Christ Episcopal Church
February 1, 2015
4 Epiphany B
Recently, I went to Jungle Jim's, the enormous international grocery store in Cincinnati, in search of golden syrup. I knew I could find the syrup in the Great Britain section of the store, if I could ever find the Great Britain section. The store has aisles with the food from pretty much every imaginable nation, plus a bakery, deli, butcher shop, enormous produce section, chocolate shop, and on and on. I am sure I walked through most of them on my way back to the Great Britain section, which, as it turned out, was about 3/4 of a mile from the store entrance. Wandering around, looking at the vast variety of food from all around the world, I can tell you that I saw not one section, aisle or shelf marked "Food sacrificed to idols." Not one. And if Jungle Jim's doesn't have it, I'm guessing we would be hard pressed to find any such food anywhere in our corner of the world. St. Paul's words this morning about whether or not to eat food sacrificed to idols seem pretty irrelevant to our lives of faith in Springfield, Ohio in 2015. The author of one of the commentaries I read said that he had never heard a sermon preached about this passage from I Corinthians. Challenge accepted!
The church in Corinth to which Paul wrote was divided over all manner of things-such as who was baptized by the greater Christian, who has the greater spiritual gifts, and how people of faith should behave at the Eucharist, which had turned into something of a potluck in Corinth. In this passage, Paul addresses the issue of food sacrificed to idols. We may find that irrelevant, but in Paul's time, the question of whether or not to each such food was of deep concern and was tearing the church apart. Since idols have no real existence, some Christians thought it was fine to eat the food that had been sacrificed. Other Christians believed that to eat such food was to participate in the idolatry, which was clearly against the commandments of God. This disagreement threatened to divide the church and created an ugly atmosphere of condescension and judgement. Paul urges the Corinthians to respect one another, to treat each other with dignity, and to make love the guiding principle. The issue here is not letting a few people control the majority. Just one chapter later, Paul will write "For why should my liberty be subject to the judgement of someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks?" The issue at stake here is the nature of Christian community. Christians are called to be a community of love and respect, not condescension and judgement. In baptism, we 21st century Christians also promise to respect the dignity of every human being including each other and those with whom we disagree. At Christ Church, we don't always agree on everything. We don't all have the same politics, dietary preferences, nor do we all have the same understanding of what the church should or should not allow. Some of us like contemporary music, some like traditional music, some like classical music and others prefer clearly sacred music. The list goes on and on. But despite our differences, Paul calls Christians to be communities of love and respect.
What Paul does not tell us is how we are to love each other in the midst of any disagreement we might have. What does a community that genuinely loves each other look like, if it does not look like a community where everyone thinks alike and agrees on everything? For that, we turn to the gospel reading. First, when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and taught. The gospel calls the Body of Christ to gather on the Christian Sabbath to worship God and to learn. Then Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit. The gospel also calls us to respond to the needs around us. Jesus neither judged the man nor sent him away. The man had probably been rejected any number of times and was not likely welcome in very many places. But Jesus healed him. Here and in so many other places in the gospel, Jesus calls us to respond to the needs around us, whether the needs of each other or the needs of strangers, to bind up the injured and set free those who are held hostages by the injustices of society. This does not mean we can, or perhaps even should, meet every need presented to us. But in baptism, we do promise to work for justice and peace. Springfield offers us abundant opportunities every day to fulfill that promise.
Years ago now, when the Episcopal Church was in turmoil and many churches were experiencing great division, a colleague asked me how we, at Christ Church, had managed to hold together so well when we could not possibly be of one mind about the issues dividing the church. My answer was that we had stayed focused on the work of the church-worshiping God and feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, tutoring children, and serving our neighborhood, all of which we could all do together regardless of whether or not we agreed on the issues of the day. Then we could talk about the issues of the day with the people we had just worshiped and worked with side by side. When we work to live that balance all the time, we are well served during difficult times.
Jesus and Paul remind us that the body of Christ, the church, is to be a community of faith where love builds up and allows us to respond to the needs to the world. If we don't love each other, we probably can't do ministry together very well either. And if we are not engaged in ministry together, our love for each other is mostly talk. The two go hand and hand and make for a church that is a joyful and effective witness to our faith-which is what both Jesus and Paul have in mind!
Amen.
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