Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's January 29, 2006 Sunday worship service.

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Food Offered to Idols

Deuteronomy18:15-20; I Corinthians 8:1-13

Bethel 1/29/06

Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD

True, the question of whether or not to eat food that has been sacrificed on a pagan altar is not one of the more pressing questions for the church today. On that much we could all agree! Unless someone is a hardcore vegan, or some other variety of vegetarian who abstains from meats or meat products based on religious grounds, few of us consider the question of food consumption a religious or spiritual matter. While I, personally, can confess to a twinge of secret shame when I participate in America’s fast food culture and buy a Big Mac, it’s hard to think of a contemporary dietary issue on the same level as the debate in the ancient Church in Corinth over whether it was appropriate for Christians to eat food that had been offered to idols.

But this very food question seems to have been a potentially divisive, contested one for that young Church. Corinth, as a leading city of the Roman empire, a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic city with many different religions, including a sizeable Jewish minority among its population, had many altars and shrines where meat was regularly brought to priests or other religious adepts, cooked, as it were, on the altar, and then sold in the butcher shops of the city or served in local restaurants. Recycling sacrificial meat was a common and widespread practice, a staple component of the local economy, a way for priests to receive income.

Jewish law, however, prohibited Jews from eating such meat for three reasons 1) it was tainted by idolatry 2) it was unlikely that a proper tithe had been paid on it 3) there was no guarantee the animal had been slaughtered in the proper way with respect to Jewish law and custom.

There were Jews in this young Christian community who believed that food sacrificed to an idol was defiled and should not be touched. Others, however, felt there was nothing wrong with eating meat that had been offered to idols. Members of that church were experiencing a kind of family squabble over this question. Was this food just food, or was it defiled food? On the one hand, why waste perfectly good food? On the other, the Jewish monotheistic tradition said such food was tainted and polluted since it had been on a pagan altar. What was this church family to do? There were two sides: all food is good to eat vs. how dare you eat meat offered to pagan gods!

Two sides, and Paul feels compelled to respond with what he thinks Jesus would require.

At first, it seems that Paul is going to side with the “all food is good to eat” side. He states that idols cannot defile food, because idols represent gods that do not exist. There is only one God in Paul’s mind, and that is the Lord. Therefore, this food that is being sacrificed to idols is really food being sacrificed to nothing, and thus eating this meat represents no danger to the Christian. Nothing magical has taken place; it is still just food.

But, Paul also realizes that his knowledge doesn’t give him license to do something that would harm the conscience of some members of the church. If a brother or sister were to see him eat such food and still in some way believe in the power or reality of those other gods, their conscience would become defiled. They would be confused. They would feel conflict that could become damaging to their faith.

Paul says: it is simply not worth the risk. When it comes down to it, food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat this meat nor better off if we do. He personally sees no reason not to eat this food. But, he says to those who have a similar point of view, “take care this liberty of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak.”

Even though it is not a big issue for Paul personally, he says at the end of this chapter, “I will never eat meat, so that I do not cause one of them to fall.” Our knowledge about food will not bring us closer to God.

Let me try a few contemporary parallels to illustrate what I think this passage is teaching us:

If you were to visit an Amish community, you wouldn’t offer children in that community a ride in your car. While there’s nothing inherently immoral about owning a car, you would recognize that Amish folk have created a community that honors God through simplicity. They have deliberately chosen to avoid the use of electricity and other modern conveniences. Now these are choices that I might not agree with, but that I should respect. To offer an Amish child a ride in my car would be disrespectful of the life that child’s parents are trying to maintain, and needlessly confusing for the young person.

By the same token, I would not offer pork to a Jewish or Muslim friend, caffeinated coffee or soft drinks to a Mormon, meat to a vegetarian, or take my guitar into a Church of Christ worship service and play it.

Even though you might believe thus and so, there are limits to what extent you should try to impose your beliefs or values on others.

This is a very different way of looking at an argument, isn’t it? Paul doesn’t take sides. He basically says that the strong should let go of their claims to superior knowledge about what can be eaten, and then actually let the position of the weaker members of the church carry the day on this particular issue.

It’s not the way most of us approach controversial issues, is it? Most of us make our arguments based on what is personally right for me as an individual. In our society, we have little responsibility beyond the individual, the personal, the private. Our whole society seems to be built on the promise that the purpose of our country is to give you the maximum amount of freedom to get whatever you want, as long as you don’t bump into me while I’m getting what I want.

Even in the community of the church, it’s very hard to let go of strongly held opinions or habitual practices in favor of doing what is good for others in the body of Christ. Especially when the things that we need to let go could include everything from personal detrimental habits that might cause others to stumble to something as big as a building program when there are, in fact, multiple acceptable ways to move forward and when it is unlikely there will ever be complete consensus.

But, once again, in this text from the Corinthian correspondence, we see that scripture speaks with a different voice, passing judgment on the valued habits and norms of our society, not to mention the way we usually operate in the church.

Based on Paul’s teaching, the principle is this: people in the church need to respect each other, and take others into account before we act, even if we know (or think we know) we are right.

Paul does not seem concerned about what direct impact eating this food might have on those outside the church. He is, however, very concerned about what sort of witness is made when others see the church squabbling with one another. He is saying, therefore, that members of the church in Corinth must stop and reconsider when some in that community could not shake the notion that eating food associated with idols was a sin. While Paul does not consider this food to be a sin, he does believe that it would be a sin to cause members of the family to act against their conscience.

For Christians, there is a higher value than our knowledge and even our freedom. There are “limitations imposed by love” (Mendenhall), times when love takes precedence over principles. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” he says in the very first verse. There are limitations in our decision-making imposed by love.

Thus, be very careful if you think you are right or that you know the truth. The Christian ethic, how we should behave and act, is not just a matter of knowing what is right or true, but it always involves taking into account how our actions will affect the Christian growth and welfare of others, especially with others in the body.

Love always welcomes those with very different outlooks – the example of the early church is the welcome extended to Jews and Greeks, slave and free, male and female – to be one with Christ. Love works to keep the various segments of the community from splintering apart. Love is the only way those with different points of view can experience genuine community in Christ. Love means that each one of us has to know that we have to be the one making the compromise. It is not somebody else who needs to compromise for us. Because, these are the limitations imposed by love.

Such limitations do not mean that we avoid conflict or disagreement. In fact, Paul insisted that this particularly difficult food issue had to be confronted. The church was exactly the place for difficult discussions, where each member can be taken seriously, for knowledge is not the possession of just a few. Good, intelligent, faithful disciples of Jesus Christ will have different interpretations of scripture and the best path of faithfulness. Therefore, we must listen to one another, really listen, not in order to correct but in order to learn.

A personal word: in the great scheme of the ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ, it seems rather foolish that we here at Bethel have had to spend close to two years getting a building plan in place to put our physical house in order and to correct some real deficiencies. Yet, truth is, in the big picture, the results are much less important than the process, in as much as we have been able to practice honesty, integrity, fairness, and deep discernment of the will of the Holy Spirit. For dialogue, I believe, becomes our protection against self-righteousness. Scripture calls us to hold our convictions but always with humility. It is always more important to be loving than to be right. These are the limitations imposed by love.

We will never live in a world where we all agree, and that’s a good thing. But it also provides us with a challenge to let love inform our knowledge before we act, to let respect for our neighbor be a factor in our decision-making, and to exercise humility and peacemaking skills by letting others act in accordance with their conscience, even if we don’t quite understand where they are coming from. Rather than puff ourselves up with that feeling of once again being right, let us build one another up with a love that is willing to take the perspective of others into account.

So let it be. Amen.