More Important Than Being Right
a sermon based on 1 Cor. 8:1-13
by Rev. Cindy Weber

When you grow up Baptist in the South, you learn as a young child that there’s not much more important in life than being right. I know. I used to be right about everything. If you didn’t believe it, you could just ask me. When I was in high school, the one real live atheist in our school wrote something like this in my yearbook: Cindy, you have offended me. You think that your way is the only way. You need to understand that there are different ways of looking at the world, etc. I didn’t let it bother me, though. Because I knew I was right.

Looking at this morning’s scripture reading, I’d guess that the church of Corinth was made up of good Baptist folks who, like me during my high school…college…okay, and seminary years, weren’t just always right, and didn’t just know that they were always right, but also let everyone else know that knew that they were always right.

The issue was eating meat sacrificed to idols. Not an issue that’s on most of our front burners today, to be sure. But one that was obviously a BIG DEAL at the time. N. T. Wright says that Corinth was a thoroughly pagan city. This did not, of course, mean merely that most of the inhabitants went from time to time to worship at pagan shrines and temples. It meant that the world view of the entire town was dominated by pagan assumptions, that the visual appearance of the town was dominated by pagan symbolism, that the normal mind set of the average Corinthian was dominated by pagan ideas, pagan hopes, and pagan motivations, and that the normal life style was dominated by pagan practices.

And one of the ways that this played out was in just about every meal that they ate. The next two chapters of Paul’s letter deals with the various levels of this issue – there was private sacrifice, where the worshipper would offer the animal at the temple of the god, and after a token part, sometimes just the hair off the forehead, was burned on the altar, and the priests got their part, then the rest of the meat would be given back to the worshipper, who would throw a banquet, sometimes right there at the temple. So most of the social occasions involved sacrificial meat. There was public sacrifice, sacrifice offered by the state, in other words, and once again, once the token part was burned on the altar, and the priests took their cut, the meat was sold in the market. Some commentaries that I read said that almost all of the meat sold in Corinth had been sacrificed at one time. And to complicate matters further, even that meat that had not been sacrificed had probably been dedicated to a god before being slaughtered. This was due to the ancient belief that evil spirits gained entry into the body through eating food. And so the people would dedicate the meat to a good god that could put up a barrier against the evil spirits (William Barclay).

Now some of the Christians at Corinth thought that all of this was a lot of baloney. Christ had set them free from such superstitions, and they felt that they could eat whatever they darn well pleased. But some of the other Christians instinctively felt that it was wrong to eat meat offered to idols. It was too connected to their former lives.

What this meant for the ‘weaker’ Christians, since just about all the meat in the city had been sacrificed or dedicated, was that they were pretty much vegetarian. And you can see, those of you who are carnivores, you can see how it would be downright painful to give up meat at all, much less for a stupid, wrong, no way this makes any sense at all, reason. You can see why the set-free Christians, who had already figured all of this out in their heads, were looking down upon the ones who hadn’t.

Enter the Apostle Paul. Now Paul, the Big Daddy of the church, whose very mantra is that we’ve all been set free in Christ, agrees that it’s okay to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. He agrees that those who won’t are “weaker brothers and sisters.” But surprise, surprise, Paul here doesn’t try and talk the “weaker” brothers and sisters into seeing things his way, i.e., the right way. Instead he tells the others, the stronger ones, to see to it that their new-found sense of liberty doesn’t become a stumbling block to a brother or sister for whom Christ died. If my decision to eat meat causes someone else to fall, then I will not eat meat, so that I may not cause my brother or sister to fall.

In fact, “knowledge puffs up,” says Paul, and I think of Robert’s sister, Julie, who used to know someone in Hawaii who would call her “Miss Huffy Puffy.” “Knowledge puffs up,” Paul says, “but love builds up.”

In other words, there’s something more important than being right. And that, of course, is relationship, community, honoring one another as fellow members of the Body of Christ. Helping one another as we struggle along. Seeing one another as sisters and brothers for whom Christ died. Laying aside our own rights and rules for the sake of another. Love builds up.

I don’t know if there are things in our lives, things in this church that correspond to the meat sacrificed to idols thing. I do know that there are some of us who struggle with addictions to alcohol, and that because of that, there are others of us who do not drink alcohol, or who do not drink alcohol in those settings where those folks who struggle with it might be. I don’t know if there are other things that we might point to as well…

What I do know is that what this passage says to us is that our relationships are to be treasured above all.

When we were discussing our Peace Statement a few years back, and disagreeing a bit, or a lot, about what we wanted to say as a church, Rick reminded us that what’s important is that we dialogue, that we keep talking, that we stay in relationship. Good words. Good words. That’s not to say that there isn’t a time when we might need to take stands that offend others. But what this conversation between Paul and the church at Corinth from so along points to is that when it comes to being community, there are things that are more important than being right.

And as I read this passage, I find that I’m not so concerned about our church in terms of some of us being all huffy puffy and thinking we know it all, though some of us are sometimes, and some of us do, sometimes. What concerns me about us when I read this passage is that for all the squabbling that the church at Corinth did, you get a feeling of how deeply committed they were to being together, of how deeply they were to trying to hammer it all out. Problems came up within the congregation because they were always together, eating together, breaking bread together.

And it makes me wonder if we’re together enough. Some of you are, of course. Those of you who belong to the Intentional Community group share meals three or four times a week. But what about the rest of us?

What this passage is about, primarily, is respecting one another, honoring one another, loving one another, knowing one another. Paul loves these folks so much that he says, If what I do causes harm to one of them, then I’ll stop doing it. That’s how important they are to me. But how can I even know if my behavior causes you to fall or builds you up if I don’t know you?

And so this morning, as we share communion with one another, I’d like to invite each of us to look around the circle, to think about who we know, and who we don’t know, and to make some commitments to get to know each other better this year. And then act on those commitments. Invite someone out to lunch, invite someone over for supper, hang around after church a while on Sunday afternoons, come down on Wednesday night for our Community Meal. Be intentional. Be community. Be family.

After all, we are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. We are worth getting to know.  Amen.