Knowledge and Love in the age of Obama (I Corinthians 8)
Valuing knowledge One of my weekly tasks is to spend a few minutes, usually on Thursday or Friday, to write a little blurb for the Reedley Exponent. You may not be a faithful reader of every page of the Exponent so allow me to tell you that there is space allotted every week for churches to print a few words about upcoming activities. We try to take advantage of this opportunity. Every week there is some standard information that is unchanged and then, in addition, there is space for about 40-50 words appropriate for the week to come.
Often when I sit down to write those lines words like ``knowledge'' or ``thinking'' come to mind. I find myself wanting to say things like ``come to First Mennonite Church, a place where you don't need to check in your brain at the front door.'' Actually, it's not that crass but it concerns me that it might come across that way, like we think we are smarter or more intellectually adept than everyone else. What I'm really trying to say is that just like some churches may emphasize ``come as you'' are in terms of your dress, or ``come as you are'' in terms of your particular personal resume; we want to say, ``come as you are'' in terms of what you've been thinking, or learning, or reading. We value the journey of the mind.
Knowledge and brains sometimes get a bad rap. Those pointy headed types, they've got their heads so lost in the clouds, they have no conception of what it's like in the real world. Get out of your ivory tower and see what it's like to get your hands dirty! Theories and fancy words don't do a thing to prepare you for the raw realities of hard-core life. And surely, we've all had experiences in our lives where the ``book'' said it one way but in the end, we just had to improvise.
But right now, I think, knowledge and smarts are on the upswing. Why? Because we are living in the age of Obama! Our new president and the people he hangs around with are known for their intellects and their tech-savvy ways. The new president is thought to be a quick study, a guy who probably did well on his SATs. He uses good adjectives, composes beautiful sentences, creates lovely word pictures, and combines it all with some good, black, powerful preaching techniques. He uses a BlackBerry and can articulate a complete, comprehensible sentence on the fly. So knowledge and smarts are definitely now ``in.''
Paul writes to the Corinthians I say all this as a way of bringing us back to our New Testament scripture passage. We're spending time with Paul's first letter to the Corinthians landing on chapter 8 today. Some form of the word knowledge, used both as a verb and a noun, is sprinkled throughout this chapter. It's been an important word for Paul, himself a very bright man. Remember back in chapter 1 how he argued that the cross is foolishness to most, but that if you really want to know God, you take up the way of the cross. Here in this chapter, Paul is thinking about knowledge in a different way. He is reflecting on what to do with knowledge, and the place of knowledge in a Christian's life, particularly relative to other characteristics the Christian should exhibit.
It's all provoked by a question. Remember Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth who are trying to sort through what it means to be a Christ follower in their own time and place. They run into issues and they decide, who better to consult with than Paul. After all, he was here for eighteen months getting these churches off the ground. He's our founding father. Let's write him and ask him for advice. So Paul is the ``answer man'' for the Corinthian churches.
The question has emerged, what about food sacrificed to idols? Can we eat it, or not? This question had social and religious implications. For converted Jews, it wasn't such a big problem. Jewish people living in Greco-Roman cities like Corinth had this advantage. Jews, whether converted or not, believed that it was wrong to eat meat that had been slaughtered and sacrificed to idols. They had obtained the right to slaughter their own animals and sell it to other Jews.
But non-Jewish converts to Christianity weren't so well positioned. It was so much the custom for meat to pass in front of an idol, in some kind of a ritual, before going out in the open market that a Christian could hardly avoid the hard, cold truth that ``this meat sitting in front of me, that I'm being offered on this occasion, has been in the presence of an idol.'' Poor citizens who became Christians were in an extremely tough situation. Meat served at public feasts was probably the only chance they had to get some protein. They couldn't afford it otherwise.
The people posing the question to Paul seem to be saying that ``we believe, we know, that actually this is a moot point. These idols are really nothing. There is only one God. Actually there is nothing to worry about.''
Paul agrees with them. He too has come to this knowledge, this understanding, this wisdom. He quotes the great teaching from Deuteronomy, the shema, ``there is no God but one.'' There's only one God and these idols, whatever they are made of, are really of no import at all. So eating meat that has been offered to idols is no problem at all. Those idols only have power, only have meaning, if you give them that power. Since I know that they are meaningless, that there is only one true God, I refuse to give them that power. Therefore, bon appetite.
But Paul says something important about knowledge. In the most quotable line of the passage he offers this fancy one liner: ``knowledge puffs up but love builds up.'' Knowledge is all well and good, but if you are not looking out for others, if you aren't practicing this agape, putting-others-ahead-of-yourself love, then there's going to be trouble.
Paul explains himself like this. I have thought enough, I am enlightened enough to know that in truth this food has been sacrificed to nothing. Those idols are nothing. But I also know this. I have some believing friends, I know some people, for whom it is their reality that these idols are real. Just because I'm enlightened, and I ``get it,'' doesn't mean everyone else does. And if I, Paul, in some cavalier way just start chomping on this meat, it will be really confusing, really troublesome, to them. And given that, for Paul it's not worth it. It's just a hunk of meat. I'm not better off if I eat it, or if I don't eat it. I just can't do something, even though I know it's right, if I know it will cause this brother or sister of my to fall.
So, freeing, liberating knowledge is a fine thing, but weighed in the balance, it pales compared to the practice of self-giving love. A humble love that shows the utmost concern for the other trumps knowledge. Such a love demonstrates and is love for God. Paul cautions Christians who have such enlightened understandings from trampling on the sensitive conscience of another, ``weaker,'' brother or sister.
How should we live this out? In real life, we ought to take our considerable knowledge and filter it through our love. We grant to love the final say. You wouldn't host an inter-faith breakfast and then heap bacon on your Muslim friends' plates. You wouldn't flaunt your freedom and knowledge about drinking wine on a dear relative for whom wine-drinking is very troubling.
Our theme causes me to think about the upcoming Lenten season. For quite a few years we have kicked off the season with an Ash Wednesday service. We have a service in the Fellowship Hall where we typically write on a slip of paper something we are grieving about, or would like to change in our lives, and then we burn the slips of paper. We reflect on the Lenten journey ahead. As a symbol of our commitment to the Jesus way we place the sign of the cross, formed of ashes and oil, on our foreheads or the back of our hands. It's a quiet, meditative, somber service.
However, as the years have gone by and our church has changed, a new dynamic has emerged. Many people worshiping in our Spanish language service come out of a Catholic background and are familiar with this Ash Wednesday symbol out of their Catholic experiences. For them the cross on the forehead reminds of a time in their lives, a way of understanding faith, which they have left behind.
Now to me, the persecution of the early Anabaptists by the Catholics in the 16th century is ancient history. I feel like I have the knowledge to put that in perspective, and the understanding to take a symbol out of the Catholic tradition and give it a new and strong meaning in our own time. But that's me, and the knowledge I possess.
We've made the decision to not have the Ash Wednesday service this year, to do something different. We are planning on having instead, on the Sunday evening prior to Ash Wednesday, a service where we sing songs we will be using during the Lenten season. The decision wasn't purely motivated by this Ash Wednesday concern, but it did factor in, at least a little bit. Perhaps in some small way, at least, we are allowing love to trump knowledge.
But this can get pretty confusing. Can this agape love result in the unnecessary silencing of important truth? If you accept the overwhelming evidence that the earth came into existence long, long ago, and that the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are marvelous accounts of the why and who of creation, but not the how, is it an act of agape love to stay respectful and silent in the face of other views? Or if you have an intimate knowledge of abortion's devastating impact is it really the agape love thing to do to let the other side control the conversation? Sometimes it is hard to know when knowledge is really knowledge. And it is hard to know when love is really love.
Is looking the other way in the name of love really, truthfully, love? Aren't there times when a deep agape love must find a way to confront the ``knowledge'' before it with its own sense of what is right and true? Is demurring always the way to demonstrate love?
A quilt metaphor Early this week I took some friends of Joseph's up to see the MCC offices. We toured through the quilt room guided by Pauline. We stood for awhile in front of a quilt that is going to be made. Pauline's been planning this quilt for a time, collecting strips of cloth from many different places, with different textures, with many different colors. I think it's the familiar ``around the world'' pattern. The pieces were lying on the table, and I imagine Pauline fussing with them, looking for the best color patterns, the yellows here, no the reds over there, hmmm, what about the blues there….
Eventually, Pauline will decide the best way to arrange the pieces. And eventually there will be quilters, sitting around the table, caringly, lovingly, stitching the various pieces together where they will remain, forever…the African piece into the Indonesian piece, the red strip into the blue strip.
Perhaps those different pieces of cloth represent our varying ways of knowing, my knowledge, your knowledge, their knowledge. But our knowledge needs to be submissive to love. We may not understand at all the other person but we can't let our confidence in our own knowledge become so dominant, so arrogant, that we can't respectfully allow the other person to have their own conscience, their own point of view. And eventually, the loving thing to do is to stitch those pieces together. They can't remain apart forever. Finally, the day has to come when they sit together and respectfully, thoughtfully, lovingly, speak to each other, with the goal not of parading our own ``rightness,'' but rather of building up the other person in love.
