Sermon: What Kind of Witness

 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
What Kind of Witness
James Sledge                                                                            January 28, 2024 

Some years ago, I was attending a meeting of a presbytery committee that I served on. At some point in the meeting people shared prayer concerns, and one woman, noticeably upset, shared a concern about her daughter and family.

They lived in Houston and were trying to evacuate ahead of a hurricane, but now they were stuck on an interstate that had come to a standstill, running low on gas so that they had to turn the vehicle off in 100 degree heat. The traffic showed no signs of moving, and they were beginning to worry about what they would do with their pets and children if they did run out of gas.

As my fellow committee member shared more information about the situation, I learned that this family had taken two vehicles in order to load up as many possessions as possible. I wondered how many other families had done the same, helping to create the traffic nightmare in which they now found themselves.

I wondered what sort of thought process had gone into the decision to take both their SUVs. Surely they must have realized that this would contribute to traffic congestion. Did they simply dismiss such concerns in the face of their desire to save both of their cars along with as much as they could stash in them?

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that this couple acted as they did. In a way, they were simply living into our American culture of individualism and materialism. Back when Hummers had a moment of popularity as vehicles, I once heard a driver dismiss concerns about the amount of fuel they used by saying he could afford it, it was his money, and no one had any business saying otherwise.

I don’t know anything about that Houston couple’s faith life, but I was a little surprised that the mother on the presbytery committee shared the fact of the two vehicles as though it was a perfectly normal thing to do. Doesn’t Christian faith require one to consider their behavior’s impact on their neighbor? And here the impact was extremely detrimental.

Now perhaps all this seems little connected to a scripture passage about whether it’s permissible to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. For that matter, how can we relate to that subject at all? It’s a concern from another time, from a completely different world. It will never come up in any of our lives.

That is certainly true, but the issues that arise from the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols may well be issues that we must deal with, so perhaps we should take the time to understand what Paul is talking about.

A little background will probably help. Paul had founded the church in Corinth, and he kept in touch with them. He got first hand reports from others who visited there, and the members at Corinth would write him with concerns.

 The congregation seems to have been made up mostly of Gentiles and not Jewish converts, and there was a broad mix of wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated. From the earlier parts of the letter, it is clear that divisions have developed within the Corinthian church, sometimes along socio-economic lines.

Clearly some of the wealthier and more sophisticated members looked down on the members they saw as simpler and with less understanding. These well to do members had embraced their new faith with great enthusiasm, and they applied themselves to understanding the nuances of their newfound, monotheistic theology. And the question of food sacrificed to idols was simply one of the flash points around this.

Corinth was home to some prominent pagan temples, and these were central part of community life. There were regular festivals and gatherings there, attended by anyone who was anyone, and a great place to hobnob with other important people. These gatherings typically served meat that started out as animal sacrifices. For that matter, most of the meat at the local butcher shop had started out the same way.

The wealthy, learned members of the church had studied their faith carefully, and it seemed to them that if there was really only one God, then meat sacrificed to idols didn’t really have any association with other gods since there were no such things. And so they reasoned that they could continue to eat at the festivals and participate fully in Corinthian society.

But other members, those the wealthy regarded as less sophisticated, worried that eating meat sacrificed to idols brought them back into the pagan world they had left when they started following Jesus. If they simply participated in pagan life as though nothing had changed, had anything changed?

At issue here is something as pertinent to our day as it was to Paul’s. What boundaries and limits does Christian faith put on participation in a world that is not governed by the ways of Christ? The Corinthians have asked Paul to settle this dispute amongst the church members. Can they participate fully and completely in their non-Christian world, or are there boundaries they should not cross?

I suspect that the wealthy Corinthians expected Paul to agree with them. Paul was, after all, an incredibly sophisticated religious thinker. Surely he would appreciate the rightness of their position.

In the verses we heard, Paul seems to accept their rationale for going to the temple festivals, although he has more to say on that beyond the verses that we heard today. But even though, perhaps just for the sake of argument, Paul concedes their point about there really being no other gods and food is not what brings them close to God, he does not take their position. Paul consistently sides with the poor and the weak.

Paul tips his hand right from the start when he says, Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. For Paul, even the most sophisticated theology must be in service to the ethic of love. Knowledge not centered on love, that merely helps get the most good for the individual, is contrary to life in Christ. For Paul, whatever freedom he has must be tempered by any negative impact it may have on a neighbor.

For Paul, it is crucial that no church member, no matter how sophisticated and well thought out their theology, ever do anything that might injure the faith of a fellow member. The needs of the fellow believer take precedence over his own, and Paul would just as soon never eat meat if he thought it might compromise another’s faith.

I should add that Paul later warns the Corinthians to have nothing to do with idols. It seems he has used this dispute to emphasize his ethic of love, but later he argues that association with idol worship is incompatible with the faith.

But what does Paul have to say to our situation? I mentioned earlier that Paul is addressing the issue of boundaries for Christians living in a non-Christian society, and I would argue that we are living in precisely the same situation. Our culture still has a bit of Christian veneer about it, but the way it worships wealth, power, individual freedom, efficiency, and busyness are all at odds with Christian faith.

I wonder if those Christians, and I probably include myself in this group, who have made easy accommodations with living in a wealth centered, individualistic, consumerist society haven’t damaged the faith of others. We have made faith so indistinct from the culture that almost no one who observes us sees anything compelling about the faith. And if faith is about nothing more than believing in Jesus to get your ticket punched for heaven, we’ve tossed out the lion’s share of Jesus’ teachings.

In our day, a lot of people are, understandably, concerned about the future of the faith and the church. Church participation continues to decline in the US at an accelerating rate, and we’ve seen the impact of that here at the Meeting House. But I wonder if the issues Paul grapples with in his letter to the Corinthian Christians might not offer us some guidance and even hope.

What if we lived our faith with a careful eye as to how it is perceived by others, as well as carefully examining how it needs to be distinct from the culture? Might we not have a unique opportunity to bear witness to the way of Jesus, to show others a different way, an alternative way, one more in accord with Jesus’ vision of a transformed world?