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.

The Community of an Untidy Calling

Acts 9:1-22

I once read a very helpful parenting book that suggested you identify your particular weakness, your problem that could trip you up as a parent of a preschooler.   As I read through the various descriptions, I recognized right away that my key weakness was: the need to be right. 

It has always been part of me – I can’t stand people thinking something is true which clearly isn’t, I have a compulsion to correct misinformation when I overhear it in someone else’s conversation and bad grammar when it’s in my own conversations, my husband taunts me by purposely (or accidentally??) singing lyrics wrong, and the worst thing for me is when someone thinks something about me, my motives or my actions, which is not true. 

As a parent this means I can get into some ridiculous arguments and battles of will because I wont just let something hang out there that is, in my opinion, wrong.  And I can be a little defensive, and a little quick to lecture, a little too prone to “I told you so.”  It also means I am passionate, and care about justice, and don’t punish unfairly, just so you know the whole picture and don’t get me wrong, here. 

But I learned that my preschooler could trigger me easily by insisting that I was wrong about something, or complaining that I didn’t care about him, or announcing that I wasn’t telling the truth. 

I think Saul was a little like me.  He needed to be right.  He probably could quote both the Torah and the local traffic laws, he ate kosher perfectly, kept his elbows off the table and reported to the neighborhood watch any suspicious activity right away.  But even more than needing to be right, he cared deeply what was right and hated passionately what was wrong. In fact, he was fanatical and relentless about upholding right and stamping out wrong, this famous and feared heretic-hunter.  He was invested, dedicated. And involved- he held the coats and watched a few chapters back while they stoned Jesus-follower Stephen to death.  He was pleased to see this thing unfold that would keep their religion faithful to God and teach a lesson to these offshoot imposter-followers. Probably prayed this prayer on his way to Damascus: Help me get these people who’ve got it wrong, who are so warping your truth and leading people away from you.  His life had one mission: to stand up for what was right and get those who were wrong. And it’s just that simple.

I watched the presidential debate the other night – an hour and a half of each candidate claiming they were right and the other was wrong, over and over again.  And during it, I thought of a friend of mine whom I deeply hurt during the last election by a side comment, meant to be funny, that highlighted our differences of opinion, that made her feel belittled or dismissed, and which has made things between us awkward ever sense.

A few weeks ago I sat with the session of a church that has discerned that to be faithful to their calling and their understanding of God’s word, they need to leave our denomination.  And they were filled with anger, hurt, pain, sadness, and frustration as they sought to do what they felt was right.

And this week I feel fresh sadness about a relationship in my family where, while we don’t ever speak about it to each other, I have heard and know that in the eyes of this person I love deeply I am wrong in my faith, so very wrong that God will judge me harshly one day for being a teacher of wrong faith.  And this person is so sure they are right that there is no way to even broach the subject without confirming their beliefs in my utter wrongness.  And this situation between us feels dismal and unfixable.

This paradigm of one side being right and the other side being wrong is pervasive and pernicious.  This story of Saul’s journey to Damascus, the driven and purpose-filled journey to stamp out the wrong in the name of the right, brings right to the surface this burning wondering I have, What happens when we get so far removed from our own humanity, from who God called us to be as children of God, that we stop seeing each other? That we stop meeting each other? That the other becomes to me just a commodity, an object that either stands in my way, or that gives me the agreement I am looking for?  What happens when we make everyone two- dimensional?  When we are so convinced that we are right – and I mean deeply convinced about the deep wrong of the opposite position and the true right of our own – that the people who hold these opinions become enemies? That their opinion can be boiled down into label, an inaccurate punch line that summarizes them so that we can dismiss them:

They’re judgmental and closed, and don’t care for their neighbor.

They no longer believe in Jesus Christ as Lord.

They hate gay people.

They don’t believe the bible is the word of God.

They are warping the faith of the one true God.

He is a dangerous militant whom we should fear and shun.

And so the story of Saul’s journey to Damascus raises the unsettling question, What if the place God calls you to is the heart of the people whom you despise? The ones you’ve already dismissed as irrelevant?  Or dangerous? Or useless?  What if the community God wants to build is with these very people whom you cannot embrace? Saul was about to find this out. But so was the community of believers in his path.

The Jesus-followers among the Damascus Jews had every reason to turn Saul away.  They had every right to dismiss him or flee. But that is not what happened.  Instead, we witness the astounding hospitality, the strange and inexplicable grace, of God.

Saul came to them not in reason or argument, not even in mutuality; he came in utter vulnerability, in need and confusion.

In the blinding light and voice from heaven he had heard the prophet’s call – just like those of old – God had summoned him and this devout and faithful Jew responded from the deep story of his ancestors of Yahweh who seeks out prophets in just this way.  That part felt right.

But then God sends him to church. To the followers of “The Way.”  To those he was opposing in God’s name.  No other explanation from the divine - Saul manages to get Jesus’ name out of this Yahweh encounter, an introduction which had to be enough to throw him into true cognitive dissonance - but he doesn’t get to properly meet Jesus just yet.   That is coming up. 

So Saul the invincible, now sightless and helpless and led by the hand into the city, unable to eat or drink, lives for three days darkness and confusion, in blindness and fear.  Then Yahweh/Jesus calls again.  This time God tells Ananias, one of the community of Jesus-followers, to go to Saul, his persecutor, and pray for him, that God has chosen Saul for a purpose and Ananias is going to be part of this story.  And Ananias talks back. God, maybe you haven’t heard who this guys is, but he is against us, just so you know.  He’s not one of us, he’s wrong, and he’s out to get us, so… want to give a different instruction? Cuz I’ll totally do what you ask me to do, as long as it sounds right.

But God insists this is what God is asking for, and so Ananias obeys. 

And then the two of them, Saul and Ananias, come together as human beings – shattering the boundary between oppressor and victim, dropping the importance of right and wrong, setting aside what they believed and what they thought they knew, and swallowing enough fear to put one foot in front of the other in humility and obedience to God’s call.  And when they encounter one another, they encounter Jesus.  And then Saul finds himself welcomed into the community of believers, aka, trusters of Jesus, that just a few days earlier he had intended to destroy. 

Instead of revenge or retaliation for the death of Stephen, instead of fear and shunning and self-protection, they share with him healing, nurture, blessing and identity. They give him a bed and meals and friendship and tell him the resurrection stories and talk about their own stories.  And now he has truly met Christ.  In the Body of Christ, he experiences the risen Messiah; the voice who called out to him from the blinding light is given hands and faces, and names, flesh and foibles and families. 

And we find out a few verses later that Saul’s name is changed to Paul – which means, “Humility”, and all of his own passion and personhood is taken up into the mission of God and given a new start in this community of care as his life heads in a radically different direction.  And I love the conversion story – especially as someone who grew up in the church without a dramatic conversion story - but that’s its own whole other sermon, and today I am really interested in what happens between them and in this community. When that little band of believers find themselves the unwitting welcomers of Christ in the face of an enemy.  When the God-follower is stripped of his mantle to stamp out the wrong and uphold the right and instead meet God anew and in person.

What is it to be church?  What does it mean to be followers of Jesus, the offspring of this story and those who live it?  

Being Church means we are formed by resurrection and not by being right.  

It means we are people of a crucified and risen Lord, not a particular political party or brand of Christianity.  

It means that in this world where we are constantly encouraged at every turn to label ourselves and everyone else, we don’t define ourselves, God defines us -as beloved children, precious in the heart of God and given the mandate to see and hold all we meet as precious as well.

Ultimately, Saul of right and wrong was not converted or convinced, he was called and he was cared for.  The church is the place where broken people are made whole -in the love of God through the arms and hands and feet and love of human beings.  And God’s Spirit does not discriminate by our politics. Or make sure our theology is all airtight before descending into our midst.  God’s Spirit blows where it will, and the love of God is felt both where we are comfortable and also in the embrace of people we might never, never, never agree with.

Thank God for not being constricted by our human understanding. 

Thank God that my faithfulness and yours don’t have to cancel each other out.  

Thank God that we live in this world, and in this church, together with people we don’t get to choose.  Because most likely we’d choose the ones we agree with. It’s just easier that way. We often don’t even need to like them or want to hang out, we just want to know they are on the right side of the issue, whatever our particular issue might be at the moment. 

But being right can’t hold a candle to being real.   And that’s what this messy collection of lives that makes up the Body of Christ consists of.  Beautiful, broken, sometimes right and oftentimes wrong - a holy and profane hodgepodge of faithful sinners. In real relationships with real people.   

For the grace of God that holds us fast in our brokenness and our hurt, I am so very thankful.  

For the forgiveness of God that heals where I have contributed to brokenness and hurt to my brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, I am humbly grateful.  

And I pray, God of all grace, please, may I let go of the need to be right, and see the face of Christ, however, whenever, Christ might come to me.  

That I might be changed.  

That the world might be changed.  

Amen.