Epiphany 4 – I Corinthians 8:1-13

January 29, 2006

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

 

Corinth must have been a very colorful city in Paul’s day.  Some of the things that Paul addresses in his letters to the Corinthians really make you wonder.  If we read in-between the lines of these famous letters, we come up with a picture of a city that makes the underbelly of New York City look relatively tame.  The issues were different, that’s for sure, but the flavor or shall we say ambience was similar.

 

One of the big concerns for the Christians of Paul’s day was that of eating food sacrificed to idols.  This is hardly one of the burning issues in today’s world.  In fact, we no doubt might be tempted to wonder either what on earth is Paul talking about or just take a big yawn and say who cares.  I mean really, with all that is going on in today’s world, you can’t seriously expect me to get worked up about eating food sacrificed to idols!

 

So what is the big deal?  The question Paul is addressing is this: “Ought we to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols?”  While we may be clueless as to what Paul is even talking about, in his day, this was a major concern.  In Paul’s Corinth, there was a common practice of sacrificing animals to the Greco-Roman gods.  After the animal was sacrificed, some of the flesh was burned on the altar.  Some of the meat was then eaten in a cultic meal, most likely a large festive occasion.  The rest of the meat was taken to the local butcher for sale to the public.  The problem arose because of social circumstances in which a non-Christian might invite a Christian to dinner and serve meat that had been sacrificed to idols?  As we might imagine, this presented a challenging situation.  After all, the meat didn’t look different.  So the poor Christian guest is put into that ever awkward social situation of questioning the food that is offered: “Oh, by the way, is this meat that was sacrificed to idols?  If it is, I can’t possibly eat it because I am a Christian and Christians do not do such awful things!  Sorry!” 

 

Even Paul, at first, seems to make light of this whole issue of eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols. “All of us know that really aren’t any idols.  We know that there is only one God so who cares if the meat has been offered to some non-existent Greek god?  How could anyone be so intellectually weak as to be the least bit concerned about food offered to idols? I mean really!”

 

For us, this particular issue might be a big yawn.  After all, the practice of sacrificing animals is a non-issue, and if someone were to try to do it, the animal rights groups more than the church would be all over them.  Given this, how does this passage speak to us in today’s world?  To explore that, we have to return to the first phrase of today’s reading: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  What a claim!  Certainly not something that is going to impress a college admissions staff!  But Paul says this, because love is more important than knowledge.  Those who have a mature faith, and truly understand that meat sacrificed to idols is a non-issue, must love the other people in the church community enough to be able to accompany them in their faith development. 

 

The larger issue that Paul addresses is that of the “holier than thou.”  This would be: “Well, my faith is really strong and I know that the whole idea of meat sacrificed to idols is ridiculous so I’m just going to eat my meat and not be concerned.”  Now this attitude might work, it just might be okay, if we were living in a vacuum and didn’t have any interaction with other people.  But then Paul addresses the issue of being with the brothers and sisters who are, at least what he says, “weaker in their faith”. After almost dismissing the concerns of these “weaker sisters and brothers” who were so upset about whether or not to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols, Paul makes a turnaround and puts the whole situation into a distinctly Christian context.  He says to those who don’t have an issue, to those who are strong in their faith, so strong, in fact, that all of this seems to be an incredibly trivial argument - to this group he says: “take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block for the weak”.  This is a profound way of thinking – a way of thinking that is absolutely radical in terms of the care and concern of others.  It is a powerful view of community.

 

Alright, let’s take this to an issue that is alive in today’s world.  Now this may seem incredibly silly but I think it will help us to understand what Paul is talking about, so we are going to jump ahead some 2000 years to the church coffee hour!

 

Some of us are trying to change our eating patterns from a lot of sweets and carbohydrates to healthier food.   When the coffee hour snack table has healthier choices such as fruit, we, at least, have a chance of making a good choice. The larger church body is helping us by giving us some options.  But when the only choice is doughnuts or when these delicious homemade lime squares, which were on the table one Sunday - when goodies such as this show up and they are the only option, we are doomed!  Some people in our congregation do not have to be concerned about what they are eating – they are mature in their ability to deal with food, but others of us, who are weaker when it comes to food, need the help of the larger body.

 

St. Paul often talks about the Christian community in terms of being on a continuum.  In his view, some people are more developed and mature in their faith than others.  He talks about how some people need milk because they are not ready for solid food.  Paul tells us that people have different measures of faith. Some are “babies in faith.” Their moral consciousness is not strongly formed or fully instructed.  But then there are those who are mature in faith.  They have a well formed understanding of what the Christian faith is all about.  We know from other sections of Corinthians that Paul thinks there are a lot of “babies in faith” among the Christians in Corinth.  In kind, Paul advises the Corinthians that as they make choices they must be careful not to harm those among them who may be less mature and therefore, more susceptible to influence.  The mature in faith must factor into their moral deliberation not only how their contemplated action will impact them and their relationship to God but also how such an action might affect another believer who is less mature in faith.  The mature in faith are capable of making well thought out decisions for which they are responsible.  But those with a less developed faith learn from those who are farther along the road.  The mature in faith are not only responsible for themselves and their own actions, they are responsible for each other and the way their actions are an example for others.   In other words, the whole idea of modeling is crucial to the health of a Christian community.  Paul’s notion of community challenges the modern inclination to privatize our relationship with God.  The way that we interpret our faith is not just about each of us individually, it is about all of us as a body.  It is about all of us as a community.

In contemporary American society, most of us make decisions on the basis of what is right for me as an individual.  We take little responsibility beyond the individual.  Our whole society seems to be built on the notion of giving all of us the maximum amount of freedom to get whatever we want as long as we don’t bump into someone else who is also trying to get what they want.  Paul challenges this very notion of individualism. He reworks the whole idea of who is weak and who is strong.  Society thinks that those who are self-sufficient as strong. But Paul would call such people weak because they have been seduced by the ethos of looking out for number one. Why should those who are number one care about number two?  Paul is saying that the only way we will truly thrive is by caring about the other.   We see this right now in all that is happening in some segments of the car industry.  Whatever is going to happen at a certain car company will have an impact on all segments of society from shopkeepers and teachers to people on the street.  No one will be left unscathed.  For better or worse all of life is connected. Those of us from the Northwest know well the story of Boeing crashing in the 1970’s.  It is hard to believe now because Seattle is such a thriving city but at that particular point, when Boeing too a nose dive, there was a bill board on the way to the airport that read: “Will the last one to leave Seattle, turn off the lights?”  People at my former church in Seattle, who own homes that are now worth in the millions, told me stories of how in the low times, they bought view property for 10,000!  The core community of die hard Seattleites committed themselves to a joint effort of bringing the city back to life and so they did.

 

In today’s reading from Corinthians, which seems so remote and irrelevant on the surface, Paul calls us to work with this reality of the interconnectedness of the life, to live with the other in mind, to be a beacon of hope and strength to all.