Neither Idiots Nor Allies

 

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

The bible has difficult people in it. Some of them knew they were difficult people. Like Paul. He had enough self-awareness to realize he could be a lot for some folks. And he still is.  
Others recognized difficulty in other people, but maybe not so much in themselves.  What’s lovely about them is that we benefit from them being challenging people. If they were easy, they wouldn’t have needed so many letters written to them. 
 
We have two very full letters written by Paul to the Corinthians.  This is not because they were Paul’s favorite.  They were difficult for Paul.  The church in Corinth was small and super diverse – a cross-section of the super diverse, very stratified city. Even though when they came together as church, they were equal, out there in daily life, they were not. Often the elitism and posturing of the world leaked into the church. The Corinthians understood power; they lived and breathed in an economy of influence and clout everyday. 

Corinth was basically Vegas as an international port city. It was cosmopolitan, vibrant, worldly, hedonistic, and accustomed to glamor and glitz. Despite his eloquent, authoritative letters, Paul was not glamor and glitz. He didn’t wine and dine the influencers, invest a big budget into his tours, and he wasn’t much of a showman. When Paul first arrived in Corinth the church there was pumped up, ready to welcome Taylor Swift. Instead they got Greta Thunberg. So he wasn’t really their favorite either. But they learned he would tell it like it is.
 
We could get bogged down in the whole meat offered to idols question they’d asked Paul, but suffice it to say, it was this thing this time, but could be anything, every time.  This time it was a debate about whether to eat meat sold in the market that had been used in pagan ceremonies, sacrificed in temples to pagan gods.  Paul couldn’t care less about this. Of course you are free to eat whatever you want, he answers. We are not bound to the belief that these so-called gods have any power at all. God’s not threatened by those idols. So whether you eat or don’t eat is your own decision and of no real consequence. But, Paul wants them to hear: you ARE bound to each other. So this thing that technically doesn’t matter, actually matters a great deal.
 
Of course you’re free from false constraints, you can eat what you want, but in Christ you have been bound to other people, as the place where Christ is made known to you. No longer bound to earn and prove, posture and rank, measure and compare, accumulate and hoard, you are part of a different economy now. Real freedom means you are free for a life of connection, mutuality and sacrifice, free for wholeness and generosity, free to see yourself and all others as loved unconditionally by God and unbreakably belonging to each other, no matter what. 
 
This means you don’t have to ask me dumb questions like this meat thing to test out whether you are doing it right and especially whether someone else is doing it wrong. Instead, you ask yourself, How do my words or actions impact my neighbor?  You look at each other not as either idiots or allies but as beloved siblings, to whom you are accountable, with and for whom you exist. In fact, what you do or say to them, you are actually doing or saying that to Jesus himself. 
 
Even if you are right and they are wrong, so what? If you use that knowledge to harm them in any way, to knock them down a peg, to humiliate them or lord it over them, to educate them ‘for their own good,’ you become wrong.  Knowledge puffs up, Paul says, but love builds up.  
 
So instead of mocking those who are scandalized, maybe be curious about why it matters to them. What is their story? What has been their experience of pagan worship before coming to Christ that makes this practice so uncomfortable or abhorrent?  And, Paul says, if food is a stumbling block to my sister or brother, may I never eat meat again!  Because we belong to each other –that is how we belong to God. Not by carefully following certain rules, and not by gleefully throwing them off, and definitely not by throwing either of those choices in each other’s faces.
 
This is the same long letter where just a few chapters later is the famous “love chapter” that gets read at just about every wedding because it so clearly explains the radical nature of love. I encourage you to read it again sometime today, but not with the backdrop of a romantic couple gazing doe-eyed toward their future, instead with the backdrop of difficult people, desperate to be right.  Paul is writing it to these dear people that require him to summon enormous amounts of patience, and bring his clearest explaining voice, when he says:

You guys, I could be the most eloquent and impressive person, the smartest and most knowledgeable, the most gifted, the wisest or the most powerful, with the strongest faith of anyone. But if I don’t have love, I have nothing. 
Love is kind and gentle and patient and slow to anger; it’s not jealous or arrogant or rude. It bears all things and hopes all things. And in the end, all those other things, being right or wise or gifted or dedicated– that all disappears, and we will finally see everything all clearly. But the one thing that endures despite and through and beyond all the rest of it, forever, is love. 

This is the reality that claims us. So don’t you dare use someone’s weakness against them. Don’t you dare use the freedom of Christ to shackle another person.  Don’t you dare elevate principles or ideals above the humanity of the one in front of you.  Especially if they are a difficult person for you. Especially if you are sure they are wrong in their beliefs and you’d love with every fiber of your being to correct them and show them the true way.  Then especially you need to step back. And look into their face for the invitation from God to love them.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to uphold them as a child of God to whom you belong. 
 
The pull of rightness, comparison and correction is strong.  Insecurity is pumped into our airwaves and our bloodstreams at every turn. The need to earn and prove, the constant insisting that it’s all a battle: right against wrong, good against evil, worthy against irrelevant, smart against stupid, woke against ignorant, moral against sinful, demands we secure our place and judge the place of others. That message is hard to resist.  But the answer isn’t to just work really hard not to think this way.  That can become it’s own battleground for self-judgment and comparison. 
 
Instead, we honestly call it sin and gratefully turn to confession, which is to say, we name the impossibility within and between us, that seems to divide us from God and others, and we tell God how caught we feel. Then we let God’s forgiveness and grace return us to the relationship that holds us.  
 
It is not me, Paul says, but Christ who lives in me. 

As soon as I feel myself either pulled into the battle, or pulled into the battle of resisting the battle, I am invited once again to surrender to God my weakness and invite God’s strength to work in and through me. This is faith: I believe, help my unbelief. I want to love but I can’t. God, help me to love. 
 
God doesn’t need us to stand up for God, or right, or truth. God’s not threatened by our idols. God calls us to seek God and see each other. To watch for how, through love, God is already bringing truth and goodness and hope into the world, and be ready for the invitations to join in. But we don’t join because we have so much insight, or power, or because we know the right way. We join because in Christ we’re bound to each other and love calls us to God through, not apart from, one another. God who came in alongside us made us for coming alongside each other. 
 
And when the Holy Spirit moves in someone’s life and they begin to feel the nudge toward greater freedom, the prompting to make some change, the itch for some confession of their own, the people they will reach out to for help and guidance are not the ones who arrogantly shut them down, who told them how wrong they were, who flaunted their own freedom and knowledge in their face. It will be those who loved and claimed them, who upheld their dignity with respect and kindness. Those who loved them. 
 
We are all difficult people. 

People are difficult. 

Being a person is difficult. 

There’s no way to get it right and do it best. That whole idea is false. What’s real is that we belong God no matter what. And we belong to each other no matter what. In Christ we have been set free for a life of real connection to God and others. 

May we live into that freedom. 

Amen.



REFLECTION & PRAYER EXERCISE 

This is from Mark Yaconelli's The Gift of Hard Things: Finding Grace in Unexpected Places, chapter entitled "Idiots: The Gift of Difficult People":

Mark writes: My wife believes that there would be more kindness in the world if everyone pinned their baby picture to the front of their shirt. It would be difficult to disregard or demonize others if you had an image that reminded you of their humanity - reminded you of their soft, innocent beginning.

Action:

Find a place and time you can sit in quiet reflection. After a few moments, bring to mind a person in your life who repulses, irritates or angers you. Using your imagination, picture this person as if he or she were a small child. What do you think this person's hopes were when he or she was little?  What fears do you imagine this person carried as a child? What experiences can you imagine the person experienced that shaped him or her int other person he or she is today?

Take a few minutes to simply gaze on this person without judgment.
It might help to write down what you notice.
After you finish the reflection, see if there is a new invitation for how you might interact with this person based on what you experienced in your reflection.

End by lifting up your thoughts and experience to God.