Freedom and Neighborly Love --- Sermon for Epiphany 4B (1 Corinthians 8)
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If you’re like me, you prize your freedom. You could call it an American thing, but it’s also a biblical thing. The problem is that when freedom goes rogue it can be quite destructive. Usually, freedom goes rogue when it becomes self-centered. That’s what happened in the Corinthian church. People were attracted to Paul’s message of freedom and then used it to their own benefit at the expense of their neighbors.
When we read the Corinthian letters, we discover that this congregation was, to quote Steve Martin, full of “Wild and Crazy Guys.” One of the reasons for this was that this congregation was rather unique for its time. Corinth itself was a very cosmopolitan port city. Because of this, the church in Corinth was very diverse in terms of economic status and probably ethnicity. Since Paul planted this church, he felt a certain responsibility for its success. Paul wrote at least two letters to help the congregation solve its numerous challenges. This morning, we get to look at an area of concern that involves personal freedom and neighborly love in the context of a discussion of food and sacrifices to idols.
Paul spends several chapters of this letter dealing with the way food functioned in the Corinthian church. The problems he encountered often had socioeconomic roots. As I said, the church at Corinth was a rather unique social and cultural experiment because it was located in a city that was an economic powerhouse that stood at the center of trade in the Mediterranean world. The church’s membership included slaves and businesspeople, Jews and Greeks, men and women. They all gathered together in the name of Jesus in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise. The problem this congregation faced was that the people tended to bring their local customs and habits into the congregation, which caused problems. What was true then is often still true today.
Throughout this letter, Paul deals with questions sent to him by members of the church asking him for advice. The question here has to do with whether it is permissible to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols.
You might wonder why anyone would eat meat sacrificed to idols. The first thing you need to know is that only the wealthy could afford to eat meat regularly. The second thing is that if you want a good steak in Corinth, you don’t go to the local supermarket. Instead, you go to one of the temples that sells the “leftovers” from the daily sacrifices. By leftovers, I mean almost everything except maybe an organ or two. In other words, the temples that dotted the city streets served as the butcher shops, restaurants, and worship centers all rolled into one.
Here’s where that became a problem. Some church members claimed they had special “knowledge” that allowed them to dine at the local pagan temples without being corrupted. After all, they knew that “no idol in the world really exists.” Since that was true, then why not go to the temples and have a nice meal. After all, to borrow an old Arby’s tagline, the temples shouted out: “We have the meat!” The church members who possessed that secret knowledge believed that since they were free in Christ, it wouldn’t hurt them to go get a good steak?
Paul might agree with this assessment about the existence of the gods worshiped in the temples because he also believed that there is only one God. Nevertheless, not everyone in the church understood this truth. After all, this was a new congregation full of people who not long before had gone to those same temples to worship before joining the church and they might still believe that this food served as an offering to the idols. Seeing another church member eating at the Temple might damage their consciences. Paul reminded the knowledgeable ones that not everyone was at the same place in terms of spiritual maturity.
While we may live in a rather disenchanted, secular world, where even Christians struggle to believe that a spiritual world might lay beyond what we can experience with our senses, that wasn’t true in the first century. Paul believed that a spiritual realm existed and that not every spirit is benevolent. Whatever knowledge someone might possess about this spiritual realm, Paul wanted the members of the congregation to know claims to have special knowledge can puff up a person.
What Paul wants this congregation to know is that while arrogant claims to knowledge can puff us up, it doesn’t build up like love. Therefore, Paul calls on this very diverse congregation to focus on loving one another. They might be free in Christ, but freedom is nothing without love.
With this in mind, Paul asks the wealthier members, the ones who thought they possessed special knowledge regarding spiritual things, to consider the needs of the church members whom Paul calls “The Weak,” who probably were poor and living on the margins of society. He tells the “Strong” to remember that when “the Weak” see their wealthier sisters and brothers eating meals at the temples they can’t afford, they might begin to question their faith. They might even decide to abandon Jesus and return to their previous commitments believing that these idols might offer a better chance at success in life.
There is a word in use today that speaks to what is going on in the Corinthian church. We call it privilege. When Paul speaks of knowledge, he’s not trying to be anti-intellectual. What he’s concerned about is this sense of privilege that some in the congregation were using to lord it over others. Paul wants these self-proclaimed “knowledgeable” Christians to acknowledge their privilege and consider the needs of the entire body of Christ. He tells them to let love be their guide. He wants them to choose a path that builds up the body rather than tears it down. In other words, he tells them not to let a steak dinner cause the spiritual downfall of another sister or brother in Christ. In making this plea, Paul draws on Jewish understandings of the covenant community when he tells them to “take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”
While these “knowledgeable” Christians, the ones that claimed to possess gnosis or spiritual knowledge, thought they understood the spiritual realm, apparently, they didn’t realize that spiritual forces exist, what Paul elsewhere calls the “principalities and powers” (Eph. 3:10 RSV), that can exploit our desire for freedom to destroy the covenant community. In other words, we need to understand that our freedom as Christians needs to be experienced within the covenant of love, which builds up the body rather than destroys it.
Now, to focus on love doesn’t mean we don’t talk about difficult issues, including ones that seem political, like immigration and refugees, war and poverty. Jesus didn’t shy away from difficult issues. If you read the Sermon on the Mount, you will discover that he shared some very challenging words that not only addressed his context but ours as well.
What we hear in this passage is a word of guidance about how to root our sense of freedom in Christ in our love for one another. As Jesus taught us, there are two great commandments. The first commandment has to do with loving God. The second commandment speaks of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. The author of 1 John connected these two commandments, letting us know that it’s impossible to love God, whom we can’t see if we don’t love our neighbors whom we can see (1 John 4:13-21).
Let us remember that Paul stuck his hymn to love right in the middle of his discussion of spiritual gifts that are intended to build up the body of Christ. As the hymn declares:
If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all the mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains but I don’t have love, I’m nothing. 3 If I give away everything that I have and hand over my own body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever. [1 Corinthians 13:1-3 CEB].
Yes, knowledge can make us arrogant, unless it is rooted in love, which builds up the body of Christ.
What does love require of us? Perhaps Paul’s closing words offer an answer to that question. What he does is set aside his privilege. He tells the Corinthians, who have a tendency to prize strength over weakness, that “if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause of them to fall” (1 Cor. 8:13). In other words, love is the key to living the Christian life. We may be free in Christ, but that freedom is meaningless if it’s not rooted in the love of God and the love of neighbor.
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