Scripture Text:
Sermon:
“Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.”
Since I begin with this verse, perhaps some of you are thinking, “Oh, boy- our vegetarian priest is going to preach to us about eating meat.” But really- the meat is hardly the point of what Saint Paul has to say in his letter to the Corinthians. And I’m not here to talk to you about my own diet, which is not fundamentally a religious matter. Today’s epistle is one that can be a little perplexing. It seems to come from a world that is so different from our own that it’s hard to know what exactly Paul is getting at. Meat, idols, liberty, knowledge, weakness and strength- what’s going on here?
Paul was writing to the first Christians in Corinth- a Greek city of the Roman Empire. Corinth was full of temples to various Greek and Roman gods, each with a statue, or idol, which was worshiped by those who came to the temple. After animal sacrifices were offered to the idol, the meat of the animal would be cooked and eaten by the worshipers. And next door to many of the temples were meat markets- where butchers would sell meat to the public- but the meat had first been offered to the idols in the temples. In fact, the butchers were part of a guild affiliated with the temples. So nearly all the meat sold in town was part of this system of pagan sacrifice to idols. To make matters more complicated, the temples often served as gathering places for banquets and civic functions. There was nothing like a “parish hall,” so social events and the like could be held right in the temple. And all the meat at such a banquet came, of course, from the temple butcher.
This posed a problem for these new Christians of Corinth. They had left behind the pagan worship of idols to become Christians. And while most people couldn’t afford to eat very much meat at all, it was still a problem that all the meat available was part of a religion that these new Christians were no longer part of. Was it wrong to eat meat because of the connection to the worship of idols?
Many of the well-off Christians were still a part of the social scene in Corinth. Had there been a newspaper in those days, some of the Christians would have made it into the “society page,” attending those lavish banquets in the temples around town. Others would be scandalized by the idea of their brothers and sisters in Christ eating this meat that was tainted by its idolatrous origins.
So some would avoid meat like the plague and others would go ahead and dig in. Those who feasted in the temples put up an argument like this- We Christians know there is only one God. So the gods of these idols don’t even exist. Therefore the idols have no real meaning, and the meat offered to them is therefore no different from any other meat. It’s just food, one way or the other. So what’s the big deal? But still- it gave scandal to the others in the church. They knew that whether idols were real or not, it just didn’t seem right.
It seems like a completely different world from our own, but I think we have some things in common with these Corinthians. We Episcopalians are known for being pretty open-minded, and not bothering with a lot of the rules other Christians hold dear. We have no rules against drinking or dancing or playing cards, as so many churches have in the past, and as some still do. We don’t set down explicit standards about modesty in dress or grooming. We permit divorce and remarriage, and are in a difficult but open churchwide dialogue about sexual orientation. In most difficult ethical matters, rather than laying down the law with a lot of specifics, we expect our members to educate themselves, think and pray carefully, and come to a well-founded decision. And we’re also like those open-minded Corinthian Christians in that many of us tend to be well-educated, articulate, and ready to make a pretty sophisticated theological argument to back up our positions.
And like the Corinthian Christians, we live in a world that is multi-religious and multi-cultural. It wasn’t just Christians and pagans in those days- there were Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs with their various pre-Islamic gods, and all kinds of other folks coming through. Our world is the same- not just in big cities, but more and more in places like Sycamore, De Kalb, and Genoa. There are a lot of different views of life that are different from our own, and we all have to live together and get along.
There are a lot of things that are commonplace in our culture that are difficult to pin down as wrong, per se, and yet are clearly difficult for many people- grey areas that can go both ways. Most of us wouldn’t say that it’s wrong to drink alcohol as a rule- but it can destroy lives and families. Most of us wouldn’t say that it’s a sin to dance, but some dances move beyond flirty into raunchy and then into demeaning. Most of us wouldn’t say that playing cards is a moral evil, but gambling can lead to the destruction of lives’ savings and financial security while the casino owners laugh all the way to the bank. And there’s nothing wrong with a rousing game of football- but as we get ready for the annual nationwide party that is the Super Bowl, it’s worth wondering what’s going on in a culture where for so many people who identify themselves as Christians, the day is celebrated with more festivity than Easter.
These things aren’t direct parallels to the problems posed two thousand years ago by eating meat offered to idols. But they are the kind of ethical questions we face in our own day. They are the kind of things we have the freedom to take part in. But we also have the responsibility of questioning these parts of our culture, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of those wounded by our culture’s excesses, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters in the faith whose consciences are unsettled.
The key is these words: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Sure, we can examine an issue, think our position through, and come to a carefully constructed argument about it. We can justify our position with well-spoken and well-thought out theological or ethical reasoning. But if our ability to convince ourselves and others becomes a matter of pride or ego, we’ve missed the point. If our reasoning serves only to make us sure of ourselves as individuals, we’re forgetting a serious part of the equation. That most important element is love.
Are the positions we take grounded in love? Love, not clever and sophisticated knowledge, is the thing that builds up the life of a community. Without love, it doesn’t do us any good to be certain what is right or wrong. If we, the church’s members, are not willing to submit to each other for the mutual growth of everyone, then it doesn’t help us to be correct. In the absence of love, even the right answer does not point the way to Christ- who above all things is our way, our truth, and our life.