Modern-day Corinth is
only one hundred and fifty years old. It
was founded in the middle of the 19th Century after an earthquake destroyed the
village that had sprung up around the ruins of Ancient Corinth, which was of
course where Paul founded his church. It
was first occupied some sixty-five hundred years before that, and by the
beginning of the Bronze Age, it had become a major center of trade. But about
that time, something happened.
Archeologists noticed a sharp decline in the number of pottery shards
after that time; they think that the by twelve hundred years before the common
era, the city was only sparsely populated.
But you can't keep a
good city down, and 450 years later, in the middle of the 8th Century, the
city's fortunes changed: an oligarchy, centered around a single family, unified
Corinthian rule. They began to build
grand public buildings and establish it once again as a major center of trade.
By the Classic Period,
some 250 later, Corinth had come to rival Athens and Thebes in terms of
wealth and influence. It was frequented
by wealthy and powerful tradesmen and government officials, and its pleasures
became known far and wide. And though
there were temples to all kinds of gods and goddesses, the most renowned was
doubtless the one dedicated to Aphrodite, goddess of love, where a thousand temple
prostitutes served those powerful men. Speaking of the city's exorbitant
luxuries, the poet Horace wryly observed, "non licet omnibus adire
Corinthum"--not everyone is able to go to Corinth.
But alas: nothing ever
stays the same, especially, perhaps, places of opulent power and
privilege. Rome was on the rise, and a
hundred and forty-six years before the birth of Christ, it came knock, knock,
knocking on Corinth's door: General Lucius Mummius besieged and captured the
city, killing the men and enslaving the women and children. Then, in what seems
to me to be an act of overkill, he burnt it to the ground.
For a century, it
remained a city of ghosts and squatters, until it was rebuilt by Rome. By the time Paul got there, 50 years after
the birth of Christ, it was once again a thriving, cosmopolitan city, home to a
large, vibrant population of Romans, Greeks and Jews.
And that's the city
through which Laius Maximus hurried one Sunday evening just at dusk. The air
had that hazy quality that came after a hot day in those climes, and humidity
still hung in the air. Laius knew the
dew would lie thick on the ground by morning.
He was coming from one of the parties that had sprung up around the
pagan temples of late, parties where the cognoscenti ate and drank well and
discussed the issues of the day. They
were the ancient equivalent, perhaps, of tweedy, private men's clubs, or maybe
the salon culture of 19th-century Paris.
Laius Maximus was
heading to an evening service in one of the house churches that had sprung up
like mushrooms after Paul's visit. He
was full of good wine and fine food, and was in fact just a little tipsy,
though he doubtless would have called it "relaxed." He was late, having tarried over good food
and conversation just a little too long, and in a hurry to get there because
he'd heard that a messenger would be reading a letter from Paul himself, and he
just knew the place would be packed.
And sure enough, when
he got there, it was nearly full, and the messenger--a woman named
Priscilla--was almost half-way through Paul's letter. The place was so crowded that Laius had to
make do with a seat on the very back row between a vegetable seller and an
overweight kitchen slave who smelled of garlic.
This was not something he was used to, to say the least.
But as he sat, he
quickly forgot his discomfort, because Priscilla was saying something that
directly related to him: "Now
concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that 'all of us possess
knowledge.”. And Laius thought quite right!
We do all possess knowledge, and he thought finally. We're going to put this controversy to bed. And indeed a conflict had arisen in the Roman
church about the eating of meat that had been previously sacrificed to pagan
gods, or idols. You see, meat was scarce
in Corinth, and difficult to find, but it was always being offered to
idols. And because there were a lot of
the little devils around town, there was a lot of meat that went to waste,
because the idols themselves rarely ate anything.
So, a thriving
grey market of meat previously offered to idols had sprung up, and it was particularly
prevalent at the kind of parties from which Laius had just come. But what was troubling to the nascent Christian
community was that it would doubtless be featured at the communal meal
following the message, donated by wealthy elite such as himself.
Now. Laius, like the other elite--indeed, like
Paul himself--was well educated in the Greco-Roman manner, and knew full well
that those idols weren't real, that they had no life of their own,
and therefore that it made no difference whether they ate of the meat offered
to them, which they did, as often as they could get ahold of it, and with great
gusto.
The problem lay with
the, how shall we say it, common people--like the two Laius was wedged
between on the back row. They were
uneducated and, might as well come out and say it, superstitious, and
they thought idols were real. And
so the controversy arose: some in the community thought--no, they knew--that
eating meat offered to idols was no big deal, while others thought that it was
evil, and shouldn't be done.
And now, Paul--their
beloved founder, their paterfamilias--was finally going to lay the
matter to rest, and Laius was sure which way he was going to come down. After all, Paul was an educated man, he'd had
the same education he'd had, and he knew idols were nothing but
wood or metal or clay, just like Laius.
And Paul started out by
quoting popular sayings, popular slogans, of the educated amongst them: we all
have knowledge, and it was true: everybody knew that there was no such
things as other gods, and everybody knew that knowledge could puff up, as
well. You could get big-headed, you
could lord it over other people, but you know what? Right was still right. Wasn't it part of being children of God that
they cast off the old ways, the superstitious ways, the ways that held
them back? Didn't they have the
authority, the freedom in Christ to do it?
But Paul grounded his
argument in love (Laius hated it when he did that), contrasting those who based
their behavior on knowledge, or claiming to know something, with those
who base it on love, who in fact love God, saying that those who
love God are known by God.
Then he uses more of those slogans again, saying that although they
know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but
one," there are those who have no such knowledge. There are those who have recently come from
worshipping idols, without the education and perhaps the sophistication of
people like Paul and Laius, who have what Paul calls weak consciences--those
whose faith is still immature, whose will-power is not what it should be. Paul is saying that these people, whose faith
is not as strong as it should be, or not as strong as it will be
someday, might be harmed by people like Laius--who know that it makes no
difference what they eat--nevertheless, such people might be harmed by
them eating meat offered to idols.
And at first, Laius
scoffed--how could that be? How could he
and his colleagues' eating such meat possibly harm someone who
hasn't? In answer, Paul quotes yet
another slogan "Food will not bring us close to God." It doesn't matter to us, to people
like Paul and Laius, whether or not they eat such food makes no difference to
them. But to others, to those whose
faith is weaker or less formed, it could be a stumbling block for them,
it could cause them to lose their faith, to revert back to the old ways, the
old ways of relating to idols. In other
words, it could destroy their faith.
As Priscilla spoke
Paul's words, Laius could see that the Apostle considered the congregation
at Corinth to be a family, from people like Laius to his friend Pelonius to the
working-class people he was wedged between. And though he wasn't sure he liked
sharing intimate, family kind of stuff with even Pelonius, much less these people,
he understood Paul's point. When you do
harm to a member of your family, when you sin against your brother or sister or
mother or cousin twice removed, you sin against Christ. Therefore, even though he knows better, even
though he has the knowledge that it's ok to eat meat offered to idols, Paul,
for one, will not do so if it will bring harm to a brother or sister. Because love trumps knowledge, every time.
And I don't know if
Laius ever changed his mind, or whether the conflict in Corinth was ever
resolved, but I do know that this kind of thing plagues us even
today. In one congregation, it was
drinking. One group thought it was no
problem to drink, they just knew that their freedom in Christ allowed
them to have a glass of wine now and then, all in moderation, of course. Another group felt the opposite, that alcohol
was harmful. Some of them had
been harmed in the past, with alcoholic parents or children, and there was even
an ex-alcoholic amongst them. They went
on a leadership retreat, and at the hotel restaurant the tipplers had a few and
the tee-totalers didn't, and they sat apart from each other so the totalers
wouldn't be tempted, and what would Paul say about this? I think he'd say that "Drink will not
bring us closer to God." It makes
no difference in our faith whether they drink or not drink, so why do they
insist on drinking when it might tempt the tee-totalers and destroy their
sobriety? A congregation is a
family, and if you hurt a member of
God's family, you sin against God.
But does this mean that
a church cannot be a prophetic witness against injustice or sin within its own
body? Can some members not express their
view on poverty, say, or war, or who can marry whom because others
disagree? Of course not, as Paul would
say: he himself spent a lot of time correcting false opinions and doctrines in
the church, and he advised brother to correct brother, sister to correct
sister, all done of course in love.
And that is the
distinguishing factor, the thing that must guide us: love. Knowledge is all right, is it necessary to
have it to get along in the world. But
it can puff up, it can be used to ill effect, to build the ego instead of the
body of Christ. That is why that down
through the ages, wise women and men, sages of all the great religions, have
said the same thing: whatever you do, do it in love. Amen.
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