Hi folks,
Below is the text of the sermon I gave today at Church on the Square. I'm working off the lectionary text 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, which you may want to read first to understand some of the references.
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Good morning, friends. Thank you for being here, for bringing your attention, your heart, your reflections to this moment. Will you pray with me?
God of wisdom, guide us in the paths we should walk. Help us to know how we can build each other up with love. Help us to care deeply and move past surface-level knowledge into the kind regard that moves us toward peace. Bless us, bless us, bless us in the struggle. We pray, trusting in your grace, Amen.
In the theater art of improv, one of the exercises players use is a game called “subtext.” It’s intended to help the players understand how to tap into emotions, and do more than one thing at a time in a scene. So the players will get two inputs. The first one is, what’s the argument about? Maybe it’s about not putting on a new toilet paper roll. And then the second input is: okay and what’s the argument really about, and maybe it’s about how one of them makes way more money than the other. So then the scene might go something like this:
A: "You didn’t put a new toilet paper roll on, again. I guess your time is just too important to have to deal with mundane things like that."
B: "Hey, look, I’m sorry. You’re really more in charge of things like that around the house anyway, aren’t you?"
Probably a scene like that would build up a little more gradually – I kind of jumped into it. But you get the point. And the thing is, you can play it for comedy, but lots of times arguments really play out like this. There’s the thing we’re arguing about on the surface, and there are the emotions underneath that are fueling the thing and keeping it moving when in a different context the same problem might not get anywhere near the same reaction.
So, a little context for our Scripture writing. Paul, the writer, was this energetic, passionate church planter and he’d helped assemble and launch the community in Corinth. They write to him with a problem – is it acceptable to eat meat that’s been part of another religion’s practice? And Paul writes back, well, yes and no.
Some background. In those days eating meat that had previously been sacrificed to a god was hard to avoid for a couple reasons. First, if a priest had received it during the ritual and hadn’t eaten it, then it might be for sale in the market and not necessarily marked in any way. This is before the USDA. Second, there weren’t lots of public venues where you could be out socially and eating with people, except for going to a temple and taking part in those celebrations. So not eating meat that had been sacrificed in another religion’s ceremony came with a social cost, not just a nutrition cost.
I realize all the vegans and vegetarians online today are thinking, “I have an idea that could help.” Right?
Paul writes back with this way of thinking about it. "On the one hand," he says, "I grew up thinking about it this way – those statues in those temples that people think are gods don’t really have any power. They’re not the one true God. So it doesn’t really matter if meat was sacrificed to them or not, because really, nothing changes about the meat and nothing changes about you if you eat it. Either way is fine." He goes on… "But while I know that and I feel it in my bones, I know for some of you, you grew up thinking about those statues as being gods that have real power. And that’s a hard habit to break. It would be easy to go to a temple celebration just for the company and come out convinced to go back to your old way of life and your old way of seeing the world. So, my advice is this: the kindest, most loving thing to do here is for those of you know what I know is for you to choose not to eat it anyway, even though you’re right, so that your siblings in Christ will be able to maintain and grow in their faith."
Here’s an analogy. Let’s imagine there’s someone who’s very new to being sober, and they’re part of a recovery group. And they have someone who sponsors and supports them in the group. But one day, they’re passing a bar and they see their sponsor inside drinking a beer. And it gets them down and they end up going and getting a drink somewhere themselves and losing their sobriety. Now, is that still their choice that they made? Yes. But, would it have helped them if their sponsor had decided not to be in a bar, or to be careful to drink something that doesn’t look like alcohol? Yes. Because as I’m imagining the story, the sponsor actually wasn’t drinking a beer, just something that looked like it.
Of course, I hear what Paul is saying and there is a part of me that wants to say, basically, that that’s not fair. Why should the one group have to bend and accommodate for the other group?
The problem with community is that it gets us into these places where it’s important that we’re both open to and aware of the surface issues but also wise and kind about the emotions underneath. How vulnerable and uncertain these Gentile believers must be, joining up with a new faith that’s so different from what their families and friends believe? How about the believers with Jewish backgrounds, feeling more connected to the Scriptures and history of this new way Paul has taught them about, but then bumping up against problems and concerns from the Gentile Christians that just feel like they shouldn’t really be an issue. How hard is it to share their traditions and to make space for newness and change within them, too?
The core challenge for the Corinthians, then, is finding ways not to just believe the right thing, but, on a deeper level, to live the right way. To make decisions that take love into account first, rather than rightness. A couple thoughts on what that looks like.
First, I know I don’t always lead by example, but letting someone be wrong on the internet can be the kindest thing to do. Every now and then I’ll read a conversation that helps me understand the world better, but usually I'm peeking in on someone else's conversation when that happens. It is exceedingly rare that I’ll learn something from somebody who has decided to change my mind for me, especially if I don’t already trust this person and believe they have my best interests at heart. If you have the gifts and the opportunity to have open, curious conversations in person, that’s a different proposition. Although of course that can have its issues, too. But when we’re online, we’re really only coming to the conversation with part of ourselves and while our heads may be available to type out the words, our hearts are generally locked in place, which means that none of us is going anywhere.
Second, one way we move some of the energy from a conflict or a disagreement around is to give it to somebody else. The psychology word for this is triangulation because you move from a 1 to 1 relationship to a 1 to 1 to 1 relationship when you do this. Mad at your co-worker, but complain to your spouse? Mad at your spouse, but complain to your friend? That’s triangulation. Easy to do, relieves some of the anger/stress/what have you, and… it doesn’t address the underlying problem. The story of the Corinthians turning to Paul to give them an answer is 100% triangulation. It happens all the time as a natural response to all of us trying to live together and cooperate. And if what you’re hoping to do is avoid having to make any changes in the relationship where there’s conflict, then triangulation is great. But if you actually want to solve a problem, unfortunately, you have to talk to the person you have the problem with. And, possibly, make changes of your own. After all, as it turns out we are ourselves the only people we can change in any relationship.
Finally, if you find yourself giving more and more complicated negative meanings to someone else’s choices, that might be a sign that things are getting out of hand. The first apartment Heather and I had together, we had three other roommates. And it wasn’t always comfortable, in general. It was really not enough space and enough bathroom for all of us. And I started to have new interpretations for what dishes in the sink meant. It didn’t just mean that our roommate didn’t like doing dishes right away, it meant she didn’t respect my time or want me to succeed. The story got bigger and bigger the worse things got.
But then, when Heather and I moved out and it was just the two of us, two young crazy kids in love, I immediately got much more relaxed about dishes. It helped, of course, that there were only two of us sharing the kitchen, and that Heather was much better at sharing the space and doing her dishes. But also, added in there, was the fact that I loved Heather in a way I didn’t love our roommates, and so having to do her dishes sometimes, and knowing sometimes she would do mine, took the temperature way down, real real fast.
I know that as a country we have a difficult task in front of us, which is dealing with both questions about right and wrong and finding a way to care for each other across big divides. Some of that will be about having people who have been hurt speaking up and being heard, and setting boundaries. And some of that work will mean actually not talking about our disagreements, and instead finding ways to work together on other projects and talk about something else. We'll need to recognize that even though we have big, important differences that there are even more important things that hold us together and more powerful things we can do together than we ever could alone. My prayer is that we will find a way to walk that path with love. May it be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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