Running to Win

This has been a bad week for athletes. Not that we haven’t had many occasions to be disappointed in athletes. It’s an old, old story. We put athletes up on a pedestal. We celebrate their accomplishments. They can’t live up to the expectations. They have some falling and their names are splashed across the headlines. We find ourselves saying things like a little boy was supposed to have said to Shoeless Joe Jackson after the 1919 BlackSox baseball scandal – “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

So this week it was Alex Rodriguez, maybe the best player in baseball, admitting that he had used steroids to improve his play. He had lots of excuses. He knew he was the highest-paid player in the game and he wanted to justify his salary. He was insecure. Say it ain’t so, Alex.

And it was Michael Phelps, the best swimmer in the world, getting caught smoking what looked like marijuana at a party. We remember him from last summer. We remember the incredible routine he put himself through in order to be ready to swim all those races and win 8 gold medals. We know what hard work it took for him to be at the top of his game, in peak condition. But last week, there he was saying, “I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."[i] Say it ain’t so, Michael!

They’re just the latest. We could add many more to the list. Michael Vick, the great quarterback for Tech and for the Atlanta Falcons who ended up in jail because of his involvement in dog fighting. Darryl Strawberry, Barry Bonds, Mike Tyson…the list goes on and on. Why do they disappoint us so much? They are human after all.

In part it’s because we want to believe that there is an arena in which people will dedicate themselves to being the absolute best that they can be. We want to believe that there are people who have remarkable gifts but who hone their natural talents through hard work and single-minded dedication to be the best that they can be. We want to believe that there are people who don’t take shortcuts, who don’t try to cheat, who don’t take steroids, who live lives in such a disciplined way that they are beyond reproach. When our heroes disappoint us, they take away our confidence that athletic perfection is possible. Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so that the thing we want to believe about you isn’t true.

“All athletes exercise self-control in all things so that they can win a perishable crown, but we do so for an immortal one.” I’ll tell you how old this is. Those were the words of Paul written two thousand years ago to the Corinthian Christians. Paul was trying to get the Christian community in Corinth whipped into shape. They were a distracted bunch, at odds with each other and not really focused on what they needed to be focused on. So Paul uses an athletic image.

He reminds them of the runners who often competed in races near Corinth. The Isthmian games were held very close to the city and his hearers would have known the spectacles that pitted contestants against one another. Paul says, “If you’re going to run in one of these races, you’re going to need to be single-minded. You’re going to need to train and to show self-control. If athletes will do all of this to win a prize that is merely a wreath on their heads that will wither away, how much more should we train for a race in which the prize will not fade away, but last forever?”

Then Paul, who was not really the athletic type from what we know, gives them some humorous images of himself. “You see,” Paul says, “I run, but with a purpose. I’m up early every morning whipping myself into shape. Like Rocky in the meat locker preparing for a boxing match, I’m in heavy training. Because I don’t want to be found talking about the race and not being prepared to run it. I don’t want to be preaching the gospel and not living it.” If you’re going to be an athlete, you’ve got to give it your all.

Paul likes this image of the runners in a race. He uses it a lot. In the letter to the Galatians he says that he went up to Jerusalem to tell the other apostles about his ministry “in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain” [Gal 2:2]. He tells the Philippians in his letter to them that if they live out the gospel he proclaimed to them it will allow him to “boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain” [Phi. 2:16]. Later in that same letter he says that he is pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” [3:14]. Guide my feet, while I run this race, for I don’t want to run this race in vain.

Do you get the sense that that’s what we’re doing here as Christians? Do you feel like you’re in a race? Is this Christian life that we profess something that guides your whole life? Or is it maybe just window-dressing? And if it’s more than that…if it really is about living a life of purpose and meaning and direction and giving ourselves over to Jesus…why are we content to only give God second-best?

This week I watched a television program that opened my eyes. It was called Kitchen Nightmares and it featured a British chef by the name of Gordon Ramsey. It’s one of those so-called reality shows and the premise of this show is that Ramsey goes into restaurants that are on the verge of failing and spend a week with them to put them on the right track.

Now Ramsey is no model of Christian character. He’s foul-mouthed and arrogant and condescending. But he is a very good chef and he knows how to run a restaurant. He has restaurants all over the world.

So on this show I was watching, he went into a small, family-owned Italian restaurant on Long Island. He started by having lunch and they brought him a crabcake, which was frozen, and some other side dishes which were well-below standard. Chef Ramsey was not pleased.

He was watching the wait staff and the managers and owners, too, and he noticed that there was a lot of tension between them. The owners were a brother and sister. The brother spent all of his time hanging out in the front, drinking espresso and schmoozing with friends. He also was spending a lot of the profits of the restaurant on a nice car and nice clothes. Meanwhile his sister was doing all the work and everybody in the restaurant was trying to work around him.

Back in the kitchen, the equipment was outdated and dirty. Two of the ovens didn’t even work and they were using them for storage. The walk-in refrigerator was leaking and the food was rotting. The chef and all of the kitchen staff were demoralized. Everyone was acting as if they didn’t want to be there. And they didn’t. But they were a restaurant. They had a purpose. Only no one was living up to it.

Chef Ramsey was not going to let them get away with it. Step by step he forced everyone there to look at what they were doing and to reclaim the restaurant. He got them to address the kitchen problems and to get proper equipment. He had them update the menu and the décor. He focused on getting the service improved. And he took on the biggest problem of all – the brother who would not pull his weight and who was eating up the profits. Very forcefully he said, “You are the problem. You’ve got to look at yourself.” And he did.

I know it’s television and I know it’s easy to edit your way to a happy ending on TV. But I found myself very inspired by several things. One – Gordon Ramsey had a vision. He knew what a kitchen and a restaurant were supposed to look like and he was not going to settle for anything less than that. He was going to build the future of the restaurant around that vision.

Secondly, Ramsey was energized by his vision. Everyone else looked tired and dragged out, just like people do when they find themselves in a dead-end job or when they feel trapped by circumstances. Ramsey knew how important it was that the people in that restaurant step out of their discomfort, even if they believed that change was difficult, so that they could experience something new.

Finally, as people in the restaurant owned their purpose and moved forward, they challenged and inspired the people around them to grow and change, too. Their dedication and commitment to excellence was infectious. It sometimes led them into conflict, but when they began to work together you could see smiles and a real sense of camaraderie.

These are the things Paul was encouraging in the Corinthian church! He called them to keep their eyes on the prize – to know why they were doing what they were doing. They weren’t together for no reason – they were the body of Christ! They had heard the good news about Jesus and they had been baptized into the church and now their lives were supposed to look different. They were living for a spiritual kingdom and what they did in their earthly life together was supposed to reflect this new reality. That was the vision that brought them together.

They were supposed to be energized by that vision. When they got distracted by backbiting and when they slipped back into old behaviors and when they thought more about themselves than their neighbors – then they stopped being the church. Paul knew that if they could just claim their identity as people following Jesus rather than their own desires then they would have more energy, more vitality and more abundant life.

Finally, just as with that restaurant, when Christians own their identity and seek to give God the best they have to offer, then they inspire and challenge the Christians around them to offer the best that they have. And they make others who do not know Christ wonder what’s up. The Christian life, when it is alive and vibrant, is a catchy thing. Just like the hook of a song you can’t get out of your head.

I want to challenge you today to give the best that you have to this Jesus that we sing about each week. If you really believe that Jesus represents the way, the truth and the life…if you really want the world to be a better place…if you really are seeking first the kingdom of God and its righteousness…if you really do want to know the joys of heaven, which begin right here on earth…if you really believe that God came into the world to transform the world, including you…if you really believe all of that, why are you holding back anything from God? Why is there anything in your life that you wouldn’t open up for Jesus to do something wonderful with?

You were claimed by God long before you ever knew it and long before you ever responded. You have been invited into a relationship with God through Jesus that never ends. There is a prize waiting for you if you will only claim it. So what are we waiting for? What are we holding back? There’s a race to run. Let’s race to win because we don’t want to run this race in vain. Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Don’t you know that in the arena all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So you also should run to receive one. All contenders exercise self-control in all things so that they can win a perishable crown, but we do it for an immortal one. So, that’s how I run - not aimlessly. And that’s how I box – not beating the air. But I beat up my body, so to speak, and bring it into submission, so that, having preached to others, I might not be disqualified.

[i] ESPN Swimming, http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/swimming/news/story?id=3876804.

A Winning Personality

It’s important to have a winning personality. A man went into a diner and sat down at the counter. The grumpiest-looking waitress he had ever seen came over to take his order.

“Could I have a cup of coffee?” he asked. The waitress went and got the coffee and slammed it down in front of him, sloshing coffee over the sides as she did.

“Anything else?”

“Yes, could I have a slice of apple pie?” She went over, pulled the pie out from under the glass and cut a piece of pie. Again she slammed it down in front of him.

“Anything else?”

“Well, a kind word wouldn’t hurt,” the customer said.

“Alright – don’t eat the pie,” she said.[i]

Have you ever been places like that? Where the kindest word that can be said is ‘don’t eat the pie’? For way too many people, that is their experience of church. Rightly or wrongly, there are very many people who believe that the church and the Christians who form it are about as friendly as that surly waitress.

You may be saying to yourself, “That can’t be right. Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, inviting people through the doors. Our slogan in the United Methodist Church is “Open hearts, open minds, open doors.” We talk about the importance of God’s love and about telling the world the good news. But the world is not hearing the good news.

The Barna research group did some surveys with young people recently and they found some surprising things. Of the twelve most common impressions that non-believing 16- to 29-year-olds have of Christians nine of them are negative. Among the most common things the young people noted were that Christians were judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned and too involved in politics. 76% did say that they think Christians have good values and 55% said that the faith is one they respect, but maybe the most damning thing they said was that “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.” 23% of the non-Christians responding said that. 22% of the born-again Christians said that. To put it bluntly, for many people Christians are failing because they are being “unchristian”!

David Kinnaman, who reviewed the research with Barna, says, “Going into this…project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences.”[ii]

Once again, if we go back to the history of the Church, we find that this is not a place we haven’t been before. The church has always been a place filled with “unchristian Christians” struggling to become more like Jesus. But just because that’s so doesn’t mean that we should be happy about it or content with the way things are. We should always be dissatisfied.

We’ve been visiting with the apostle Paul for the last few weeks as he talked with his unchristian Christians in Corinth who had a lot of questions for him as they struggled to be a new congregation of Jesus followers. We talked a few weeks ago about how they dealt with marriage. Last week we talked about how they tried to be a peaceful, mixed community made up of mature and weak members.

We get a hint from these chapters of what life in the Corinthian church must have been like. They were contentious folks. You might not call them old-fashioned, but judgmental and hypocritical…O yeah! They were definitely sorting themselves out by putting some members down and elevating themselves. Everyone thought they knew best and had the most desirable gifts to offer to the community.

It seems like they were even questioning Paul, wondering if he was really behaving like he ought to. In the early verses of chapter 9 in 1 Corinthians Paul is telling them all the reasons he could pull rank on them and all the reasons why he should be able to claim a living off of them due to his position as a minister of the gospel, but after saying all this he says, “I could claim my rights but I’m not doing that. I’m not going to impose any burden on you because I don’t want anything to stand between you and the gospel.”

You see, Paul knew what he could claim. He knew that he could have a wife. He could have a salary or some means of support from his work as a minister. But if anything was going to come between the ability of his audience to hear the good news and that good news, he was not going to let it be an issue. So he chose a life of celibacy and he chose to work to support himself.

He tells the Corinthians all this and then he goes on to challenge them to do something, too. They are caught up in this judgmental boasting game. They brag about their spiritual gifts. They jostle for position in the leadership. They think that because they excel in an area of spiritual leadership that gives them standing over others. But Paul says, “Look at me. I preach the gospel, not because it gives me a right to boast, but because if I don’t everything I am is all for naught. I feel an inner compulsion to preach the good news. Woe is me if I don’t preach. So what is my reward? That I will be free from all my other preoccupations and others will hear the good news.”

Then Paul goes on to talk about all the people he is engaged with and how he orders his life so that the people he is talking to can hear and see Jesus in him. “To the Jews I appear like a Jew. To those who live under the old Mosaic Law, I address them as one who is under the old Mosaic Law. To those who are outside that Law, I talk to them as one outside. To the weak, I am weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some.”

I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. We hear that and we hear a warning in our heads. “All things to all people? Isn’t that the problem with politicians? They promise one thing to a group over here and another to a group over there and in the end you wonder if they have any convictions at all.” That’s what we think but that’s not what Paul is saying here. He is not saying that he has no convictions. His life had been turned around by an encounter with Jesus. He had been going one way and now he was very clearly going the other way. He once was lost but now was found. There was no turning back.

What he is saying here is that he does not want to put any roadblock in front of anyone that will keep them from hearing what he has heard. He is going to go into the culture to listen, to see how they view the world, to know their concerns, to be with them where they are and to help them see how Jesus enters that very same world where they live to transform and save them. That’s what it means to have a winning personality.

How powerful is that? How many people need to know that Jesus has entered into THEIR world to bring life? Maybe they’ve lost a child to drug addiction and they’re afraid of what church people might say if they knew – what is it that they need to hear except Jesus is with them and with their child? Maybe you are depressed and distraught and you just don’t know how to get over it and you’re afraid to bring that cloud with you to church because what if church people won’t get it, won’t accept it…what if they tell you to just be happy—what is that you need to hear except Jesus walked through the valley of the shadow, too? Maybe you’ve just lost your last friend and the loneliness seems overwhelming – what is that you need to hear except Jesus felt abandoned and rejected, too? Maybe you feel like there are things you’ve done in your life are so bad and so far from what God wants that you could never be accepted…never be loved – what is that you need to hear except Jesus’ voice saying, “I did not come for the healthy but for the sick”?

While we were in Dallas last week we had dinner with some of the folks I worked with in West Dallas. We got together to remember a friend and colleague, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who worked with us there and who recently died. But more than that we remembered stories about how we began that work. Most of us had not grown up in that neighborhood. Most of us came from different places, different cultures, different backgrounds. My friend, Juan Prieto, had come from Colombia. Another one from Kansas. Me from Virginia.

When we started we were all lost. We had to give up everything we knew about how to act and behave in order to learn what it meant to live in a place like West Dallas. We had to risk failing and falling, which we did many times. But that’s what it took to bring the gospel to a neighborhood overrun by the problems of broken families, broken lives, and broken promises.

I also got to hear about a lot of amazing new churches last week at the conference I attended. One of them was a small church growing in downtown Seattle called Church of the Apostles. A young, African-American woman named Karen Ward is the pastor, or abbess, of this church and they have taken over an abandoned Lutheran church in a neighborhood of people who are just like the young people I described at the beginning of this sermon – people who are skeptical of church and many of whom suspect that being Christian means being judgmental and harsh.

They do church in a radical way. By that I mean that they go right back to the roots to see how the early church did it. The early church lived in close community, sharing meals and resources. So do they. They also have three community houses where people live together according to a common rule of worship and work. They call themselves “new monastics,” trying to reclaim the ideals of monks and nuns by following the model of Jesus. And they also see themselves as icons for the rest of the community. They know that not everyone can or will become a new monastic, but the people who live in these houses hope that they will live out their Christian lives in such a way that others will know that they, too, are called to live in a relationship.

When the Church of the Apostles talks about what it expects of its members, some of the things sound very familiar to our ears. Members are called to love God and love their neighbors. They are to engage with the community and practice their faith. But they have some things, as well, that sound different. Members there commit to giving invitations and providing welcome. They are supposed to share stories and throw parties. They are called to create art and exchange gifts. And they are to renew culture and steward creation.

All sorts of people find their way to Church of the Apostles for their Saturday night worship. The community works with Karen Ward to plan the worship and they like to build things. Ward says that Home Depot is their worship supply store. Once when they were doing a series on water, they built a river in a wooden chute right through the middle of the sanctuary with running water.

They do these things to reach the people around them who need to hear the gospel and need to hear it in words and images they can understand. Experimental communities like this one are willing to become all things to all people in order that by all means they might save some. If you think about it, it’s exactly what God did – became one of us in order to save us.

So who needs to hear this word? Who needs to know that what the world imagines about Christians is in need of some revision? What sort of community shall we be to help a hurting world? What things do we not have to be so that we can be the light of Christ? Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I preach the good news, this is not something for me to boast about it, because that compulsion presses on me. Woe is me if I don't preach the good news. If I do this willingly, I will have my reward. If I do it unwillingly, I am simply acting on a commission.

So what is my reward? That in preaching the good news I may offer the gospel free of charge and not be absorbed with my rights in the gospel. Even though I was a free person with respect to all, I made myself a slave so that I could win many people. To the Jews I became like a Jew so that I could win the Jews. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law so that I could win those under the Law. To those outside the Law I became like one outside the Law, (even though I am not outside the Law of God but rather under the law of Christ), so that I could win those outside the Law. To the weak I became weak so that I could win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. I do all things through the gospel so that I may share in it.

[i] Adapted from Nigel Griffiths, http://living.scotsman.com/features/Top-jokes-to-cheer-you.4808592.jp.
[ii] “A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity,” Barna Research Group, Sept. 24, 2007, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=280.

How to Get Along with Anyone

When I was young I usually spent New Year’s Eve in exile. It was fun. My sisters and I would get to watch a movie on the TV in my parents’ bedroom. Mom would fix us up with ginger ale and cheese and crackers. And we’d hang out until midnight waiting for the ball to drop.

All of that was going on upstairs. Meanwhile, downstairs, my parents were entertaining their neighbors and friends at their annual New Year’s party. I didn’t really want to go to their party. At ten years old I didn’t really care about the conversations about politics and life in Orange. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t go to their party. We were under orders to stay upstairs. So of course that meant that what was going on downstairs was really intriguing. What were the adults doing down there? Why was it that children weren’t allowed? I don’t know all that happened, but I wanted to know.

How do we behave in mixed company? What does a family or community do to help people of different ages and different beliefs and different levels of engagement together? What does the church do?

When you think about it, the church ought to be a pretty remarkable thing. It’s one of the few places left in our society where people of a large range of ages get together for a common event. We have infants and seniors, children and young adults, teenagers and middle-aged folks. Try finding a television program that would appeal to that range of people. Maybe the only thing that does is the Super Bowl.

We also strive to keep the doors open to people of every race and class. We don’t send anybody into exile here. We open the doors and say, “God has done an amazing thing. God has taken men and women, black and white, Jew and Gentile, Hokie and Cavalier, and made a community out of us. Through Jesus Christ, we are a people…a church! And you’re invited. And you’re welcome. And we want you to hear this good news, too.” How does that work? How can all those folks coexist together?

So, I want to have a Rodney King sermon today. Do you remember Rodney King? During the 1992 L.A. riots that were spurred by the video-taped beating of Rodney King by city police and their subsequent acquittal, Rodney King went on television looking just as disturbed and confused as we all were during those dark days. He looked into the camera and said, “Can’t we all just get along?” King was ridiculed by a lot of people in the media at the time. “Get along? How naïve! We are hopelessly divided as a nation to just ‘get along’!”

Christians do believe that, though. And that’s the question I want to explore today with you. How do we get along as a Christian community? How do we get along with anybody?

Last week, we spent some time with Paul as he was talking to the new Christians in the city of Corinth about one of their major issues – what to do about marriage? Today we’re going to pick up right where we left off and explore this question of getting along because this was also one of the major issues for the Corinthians, too.

At the beginning of chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “Now you asked about food that has been sacrificed to idols.” This may sound a little archaic to our ears. We don’t have food being sacrificed to idols much anymore in our day, (unless you count the guacamole and seven-layer bean dip we’re offering up in honor of the big game this evening). But in Paul’s day sacrifices were a regular part of the urban landscape.

Corinth under the Roman Empire was a place of many gods and many temples. Many religions of the day, including the Jews, had rituals that involved slaughtering animals. What usually happened at pagan temples, according to some sources, was that the sacrifice was divided into three parts. One part was burnt on the altar as a way of honoring the god of the temple, another portion was sent home with the worshipper to be eaten there, and a third portion was given to the priests. And if the priest did not want that portion, the priest could sell it to a temple restaurant or meat market.[i]

You can imagine that with all of these sacrifices taking place there was a lot of meat around that had been offered to pagan idols. It may have been a major way that people got meat. Lots of folks benefitted from the portion that was not burnt up. And lots of folks probably never gave it a second thought.

Some did, though. For Jews and Christians, the idea of many gods was disturbing. They were monotheists who believed that God was one and even if their name for God was plural, they did not believe in multiple deities. To Jews one of the most important scriptures then and now is the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” Christians believe that as well. The God of Jesus Christ is one God, even if God can be experienced in different ways, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

They were also supposed to love this one God with all of their heart, mind, soul and strength. So here’s the question for Paul: If the tradition in the town is to eat meat sacrificed to other gods, should Christians participate? Are they giving honor to other gods if they do? What do you say, Paul?

Well, does Paul say? He doesn’t answer directly right away. First, he starts talking about knowledge. He says, “We know that all have knowledge. But the thing about knowledge is that it puffs people up. They get an exaggerated idea of their own importance.”

Have you ever seen this happen? I had a good friend in my first appointment who was a college professor and he used to talk about the terrible infighting among the faculty in his department. He said, “The reason academic fights are so nasty is because so little is at stake.” There are great and humble folks with lots of knowledge, too, and I love being around them because they get my brain going, but it’s true, isn’t it, that knowledge can puff us up.

What was happening in Corinth was that the Christians had started dividing themselves up. There were some who were pious in their devotion to God who would not eat food from the pagan temples because they were worried that it might be a sin. But there were others, the knowledgeable ones, who knew that there was no power in the pagan gods. They knew that there were a lot of things that the world was misguided about. So whether or not you ate meat from a pagan temple, it didn’t make those false gods any more real. They were always going to unreal. Only God was real. So they didn’t have any problem continuing to eat meat from the pagan temples.

The problem was in how these knowing Christians dealt with the other Christians, whom Paul calls the weak in the community. They were harming them. They were bruising their consciences. They were beating them up, to use Paul’s words, by their insensitivity.

We think of the word weak as a demeaning word, but think of how Paul uses that word in other contexts: “God chose what was weak in the world to shame the strong” [1 Corinthians 1:27]. That’s from the same letter to the Corinthians. Think of how Jesus talked about the kingdom: It was going to be full of the meek, the needy, and little children. Weakness is not a bad word in the Christian community. In fact, it’s the way God gets things done in the world – by showing strength in weakness. That’s why our greatest symbol is the cross on which Jesus died.

So, Paul is saying to the knowing Christians, “Yes, you’ve got your knowledge, but when you eat this food sacrificed to idols and demean the scruples of the weak, you have forgotten the most important thing in the Christian repertoire. You have forgotten love.”

Paul is going to have a lot more to say about love in a little bit. Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians is coming up when he sums up his whole argument about Christian life, but he starts to bring it up here in chapter 8. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” he says. Love is the way in which we are supposed to get along. Love is the way we are supposed to relate to one another. And love changes the way we think about knowledge.

This is an important part of what Paul is saying to the Corinthians. They thought their knowledge was going to give them mastery over their faith. They thought that by knowing that God was one and that the pagan gods were fakes they would be able to do as they pleased. Paul says to them, “If you think you know something, you don’t really know it, particularly if you are talking about God. How could you ever claim to ‘know’ God in full? The best you can do is to love God and by doing that to be known by God.”

This is what true knowledge is – not that we should know God but that God should know us. And it is through love that we are known to God. Paul talks about it this way in the famous love chapter – “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” [1 Co. 13:12]. Then – when the perfect comes – when love is made the rule – then I will know fully. For now, love will have to do.

So Paul tells his knowing friends that they don’t know half of what they think they know and worse than this they are injuring them and by doing this injuring Christ. When they don’t treat their weak brothers and sisters with love, they are not loving Christ and they are not following the model of Christ, because what did Jesus do for the weak? He died for them.

So what’s the message for us who live in a time when there are no pagan temple restaurants selling sacrificed meat? Do we really have to worry about this passage still?

There are at least two ways that Paul’s words still ring with truth today. One way is in the way that we treat children. It is a tragic thing when churches start to act like children are a nuisance. No church would say that they do that, but when they make no provision for children, when they make families with children feel like they have to have perfectly quiet children in order to be accepted, when they expect children to be out of sight except when they are trotted up for the children’s time or the Christmas children’s pageant, when they make no provision for children’s deep need and desire to learn about God and Jesus, when the church facilities are decidedly kid-unfriendly, when there is no child protection policy or awareness, when children are not lifted up in prayer, when children do not have significant relationships with adults in the church other than their family members, when there are no high chairs, when there are no toys, when there are no children’s books, when there are no chances for a child to speak and laugh, when there is even one Sunday when a child is not cherished for being in the church…when ‘all those things’ a church has no right to call itself part of the body of Christ.

How are we doing on that score? How’s Franktown doing? What more can we do? What more can you do? Do you have a relationship with a child in this congregation? Could you be teaching a Sunday School class? Helping out a teacher? Volunteering for the nursery? Leading music for them? Helping with Kids Club on Wednesday night? Making the classroom space bright and inviting? Stopping to tell a child that you are glad to see them here? How are we getting along with our children?

Secondly, there is enduring truth in Paul’s call to love. Love. It’s our greatest virtue as Christians. It’s the thing we’re known for. And yet how often do we despise love as the answer to anything, even in the church. We talk about our neighbors, but do we love them? We scoff at their concerns, but do we love them? We pity them their weaknesses, but do we love them? We lament their losses and their failures, but do we love them?

What if the way to know God is to love God and to love our neighbors? What if love is a better way of knowing? What if the world is wrong that love is naïve and foolish and simple-minded? What if the first step toward reconciliation is simply looking at our neighbor as though she or he was Jesus? What if, to borrow the words of Elizabeth Alexander in the poem she wrote for the recent inauguration…what if, the mightiest word is love?

Now faith, hope and love remain, these three. And the greatest of these? You guessed it. It’s love. Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Now you asked about food sacrificed to idols. We know that "all have knowledge." But knowledge tends to puff us up while love builds us up. If people believe they know something they don't yet know as they ought to know, but if they love God they are known by God.

So back to the point about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that no idol really exists in the world and that there is no other god than the one God. Even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, (for there are many gods and many lords), still there is one God the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist, and there is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist, including us.

But not everyone knows this. Some have been so accustomed to idols that they eat as though the food had been offered to idols and their weak consciences are defiled. Of course food can't stand us in good stead with God, because we are no worse if we don't eat and no better if we do. Watch out, though, that your free authority doesn't become a stumbling block to the weak. If anyone should see you, who has knowledge, sitting down to eat in a place dedicated to idols, won't that person, whose conscience is weak, be more inclined to eat food sacrificed to idols? So through your knowledge, the weaker one is undone, the one for whom Christ died!

In this way you are sinning against your brothers and sisters, beating up their weak consciences and sinning against Christ. For this reason, if food causes my brother or sister to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my fellow Christian to fall.

[i] http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/4608.htm.