There are a lot of occasions when I can't tell the Christians apart from the non-Christians. At parties, grocery stores, courts of law, even in church. Seldom do the actions of Christians distinguish them as Jesus followers. We are these walking contradictions to grace. For example:
We preach a gospel of grace that is inclusive of all - yet our churches are frequently cliquish and exclusive.
We preach against marriage rights for homosexuals - yet our divorce rates and adultery indicate we don't know much about heterosexual covenant keeping.
We proclaim that Jesus became powerless on the cross - yet are unwilling to give up our own idols of power.
It's impossible to measure the distance between what we do and what we say we believe, partly because we have made following Jesus about sin management instead of a life of careful discernment. We have exchanged Jesus' radical way of pursuing the spirit of the law for the actual law, perhaps because quick absolutes are easy to grasp in a life that moves at warp speed. The problem is that absolutes don't flex, and they certainly don't allow for grace. And, oh by the way, the law is impossible to keep.
Paul dealt with this in his letter to the church at Corinth. It appears that they were struggling with whether or not it was right to eat meat that had been used as a part of pagan sacrifice ritual. It all seems strange to our modern ears because we mostly buy our meat at a store, but pay close attention, because the case makes extremely clear that careful discernment about right and wrong trumps moral absolutism.
Paul says that the meat ought not be a problem because those pagan rituals mean nothing, and, after all, the Christians there knew there is only one true God, so the meat was fine to eat. Except for one little caveat. Paul points out that not everyone had this knowledge, and so everyone must be careful "that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak." In other words, if eating the idol meat might cause problems for others new to the faith, don't do it. The fact was that love for others had to trump freedom to eat the idol meat. The implication for us? We must question our moral proclamations as Christians and admit that not everything in life is so black and white.
Sometimes the answer to "is this right or wrong?" is "it depends."
And "it depends" means we have to think carefully, pray carefully, and live carefully. "It depends" is a heavier burden than strict adherence to the law because it requires that we ignore the sound-byte theology of pop religion, and engage in the utterly serious question of, "Is this right or wrong for me in the here and now?" To fail to ask - and answer - this question is a diminishment of Jesus' grace that frees us from the law. It is a stark refusal to appeal to love, rather than knowledge or law. Hence, it is always easier to manage sin than to discern carefully.
This Sunday our church family will renew our covenant with one another. It's something we do every January. The sermon is going to hover over the issue of careful discernment because it is the task of any congregation trying to faithfully follow Jesus. We'll talk about how to walk this path of discernment together in a sermon called Wii Church. It's based on 1 Corinthians 8.1-13. Bring your Bible and join us at 10:45 or 11:45.
Carefully,
Pastor Gary
No comments:
Post a Comment