginning a year-long theme called “Making Room” that will guide our worship, preaching, and much of our programming over the next twelve months. The six-week series that starts today focuses specifically on making room for one another, but this theme will expand throughout the year as we explore what it means for the church to create space – space for new people, space for questions, space for growth, space for God’s Spirit to work in ways that might surprise us.
The theme connects directly to who we are as FPC Asheville. Nine years ago, during a session retreat, we developed our mission statement: to experience the boundary-breaking love of Christ by practicing radical hospitality, forming deep relationships, and joining in shared ministry. Those three commitments have continued to guide us ever since.
The first one – radical hospitality – remains a touchstone for us because we believe that hospitality is at the heart of the gospel and the boundary breaking love of Christ. What is hospitality?
Brené Brown puts it this way: “Radical hospitality is not about creating a space where people feel comfortable, but creating a space where people feel welcomed.” There’s a difference.
Comfort is about creating a space that’s agreeable, where you don’t face tensions or challenges, awkwardness is avoided.
Welcome is about being seen, valued, and embraced for who you are – imperfections included, tensions and challenges expected, some awkwardness along the way.
Radical hospitality means making room to belong, at tables, in pews, in groups, in conversations, in prayers, in life.
This theme feels important because the divisions in our world are so evident. We are divided by so much: politics, economics, race, nationality, culture. Our disagreements are real and matter, but our divisions are intensified by our political climate; and they are magnified by our media. This feels urgent, I know, but it isn’t a new story. It goes back to Cain and Abel, and the first chapters of Genesis.
The story of our faith is the story of what God has done to reconcile our divisions. The gospel is a declaration of our unity in Christ and a call to make that unity visible in our life together. Every single one of Paul’s letters in the New Testament one is an appeal for unity.
In our text today, Romans 15:7, Paul writes: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” This is our touchstone for this theme of making room.
It isn’t just advice for getting along better. It’s a summary of the gospel. This is God’s plan for a new human family – a community where divisions are transcended and God is praised because people who were once separated now live together in peace.
To understand where this story starts, we need to go back to an ancient story about a tent, some unexpected visitors, and an act of welcome.
Abraham and Three Messengers
In Genesis 18, we find Abraham sitting at the entrance to his tent during the heat of the day. Three strangers appear on the horizon, and Abraham’s response is immediate and extravagant. The Hebrew text says he “ran” to meet them – an elderly man sprinting across the desert sand to greet people he’s never seen before.
“My lord,” he says, “if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves.”
A little water. A little bread. But then Abraham goes further. He rushes to Sarah and says, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” He runs to the herd, selects a calf “tender and good,” and gives it to a servant to prepare hastily. What started as “a little bread” becomes a feast.
This kind of hospitality wasn’t unusual in ancient Near Eastern culture. Welcoming strangers was considered a sacred obligation. But there’s something more happening here. Abraham welcomes these visitors with an eagerness, an abundance, that suggests something more important.
And he’s right because these aren’t ordinary travelers. Turns out, they’re messengers from God. These visitors have come to announce that Sarah will bear a child – Isaac, the child through whom, as God promised Abraham years earlier, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Here’s the theological meaning in this story: Abraham’s radical welcome becomes an encounter where he makes room for God and receives God’s promise. The visitors he entertains at his table are the ones who announce Isaac’s birth. Isaac, also called Israel, is the child of promise through whose lineage the blessing will flow to all nations.
Paul’s Vision: Welcome as New Creation
Fast forward fifteen hundred years to the apostle Paul writing to Christians in Rome. The early church was wrestling with a fundamental challenge: what does it mean for Jews and non-Jews to worship together? The ancient world was very tribal. Jews and Romans and other nationalities were distinct communities, cultures, peoples, marked by boundaries, culture, status, and power.
Those who followed Jesus were becoming one community and faced all the tensions and challenges that ensued.
In Romans 15, Paul addresses this tension directly. He talks about “the strong” and “the weak” – terms that probably refer to Jewish Christians who felt bound by dietary laws and holy days, and Gentile Christians who felt free from these observances.
The “strong” looked down on the “weak:” “they’re so bound by their rules.” The “weak” judged the “strong” as compromising: “they don’t understand things like we do.” There was mutual judgment and division.
Paul’s response is to command genuine neighbor love: “We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.”
And then he brings the whole gospel to bear on their lives: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
The Greek word Paul uses for “welcome” is προσλαμβάνω – it means to take someone into your family, to receive them not as guests but as members of your household. Not comfort, but welcome. Full incorporation, quirks, tensions, challenges, and all.
“As Christ has welcomed you.” How has Christ welcomed us? Unconditionally. Extravagantly. While we were still sinners. Before we got our act together. With all our baggage and blindness and brokenness.
Our Practice: Making Room in Concrete Ways
So what does this look like in practice? How do we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us? It starts with recognizing that the sacred and the mundane are more connected than we usually imagine.
It shows up in things like parking. When you arrive at church and see a prime parking spot, do you take it? Or, if you can, do you park a block away so that someone else looking for a place to park – especially someone who has mobility challenges, or who has young children, or who is clearly visiting for the first time – can have that space. Choosing the less convenient spot is a small act of welcome. It says, “There’s room here for yo
It shows up in our worship. We all have preferences – songs that move us, styles that we like, things about a service that resonate with us or that don’t. But when we worship together, we’re creating space for different tastes, different generations, different needs, different ways of encountering God. The hymn that leaves you cold might be the song that brings someone else to tears. Making room means choosing “what others need” over “what I like.”
And it can go beyond worship. Some of you are mature Christians with a strong spiritual framework. You know the books of the Bible, you understand the language of worship, the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles Creed. That religious scaffolding is there and is a framework for you to lean on or push against.
But others are just beginning to construct that framework. They have questions about basic things. They need help finding the text we’re reading. They need to read the words printed for the Lord’s Prayer. They need to say the Apostles’ Creed enough times to learn it. They’re building the scaffolding of faith for the first time. And one day they’ll lean on that scaffolding, and push against it; but they need to build it first.
This is where Paul’s word about seeking the good of the other is a good word for us. Mature Christians who already have the scaffolding of faith, can meet people where they are, the strong helping the weak, the mature helping the young, making room for others.
And of course, those others for whom we make room may have different ideas than we do. Making room extends to how we relate to Christians who see things differently than we do. In our polarized time, it’s easy to write off others who are part of the Christian family: evangelicals are too conservative, Catholics are too institutional. But Paul’s vision reminds us that Christ has welcomed all of us. Our unity isn’t based on agreement – it’s based on Christ’s welcome. Being prayerful and patient about other Christians, rather than judgmental about them, becomes another way we embody the gospel’s reconciling power.
Living the Foundation
Henri Nouwen wrote that “Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.” This is exactly what Christ has done for us. We were strangers to God, even enemies of God in our sin and rebellion. But Christ welcomed us, created free space for us to enter God’s family, transformed us from enemies into friends.
From Abraham’s tent to Paul’s vision, God’s story has always been about turning enemies into friends, about making room. This isn’t peripheral to the gospel; this IS the gospel lived out. When we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us, we’re embodying new creation. We’re participating in God’s ancient promise that through radical hospitality, all nations will come to know divine love.
In chapter 15 of Romans, Paul connects the vision of unity in Christ directly back to Abraham’s story. “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs.”
The same promise that was announced to Abraham in Genesis 18 – that through him all nations would be blessed – is fulfilled through Christ. The tent where Abraham welcomed strangers connects to the cross where Christ makes room for the world in God’s promise.
Paul drives this point home by quoting four different Old Testament passages about Gentiles praising God alongside Israel: “Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name.” “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him.” “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope.”
Paul is describing the new reality that Christ has already inaugurated. Jews and Gentiles worshiping together is a sign that God’s kingdom has broken into history.
Incidentally, connecting with today’s world, this is why the idea of Christian nationalism is so bonkers, such a false ideology. The Gospel isn’t about making one nation Christian or blessing one particular kind of people. The gospel is a promise of unity in Christ for all people, all nations – the Greek word for Gentiles is ethnoi, all ethnicities, nations – all ethnoi one in Christ as one human family.
The church doesn’t create this unity; we reveal the unity that Christ has already accomplished.
Conclusion
Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us, so that all will give praise to God.
The tent is open. The table is set. Christ has welcomed us with extravagant love. Now we get to pass that welcome on.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina