Deut. 18: 15-20 Psalm 111
1 Cor. 8: 1-13 Mark 1: 21-28
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Jackie Graeser makes the best chocolate pie…in.the.world. She was the wife of a retired pastor from my first call congregation, and oh, can I just tell you. That was some chocolate pie. Rich, creamy chocolate, topped with light, wonderful topping. It would literally melt in your mouth. Jackie often made these pies and brought them to church pot lucks, just like the one we are having today. But I quickly learned that there was one problem. By the time I got through the pot luck line there was NEVER any of Jackie’s pie left! Oh no, people would already be eating their meals, and laughing it up with their friends, while those big delectable pieces of Jackie’s chocolate pie sat beside their dinner plates, just waiting for them…but not for me.
In the first letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, that was our second reading today, he writes “Food will not bring us close to God.” Clearly, he had never eaten Jackie Graeser’s chocolate pie.
The church at Corinth was a church that Paul had founded several years before he wrote them this letter. Corinth was a large and prosperous urban center with an ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse population. Some might say it was not that different from Seattle. Most of its members were just plain folks, real people with real jobs and real lives. Some might say not that different from you and I. Oh, there were a few names that stand out, Prisca and Aquila were members of this church, but mostly, they were people trying to live out their faith and learn more about what it meant to be a disciple of Christ.
Apparently, though, like many churches, they did not always get along well and they had their fair share of disputes over the years, stories that last about poor leadership in critical times or factions of people leaving over this or that. Some might say this is not unlike the church today.
So, this first letter, 1st Corinthians, as we know it, is Paul’s response to them as he’s heard about some of what’s been happening there: disagreement within the church, groups jockeying for power and control, people trying to stir up trouble behind the scenes, an unwillingness of people to call out bad behavior when it happens, which included sexual immorality, lying, cheating, and marginalizing the poor. Whew! And, did I mention that they also began to question Paul’s authority. So Paul must respond. It’s a fascinating book of the Bible and I commend it to you.
Paul has had to address so many issues that when he gets around to the issue of food, it’s a bit difficult for us to understand, as the kids might say “what’s the big deal?” But it wasn’t just any old food they were dealing with here, it was food that had been offered to idols. The Christians at Corinth wanted to know if they could eat meat that has been left over from pagan sacrificial rites. And Paul says, right off the bat…you “know” (big air quotes), you “know” what is written about this. All of us “know”, all of us possess knowledge. Then Paul gets right to the heart of the matter…knowledge, he says puffs up, but love builds up. Agape builds up.
Today we will leave the sanctuary, but our worship will not have ended. There will be no final blessing or dismissal until after we have completed our annual meeting. It’s so easy for us to say, well our worship is one thing and our annual meeting is something else. Our annual meeting is a time for us to show what we “know”, our “knowledge.”
But friends, what we do in that meeting today is not separate from our worship at all. It is a part of our worship. It is a part of our service. And lest we get caught up in what we know, let us be reminded of Paul’s words….Knowledge puffs up; but Agape, love, builds up.
Last week when Pastor Jerry Buss was here from the synod office he suggested that if the term “Christian” has become something other than what it was intended to be, perhaps we should call ourselves something else. Because Christian in society today too often means a person or a group that is intolerant, believing that they are always right and everyone else is always wrong. Believing and behaving in ways that might make a Corinthian blush. When strangers ask what I do for a living I tell them that I am a pastor, but a Lutheran pastor, and not a narrow minded Lutheran, but a grace filled one. Too often my answer to their question, what do you do, still puts a wall between us.
During the snowpocalypse of week before last, our church sign was changed to read “Who Prayed for Snow?” And that kind of went viral. It was on KOMO’s web site and on the My Ballard blog. My Ballard even tweeted it out to their subscribers. And then people started commenting. Most of the comments said things like “It’s nice to see Lutherans with a sense of humor”, “It’s good to see Christians not judging others for a change”, “Wow, who would have thought they could be this cool?” And as pleased as I was to see us getting so much good exposure, and as much as I was delighted with this unexpected 15 minutes of evangelistic fame, I was somewhat saddened by the surprise that was expressed. Our neighbors and fellow Northwesterners had a completely different idea of what a Christian was and what we stood for, probably based on what they’ve read and seen in the media.
Knowledge puffs up. Agape love builds up.
We have work to do. We have been busy doing it. I was astonished and delighted when the request for warm coats, hats, gloves, socks and scarves yielded a ginormous pile of the same! Oh, Mary’s Place was overjoyed! They were thrilled! Those women and children without homes will at least be warm, or warmer, than they would have been otherwise. We can debate all day long about the causes of homelessness, but this response…this was not based on what we knew. This was based on how we love. Agape. This was love in action.
I don’t know what we would call ourselves if we tried to replace the word “Christian.” Followers of Christ, Christ’s peeps, Jesus freaks. All would probably eventually be misunderstood. So, what we will have to do, is show others who we are. It won’t get us eternal life, because we have already been given that free gift. But it will bring the Kingdom of God to this earth, visibly and powerfully.
After several disappointments over my inability to get a piece of chocolate pie in the pot luck line, I sat down at one pot luck with my plate of food, only to have Jackie Graeser come over to my table with a piece of her pie. She had set it aside for me in the kitchen. This happened at every subsequent pot luck and during the week that we packed up and moved away from that lovely community, embarking on this new life in Seattle, Jackie brought us an entire pie. A little bit of heaven it was. And a whole lot of agape love.
We gather for all that we do in the name of the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus Christ, who told us to love one another. To do all that we did in response for the love he had for us. And we do our work through the lens of our mission statement: Actively Sharing Christ’s Love in Community. Because there is much that we “know”, but even more may we love much…agape….love. Knowledge puffs up, but, love, agape, love builds up.
May we be built together and strengthened for service to the world,, now and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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