Knowledge not Enough
1 February 2015
Epiphany 4B
8:00 a.m. said Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Today’s passage from 1 Corinthians
has always been a favorite of mine. Paul
begins it with a quote from a letter he has received. The Corinthians are having a
congregation-splitting argument over what the faithful should and shouldn’t
eat. In the Greco-Roman world in which
he lived, most meat on sale at the market had been slaughtered originally in
Temples of pagan gods like Zeus or Aphrodite.
Some people felt it was wrong to buy or eat such meat, since they
thought it was bordering on an idolatrous act, honoring those other gods. Other people felt eating such meat was O.K
since it was not an act of worship. And
because they did not believe any such gods existed, they felt that worrying
about such things was basically a silly superstition. Knowing that Paul is generally opposed
keeping Jewish purity laws, and wanting him to endorse their liberal position,
they write to him saying, “We know that no such gods exist, and that there is
only one God,” so how can eating meat sacrificed to them by the ignorant
possibly be wrong?
But Paul surprises them. He starts his reply by focusing on the words
in the received letter, “we know.” He
says this: “Knowing things puffs us up in pride. People who think they know something often
don’t know what really matters. Knowledge
puffs us up, but love builds up. … Loving God means that God knows you, so love
brings knowledge not vice versa!”
He goes on to say that eating such meat is not O.K., even if you know that that there are no such things as other gods, since it might cause someone whose knowledge is not as firm as yours to go against their heart-felt beliefs, their own conscience. This is
how I translate what he says:
“Here is what I say about eating such meat: idols are false. They are nothing, really. … But not everyone knows this. Some people who used to worship false gods might feel uncomfortable when presented meat that has been placed before idols. They still might feel it belongs to the false god and worry it is wrong to eat it. And when they eat it, they feel guilty. Food cannot make us closer to or farther from God. We are free to eat or not eat things… But be careful with your freedom. What you decide to do may hurt people worried about such things. … If someone who thinks eating such food is wrong sees you eating it, and then does it too, you have encouraged them to go against what’s in their hearts. And that’s just wrong. This weak brother or sister—someone Christ died for—might be lost because you insisted on rubbing their faces in how you understand things with your ‘knowledge.’ You are doing wrong against your brothers and sisters in Christ by such action. You hurt them by causing them to do things they feel are wrong. And you are also hurting Jesus.”
All this from a guy who says he “stood up to Peter face to face” and accused him of abandoning Christ by compromising with Jewish Christians still grossed out by the thought of going to Church or eating with uncircumcised gentile Christians.
Paul here is saying love is more important that knowledge. He is saying concern for our sisters’ and brothers’ well being and good relations with God is more important than making a point. He is saying openness to God requires love before all else.
Love is an active disposition of the will; it is wanting to do well by the beloved, to do good for the beloved. Though we often use the word “love” to mean “affection bred by familiarity,” or “desire to possess or be possessed because of attraction and natural urges,” as Paul uses the word here it means “choosing to put that person’s interests before your own.” It implies an openness of heart and a willingness to act on it.
Interestingly, instead of the old nostrum “to know him is to love him,” Paul says here, “to love him is to know him.”
This centrality of love and openness is also found in today’s other scripture passages: the prophets are prophets because they are open to speaking God’s word, not their own. And Jesus astounds people around him because he actually helps people and then preaches what he knows from his own experience, not something he had studied and learned from others, like the scribes. The Psalm puts it this way, “awe in the presence of God” what I would call openness and wonder, “is the beginning of wisdom.”
Don’t misunderstand me: knowledge is a good thing; seeking to understand things is a desire God has put in our hearts, not something of the devil. But a desire for the good of others, and empathy, and compassion for them—this is the center of growth in God. It is the way Jesus calls us to. Remember that he said the most important part of all scripture was the command to love neighbor as well as the one to love God.
Love can lead a radical like Paul to soften his stances out of consideration for others when needed. It is the beginning of wisdom. It is what makes some teaching authoritative and confident amid so much vapid and second-hand teaching. It is what can drive out the horrors and fears that control us so much that others think that we are possessed.
This week, I invite all of us to act with love as Jesus did, and speak with authority as he did, telling our own stories and experience—things which no one can take exception to—and then listening to the stories of others.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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