Love Builds Up (Epiphany 4 B)

 Love Builds Up

28 January 2017

Epiphany 4B

8:00 a.m. said 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 ; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When I was in high school, the length of young men’s hair became something of a controversial topic for a while.  Short and military style suggested you might be a supporter of the disastrous U.S. policy of war in Indochina, or maybe you were a true believing Mormon boy readying for a mission.  Long, it suggested you were part of the counter-culture, maybe on drugs or sexually loose.  I remember having a long conversation with the head of my congregation: he wanted me to cut my hair, shave my moustache, and not look so much like a hippie.  “You are the student body president at school.  You need to set a good example!”  “But Jesus had long hair and a beard,” I replied, “And he was a rebel against the government and legalistic religious hierarchy.  Aren’t we supposed to follow him?’  “That was then and this is now,” he replied.  Me: “But you will admit, won’t you, that length of hair and beards in and of themselves are not really a matter of morals, sin, or righteousness, right?”  “O.K.,” he replied, “it is not a matter that really counts as important.”  I brightened.  In my mind, I had won this argument, and was feeling the power of the anthem in the rock opera of the day:  “Give me it down to here HAIR shoulder length and longer, HAIR, here baby, there Mama, everywhere Daddy Daddy, Hair!, Hair Hair Hair, Hair Hair Hair!  Flow it. Show it. Long as God can grow it, my hair!”  But then he shocked me out of my little reverie of victory and independence by adding, “But since it’s not that important, why can’t you just give a little here and follow what your parents, me, and the church leaders want, and cut it short!”  I thought to myself:  “And if it’s not important, why can’t they give in on this, and not me?” 

Looking back, the irony of the scene is striking.  Today, some leaders in that same community discourage men from having hair too short if you are not in the military, since it might mark you as “gay,” in their minds a departure from what God intends.   And coming into the Anglican communion has made me acutely aware of the rich tradition of discussion we have had all along about adiaphora, points of disagreement that are indifferent as far as the teaching of scripture, tradition, and reason are concerned, whether on worship practices, clerical clothing, or sexual ethics and what is means to be a moral person. 

 

Today’s passage from 1 Corinthians is about such a disagreement and show how Paul struggles with it.  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 idolatrous, an 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 to requiring observance of 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 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 on which Jesus leads us.  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. 

In the name of God,  Amen.