Here is Fr. Davids sermon for this weekend. OK, lets do some audience participation. Imagine you are shopping at your favorite grocery store - Martins, Kroger, Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods. You havent had a nice steak in a while and you are hoping you can find a New York strip or Filet Mignon, but money is tight. Hoping for a deal you head to meat aisle and it certainly looks like you are in luck. You see a sign above several packages of meat that says: THESE STEAKS 50% OFF, GUARANTEED FRESH. You notice a beautiful looking package of filet mignon that is just what you were hoping to find. Your mouth begins to water as you reach for those juicy steaks. Just then, you notice that there is some smaller print on the sign. The smaller print says: Meat Has Been Sacrificed to an Idol in a Pagan Ritual. Which brings me to my question: Would you buy meat that had been sacrificed by someone as part of a pagan religious ceremony? No, I havent lost my mind. This is exactly the scenario faced by first century Christians. It is definitely not a hot button issue for the twenty-first century church, but in the first century, this is what a lot of Christians were debating. Many countries in the world today are dominated by a major religion, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. In the Roman Empire, things were much different. Worship at that time was very pluralistic and consisted of a variety of cults. (Cults in this sense means the worship of particular deities, not people being fed a lot of carbs and brainwashed). People participated in all sort of cults, the way we visit booths at a fair. No big deal. When Judaism as a religion became known, the Romans in particular found that religion to be quite confusing. Why? Because the Jewish people only worshiped one God. Weird! (at least to the Romans). One of the things that happened with many of these cults was that sacrifices were made. Now, we see this in Judaism as well. In Luke, after the birth of Jesus, what do Joseph and Mary do? They go to the temple in Jerusalem to make a sacrifice. This could be wine or grain. But both in Judaism and in pagan religions, an animal was often sacrificed. It could be something small like a bird, or in the Mithras cult, it was an entire bull. Once the sacrifice was made, the animals was butchered and the priests were given some of the meat as part of their compensation. (By the way, I am not sure how priests gave that up. I certainly wouldnt mind somebody sending me home with some filet mignon every Sunday!) OK, back to the story, after the priests got their allotment, the meat would be in danger of going to waste. So, the meat that had been used in the sacrifice was sold in the marketplace, sometimes at a reduced price. So, while my introduction may have sounded crazy to you, it is pretty much what Christians encountered when they went shopping. For members of early Christian churches, this created problems for church members. Remember that Christianity as a religion evolved from Judaism, and then, as now, we accepted the belief in one God, along with the holy books of Judaism, which we call the Old Testament. In Exodus, God makes it very plain to the Jewish people that there is only one God. Not only that, in the Ten Commandments God makes it pretty clear how Jews and Christians should handle other gods they might encounter in the world. The very first commandment is, You shall have no other gods before me. So, when Jewish people rubbed shoulders with Roman and Greek citizens and their religions, they were horrified. In Greeks and Romans, Jewish people saw not only people who had other gods, they had many more than one. They participated in the cults of all sorts of gods! The Jews wanted no part of these pagan cults, and Christians were the same way. Again, it is difficult for us modern people to grasp that in the first century, Jews and Christians were regarded as being very weird because they only worshiped one God. But what about buying meat that had been offered to an idol in one of these cults? That is the topic that Paul is addressing in our New Testament reading, which is from the letter to the church in Rome. There were two basic positions. The first position is one that Paul saw as correct theologically, but didnt fully approve of, as we will see later. These were people who saw the idols that were worshiped in pagan cults as being nothing more than blocks of stone. They knew that only the Judeo-Christian God had real power in the world, and that praying to a god of stone or wood was nothing short of being silly. Imagine if you were to get into an argument with your neighbor and then run into their house, come back with a stone idol and say to you, I have prayed to my god Beor to curse you!!!. I personally would have trouble keeping a straight face. So, the first group of Christians knew their theology. They had common sense and were strong enough in their faith to not worry about idols that everyone knows dont have any real power. Paul implies that the strong are right to go ahead and buy meat that had been sacrificed in a pagan ceremony. On the other hand, some Christians took an opposite point of view. They took that first commandment very seriously. They avoided other gods. They did not go anywhere near pagan ceremonies. And, when they encountered meat for sale in the marketplace, they refused to buy it, because it had been associated with pagan ceremonies, and in their minds, eating it might violate that First Commandment. Not only that, because the consumption of this pagan meat was so widespread, they worried that if they had dinner at a friends house, they might be served meat. And, if they were served meat, they would have no way of knowing where the meat came from. So, they became vegetarians. Not because they loved animals or for health reasons, but because they were worried about eating meat that had been used in a sacrifice. Paul saw these people as being weak. The phrase, the weak eat only vegetables in our lesson speaks to this. These people were viewed by the early church in the way we might think about people who see the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich. We who are strong might see the grilled cheese folks as weak. That being said, Paul is actually writing this portion of the letter not to criticize the weak, but to criticize the strong. He agreed theologically with the strong. But for Paul, the question was not, Who is right? on this issue or Who is wrong? on another issue. The real question is, Are we being loving and caring towards our brothers and sisters in Christ? Some people in other churches, like Corinth, were pretty sophisticated in their knowledge, but very unloving in their behavior. That same dynamic continues to play out in churches today. Some of us are pretty sophisticated in our faith and have been Christians for some time. We have experience. Maybe we have done E.F.M. or have gone to seminary. We are strong theologically compared to people who might worship the Blessed Mother on a grilled cheese sandwich or Jesus on a water tower. However, if we laugh at them, we are weak in the most important category that Jesus taught about: Love. Pauls letter today is really all about that. When we get to heaven, Jesus will have some questions for us about our lives. He will not be asking, What was your theology? or How sophisticated were you in your faith?. No, he will ask one question: Did you LOVE others? If we want to be one of the strong we need to be strong in one aspect of our lives: our ability to love others as Christ loved us. Exodus 14:19-31 Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13 Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:54:24 +0000
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