Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Some years ago in my second parish, we had a fund raiser for our youth group which was going to New Orleans for the National Youth Gathering. We sold hot dogs and funnel cakes and we also had a “gypsy” fortune teller who would tell you your fortune and future for a dollar. The youth leader Sue and my wife Debbie alternated as the “gypsy” complete with huge gold earrings, head scarf and lots of costume jewelry. The event was a street fair called “Pipinfest’ which is a kind of home coming for the village of Fairfield in Pennsylvania. I was still in my collar, selling funnel cakes when some stranger came up to me and said, “This is a disgrace”. I responded, “What are you talking about, Sir?” He replied, obviously troubled, “Here you are a church and you are sooth-saying which the Bible specifically prohibits”. I said in reply, “We are just having fun sir; no one takes this very seriously. We are just raising money from neighbors to send our kids for our church’s national gathering of youth. You don’t seriously think that we are giving accurate fortunes for a mere dollar do you? Everyone knows this is just for fun”. He repeated, “You are being a disgrace to the church”.
I felt badly about upsetting him: he was very literalistic about his scripture and he revered the Word of God. We of course, did as well, but we didn’t think much about the obscure prohibition against sooth-saying which I have since tried to find in scripture and cannot. We were just having fun, yet he was highly offended.
Every once in a while, a group of Christians decides that Halloween ought not to be celebrated because of its historical connection with witches, ghosts and goblins and all kinds of medieval beliefs that no modern person ever has. Paul would call such folk as folk of “weak conscience”, as he does in our lesson from first Corinthians. The issue at that time wasn’t fortune telling rather it was eating food that had been sacrificed to idols or “false gods”
Paul’s world was very different from our world. Most modern people believe that there is only one God. This wasn’t the case in Paul’s time. There were temples to Zeus, Aphrodite, Isis, and literally dozens more gods and goddesses in Corinth. The idea that there is and will always only be one God was a new idea. Israel’s confession of faith was the “Shema” it is still said among pious Jews. “Hear O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God is one”. They were the first people in recorded history who understood that there is one creator and ruler of the universe. In ancient Corinth even the Roman Emperor who ruled the Empire was a god.
At this time, the church was separating from Israel and beginning to understand her own identity. Like the church, Israel was very sensitive about worship. Only God, who for Christians now included Jesus, was to be worshipped. But it was a confusing time too because the church in Corinth included many people who had been raised faithful, pious Jews. Paul told them that the old kosher written laws were unnecessary. The book of Acts shares that Peter told Cornelius and the church that all meat was from God and that thereby undid the old laws and customs. Men no longer needed to be circumcised, Paul told the Galatians Christians. Because Christians were a new creation; they were freed from many of the old laws, traditions and customs which had defined them.
Some took this freedom and ran with it. Because they knew Christ, some in the Corinthians church claimed that it was this special knowledge that saved them. In Greek the word “to know” is gnosis and they called themselves Gnostics – the ones in “the know”. They had liberty in this knowledge therefore it didn’t matter according to their way of thinking, what they actually did. A few weeks ago we talked about the confusion they got into over sexual matters where some were visiting brothels because to them it didn’t matter what they did – because they “knew” Jesus. The Corinthians Christians were a bit confused about what they could and could not do with this new found freedom they had in Christ.
Food and sacrifices to the gods of the ancient world was a common practice. Many of the temples had great salons where food that had been sacrificed to Zeus, or the Emperor, for example, was consumed. Some of this meat was made available at the temples very cheaply or for free and a considerable portion of other congregation at Corinth was very poor. About a 1/3 of them, if we can believe the statistics typical of the ancient world were salves and they didn’t eat meat very often, if at all. If they were invited to a non-Christian wedding for example, the chances were good that the meat being served had been offered as sacrifice at a pagan temple. To refuse to eat the meat would mean running the risk of offending the hosts and also going hungry while everyone else was feasting. It was an issue that had real consequence from the church at Corinth. Paul was doing his theology with these and many other pastoral concerns in mind.
Basically he was saying. It is OK to eat meat when its offered because there is no god but God. You aren’t really performing an act of worship in eating because Zeus, Athena, and the Roman Emperor were not really gods. “But” he said, and it is an important “but”. Be careful that those who are new to this whole thing called Christianity might not understand your behavior. Don’t do anything that would offend them.
His point was really a point about love. Paul is telling us to be concerned about the conscience of our brother and sister who forms part of the body of Christ with us. We shouldn’t be so confident in our freedom in Christ, nor so proud of our knowledge of our freedom that we permit our knowledge based freedom to become a form of arrogance. No, rather we should take pains to explain our behavior and even, if necessary, impose limits on our freedom and not eat meat that had been offered to idols. Especially if it means that someone with a weak conscience might be offended. “Love will”, to quote the old love song,” keep us together”.
So how does this obscure passage speak to our life in the 21st century? The basic principle is that we are free because Christ has freed us but we are compelled in love to do and not to do what might offend the others who are part of our community the church.
For example, some years ago, a woman in my new member’s class who had never been baptized asked me if she could still dabble in astrology after her baptism. I asked, what do you mean by dabble? She explained that she really believed that astrology had some value as a predictor of human behavior. I asked her a follow up question. Who really controls the future, the stars or God who rules the heavens? God, of course, she said. OK I said. Be baptized and continue to read about astrology if you want. But you should never spend more time with astrology than you do in prayer or study of God’s Word and will. You should also be discreet in your affection for astrology especially in the Christian community because your allegiance is to Christ, first and foremost. You don’t want anyone “weak in conscience” to be offended. Love trumps everything in the church.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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