Think about your grocery list.
I won’t often encourage you to do that during the sermon, but think about it now, really.
What will you eat this week? What do you need to buy?
I won’t often encourage you to do that during the sermon, but think about it now, really.
What will you eat this week? What do you need to buy?
Do you have it firmly in mind?
Your shopping list, lunch plans and dinner menu are expressions of your faith, a way that you live in relationship to God. Though I expect that many of us are not thinking specifically about that at the deli counter or in the cereal aisle.
But Paul’s thinking about it.
His friends in the church at Corinth have written to him about the arguments and questions that are causing conflict in their congregation, and grocery shopping is right up there on the list.
You may already know that the Corinthians weren’t shopping at Jewel or Aldi. Instead, in the market square there were different vendors for vegetables, baked goods, dairy, and whatever else you needed. And most of the meat vendors were working out the back doors of the temples of Aphrodite, Poseidon, Apollo and others, selling meat from the animals sacrificed in worship and prayer to the Greek and Roman gods.
Most residents of the city understood that to eat Apollo’s meat, purchased from his temple, was to honor Apollo. Not as much as making a sacrifice of your own, of course, but on some level, you had to respect Apollo to dine on his beef.
So the small Christian community faced an ongoing grocery challenge.
They all knew, of course, that there is only one God. The God of Israel, Creator of All, Father of Jesus Christ, the Lord. And Apollo, Aphrodite, Poseidon were all illusions. Idols without power of their own.
No one in the Christian community was going to participate in the worship of those gods. But they still had to eat.
Some in the congregation said that to eat Apollo’s beef or Poseidon’s mutton was idol-worship – a sinful rejection of God. Others, however, said that eating the meat sold from the temples was harmless, since we all know those gods don’t really exist. (And apparently the “eat everything” group were calling the more cautious folks stupid.)
It may seem a strange thing to argue about, two thousand years later. But we have similar challenges. Just not – mostly – in the supermarket meat department.
Paul points out that this isn’t really about idols, or about meat.
It’s about how our every day actions and choices affect others.
It’s about caring for our brothers and sisters in the community.
And that’s exactly what matters to us, today.
Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that food cannot bring them close to God, and it’s perfectly okay to eat meat from the temple markets
UNLESS
it distresses one of your fellow Christians.
If it makes your dinner companions feel that they have sinned, or makes others who respect you question the quality of their relationship with God, take the meat off your table and eat your vegetables. Period.
Being right doesn’t count. Building up your neighbor does.
This week I got an email from a friend inviting me to join an internet protest of Trader Joe’s about fair wages for tomato pickers. And, while I’m generally allergic to internet protests, I signed on to this one, sending an email of my own to the management. Because I buy a LOT of my groceries at Trader Joe’s. And I if I know my food costs someone else their health, family life, and dignity – which does happen when we underpay our farm workers – dinner feels sinful.
And dinner that feels sinful undermines our relationship to God.
That’s about food, yes. And about idols, on some level.
But it’s not mostly about food.
It’s about how our daily actions impact others.
Your decisions this week may not be about tomatoes. It might be clothes that horrify your sister because of sweatshop labor.
It might be your kids or grandkids watching your behavior in traffic, or when there’s a political debate on TV, and learning some words they know they shouldn’t use.
It might be peers or co-workers who respect you watching your relationship with the boss, or a client, and trying on relationships that feel wrong to them becasuse they want to fit in.
You remember how that works in school, don’t you?
It’s not just food. It’s everything we do.
Because other members of God’s family are affected by our dinner, our clothes, our vocabulary, all of our actions.
Sound like a tough job?
It was tough in Corinth to serve a healthy dinner without shopping among the idol-worshippers, and it’s a tough job in Lombard and Chicago to make every choice count.
But the good news is that all our choices count.
Colleages and fellow students might want to fit in with our habit of treating everyone with dignity and respect.
Kids and grandkids want to learn how to love from the ones they love the best.
Siblings and friends want to be led to life-giving choices and peace of heart and mind.
The good news is that we preach the gospel all day, every day.
And the mission of the church is fulfilled in our offices, cars, classrooms, and yes, our shopping carts.
We make a difference in the world with every email, phone call, management decision, conversation, and purchase.
Look around you for a minute at your brothers and sisters in Christ. See all the different lives through which God can work in Lombard – Villa Park, Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn, Downers Grove, and all around.
Think about their shopping lists, their offices and homes and friends, all the daily choices and actions that are shaped by the faith we share.
Look at them, looking at you. And know that your decisions make a difference – even in the grocery. Every single thing we do to love and build up our neighbors makes the gospel real, here and now.
Isn’t that good news?
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