Sermon for January 14th, 2024
Readings:
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
The Apostle Paul, in his characteristic style, is trying to tackle how some folks are misunderstanding the Christian faith. Is Christianity meant to be a more strict, or less strict version of Judaism? How are Christians meant to relate to God’s law? What should direct and drive Christian behaviour? What is the relationship between Christian freedom and Christian responsibility? These are some of the very practical questions that Paul addresses in his letters, including his letter to the Corinthians that we heard a moment ago. Funny thing is, Paul was addressing these issues with the Church in Corinth a couple thousand years ago, but these issues and these questions are still very much present in our own day. They aren’t irrelevant.
I know that there are many people in the world that think that church (and possibly religion in general) is either one of two things: a get out of jail free card that offers a pie-in-the-sky promise of heaven for those who subscribe to the correct beliefs, OR an ethical system of dos and don’ts that is primarily designed to make nice people nicer. Plenty of people look at us and think that that is what Christianity is about: no rules or all rules. There may be many faithful Christians who see their faith as being about one of those two things: Correct beliefs or correct actions. Believe the right thing and go to heaven, or do the right things and go to heaven, or even more common nowadays for those who strain to believe in an afterlife: do the right things and make heaven for ourselves. But what if I told you that it’s not an either/or situation? What if it isn’t a choice between believing and doing? What if it isn’t a choice between waiting for heaven and trying to make the world a little better? What if belief and action are married to each other and walk hand in hand?
What I think Paul really wants the Corinthians to understand is that in Jesus Christ God has revealed his love to us in this most astounding way. God has shown us self-sacrificial love. Christ offers himself as a sacrifice for human sin. He fulfills but does not negate the law. He offers us freedom from this cycle of sin and death that we get trapped in. The same God that led the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, offers us all a way out of slavery to the forces in this world that dominate us. Sometimes the forces in this world that dominate us are very personal demons. Maybe it is addiction or anxiety or greed or anger. We live in a world filled with good things, including amazing food, but any of those things, when taken out of perspective or out of balance, can dominate us. That is Paul’s point. Christ offers us freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. We have this amazing promise of forgiveness of sin and everlasting life, and we have been given a foretaste of this resurrected life in Jesus’s resurrection, but that tremendous gift still calls for some response from us.
There was a biblical scholar named John P Meier, who once wrote that “if religion is grace then ethics is gratitude.” “Radical demand, flows from radical grace.” If religion is grace then ethics is gratitude. What that means is that if our religion, our belief system, teaches us that in history and in our own personal lives, God has shown us unmerited grace, meaning God gives us love, forgiveness and salvation that we don’t deserve, then our ethics, or how we live our lives, the code of conduct that we willingly subscribe to, that should be a reflection of our gratitude for that grace. God acts first. God gives us life. God knows us, God calls us. God offers us forgiveness, love and salvation. That is all grace. God’s work in the world is grace. When we stand up and recite the creed, which is the core belief of our religion, we are reciting and retelling a short history of God’s grace. God acts first.
But does an encounter with that grace change us in any way? Does it change how we live moving forward? God may indeed act first, but does that mean that everything we do as humans is irrelevant and bears no consequences? The Apostle Paul certainly didn’t think so. Jesus didn’t think so either.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he talks about being free from a rigid and narrow understanding of God’s law. He talks about being free from this idea that in order to be saved we must fulfill God’s law perfectly, meaning that we must be faultless in our actions. If, in Christ, we are free from that kind of slavery to a rigid interpretation of law, does that then mean that we should just do whatever we want? Paul doesn’t think so. All things may be lawful for me, he says, but not all things are beneficial. Just because you can do something and get away with it, doesn’t mean that you should. We live in a very free society here in our country, and that is indeed a blessing, but with freedom comes responsibility. There are many, many things that are perfectly lawful for us to do, but that doesn’t mean that we SHOULD do them. It doesn’t make them good for us, or for anyone else.
Christianity is not just about rigid adherence to a bunch of rules; nor is it about willfully just doing whatever the heck we want, regardless of the consequences to ourselves or others, just because we are confident that God has an ultimate place for us in his eternal kingdom. It is about freedom AND responsibility. A responsibility that comes from gratitude, NOT guilt. We are called to be people who witness to God’s grace, not only with our lips but in our lives. We are people who value rules and traditions, NOT because we think that our eternal salvation is contingent upon adhering to them, but because we find in them wisdom. They are good for us and they help us to not be dominated by the forces of this world, even our own demons and desires, that would dominate us. If Christianity is about grace, then the Christian life must be about gratitude. If my life means so much to God, then it should mean something to me too. If your life means so much to God, then it should mean something to me too. That is Christian ethics in a nutshell. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should.
Inwardly Digest 