Jan 28, 2024

My friends, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

How many of us like to be right?  Now, how many of us have been right, and still gotten ourselves into trouble?  Because sometimes we can know everything, and still be very, very wrong. 

This isn’t a recent development.  The part of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians we heard earlier gets at this idea – even as its discussion of liberty and freedom can make it feel like it was written yesterday.  So what I want us to be thinking about today is: what does it mean to be right?  What does it mean to be free?  And what might be more important than knowledge, even if what you know is the Gospel truth?

Before we dive into what Paul is telling the Christians of Corinth, we need a little context.  The Corinth of Paul’s time wasn’t a Greek city – it was a Roman colony associated with lavish lifestyles and conspicuous consumption.  Paul had started a church there that was socially and ethnically diverse: with slaves and free people; educated and uneducated; wealthy and poor; people new to the Christian faith, and those with more experience and knowledge.

This morning Paul is dealing with the question of whether the Corinthian Christians should eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols.  At many of the city’s temples, meat was sacrificed to the temple’s patron god.  And because this meat was then distributed at meals in the temple and also to the markets, most of the meat Corinthians ate had been used in pagan worship.

Here’s where the diversity of the Corinthian church comes into play.  Longer-term, more educated, wealthier members of the church ate meat regularly – either because they could afford it, or because their well-to-do friends served it.  They justified eating this meat by claiming that they “know”, because of their Christian belief in the one, true God, that the gods the meat was sacrificed to don’t actually exist.  So, they’re free to eat all the meat they want.  Listen carefully, and you can hear their sense of smug superiority.

Paul’s concern is for the church’s less educated, less well-off members.  Some 30% of those in the Roman Empire lived in poverty.  For them, meat was a luxury item.  One of the few times they could get their hands on it was when it was doled out at the pagan festivals.  And so for these powerless people meat would have been associated with idolatry and pagan worship.

What’s happening here is that in this less privileged group of people, many recent converts to Christianity are backsliding.  They see the more well-off members of the church eating meat, and they think “if it’s okay for them, it must be okay for me”.  But many haven’t grown deeply enough into their faith to completely turn their backs on their old religious practices.  They don’t “know” that these pagan gods don’t really exist.  And so for them – unlike their role models – eating meat of any kind is still associated with pagan worship.  At best, eating meat gives them a guilty conscience.  At worst, it’s a path back into idolatry.

Notice that Paul doesn’t tell the privileged group their knowledge that the meat sacrificed to idols presents no danger is wrong.  In fact, what they know is the Gospel truth.  Instead, he warns of the dangerous consequences that their freedom to choose can have.  Because they’re role models for their less mature brothers and sisters in Christ, their decision to eat this meat – even though they’re “right” – is causing harm.

Paul frames his response to this question of freedom and how a Christian is supposed to use it not in terms of knowledge or ignorance, or rights and privileges, but in terms of love and care for community.  He tells the Corinthians that he would never eat meat again if doing so might cause a weak Christian to fail.

Paul’s point here is that the Gospel doesn’t give a Christian freedom to do anything he or she wants.  Jesus’ followers are motivated by the Good News to act for the good of everyone, even if it means voluntarily denying themselves things they have every right to.

And Paul concludes, that motivation comes through love.  It’s love, not knowledge, that leads Christians to make choices that build up the community.  One of Paul’s primary messages in this letter is that Christians tap into that love by identifying with the crucified Christ, not the risen Christ.  Identifying with the one who allowed himself to be bound and killed like a criminal while wearing a crown of thorns – instead of the all-powerful miracle worker.  Paul argues, in other words, for a theology shaped by the self-giving love of the cross, rather than the power and majesty that comes with God’s glory.

Paul’s argument still rings true today.  The fact of the matter is that our understanding of who God is and how God acts in the world fundamentally shapes our decisions about how to be a Christian.  We believe in a God who is many things – all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, and all-loving, just to name a few.  But as humans we need to privilege one attribute – to make it the lens through which we understand the rest of them.  Because otherwise God becomes just too complicated for us to understand.

Everything about Jesus’ life and ministry tells us that we need to understand God through the lens of love.  Jesus, who in love taught and healed and touched the lives of those he encountered in ways that built community.  Jesus, who, to show us the depth of his love, set aside his ability to control – to exercise power – and instead showed us the route from darkness and light – from sin to life – through his death on the cross.  Let’s be honest.  Is the God we experience one who controls and dominates, or one who relates to it through radical love?

Friends, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this morning calls us to know that Christian freedom isn’t just freedom for ourselves.  Christian freedom is about building others up with Christ through love.  Because when love is at work, it can only bring about good for others.

And so I want to leave us with two questions today.  What epiphany might I have if I make love the lens through which I understand God?  And how might the loving choices I make to limit myself lead to the freedom for everyone to flourish?  Amen.