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.