Are we not free? Food and the Faith (Epistle for the Sunday of the Last Judgment)

1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2; Amos 5, Isaiah 40

In our epistle reading for the Sunday of Meatfare, we pick up St. Paul’s train of thought after he has been answering the question of the Corinthians regarding whether it is permitted for Christians to eat food that had been previously offered to idols. It is important to realize that he is not addressing in 1 Corinthians 8 whether they should attend pagan worship ceremonies:  that was a foregone conclusion, though no doubt some faithless Christians did so to avoid persecution or social ostracization.  No, it was a matter of the food that HAD been present at those ceremonies.  Was it unclean, and could it contaminate one?  This was a live issue for the early community, as most of the reasonably priced food had this history: to buy food that hadn’t been blessed in a temple would be expensive, like only buying at Whole Foods, as some do today for the sake of conscience.

The apostle’s answer to the Corinthians on this issue is clear, but complex.  It is not just a matter of whether it is right to eat such food, but about love for the community, including those with scruples.  Yes, everything is permitted in this area for the Christian, he says.  In the background lies the huge debate in the early Church, one that even brought Peter and Paul into conflict, but which was solved in the Jerusalem Council—Gentiles did not have to keep kosher any longer.  But the reason that St. Paul gives for this permission is key to understanding Christian foundations.  He takes them back to the Shema (Deut 6:4):  Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  And he offers them what we could call a fulfilled Shema, something that he evidently expects all the Corinthians would agree with: “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and ^zthrough whom we exist.”  Now, in logic, one AND one makes two.  But, Paul reminds them “no idol has any real existence” and “there is no God but one” (1 Cor 8:4).  Christians are monotheists.  However, they have come to understand, through God’s amazing actions in history, that the YHWH, the LORD of the Old Testament who spoke to Moses and the prophets, has taken on human flesh, and revealed Himself fully in Jesus, the God-Man.  Further, this Jesus, in living among us, has shown us the character of the hidden God, whom we can now call Father.  All things come from the Father, and through the Son—everything may be received from His hand!

This may look like a change from the past, but it is more accurate to call it a clarification.  Yes, God did set down food laws in Leviticus, separating the Jewish people from those around them. (The Church did not canonize the Epistle of Barnabas which, for all its beauty, makes the mistake of suggesting that these laws were only meant to be taken symbolically, and that the Jews had been wrong to keep kosher).  Now, however, such distinctives were no longer necessary, for everything to which the Law had been pointing was fulfilled in the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.  What Jesus did has rendered these particular laws redundant, for he is the One who makes all things clean.  (Here we might also note that the apostle and the New Testament do not make the same move with regards to sexual matters—all sexual behavior is not clean, because God has made us in a certain way, male and female, at the beginning. The food regulations were given for a time, but our sexual nature is part of our created makeup. Those who are presently arguing that we adapt our sexual ethics because the Levitical laws have been surpassed are making a false connection, and need to ask why St. Paul himself did not argue in this way, but continued to class all forms of sexual immorality as outside of the purview of those inheriting the kingdom of God, cf. 1 Cor 6). But as for foods, after all, these good things were given by God for our use—all things come from Him.

It is not as though keeping kosher had any value in itself: what mattered was that this practice set apart the Jews, along with their circumcision, marking them as specially sanctified to God.  But now, the time of separation was over, and the promise to Abraham had come to pass in Christ: “in your seed shall all the nations of the world be blessed.”  And so St. Paul rightly says that for a Christian to take on, or to go back to the constraints of the Law, is the same as slavery.  We are no longer children, banned from using some of the household goods, nor are we slaves to external laws, but we are free.

Yet our freedom is not for our good alone.  Taking us back to look at the character of the living God is a brilliant move.  The Corinthians have been asking only half the question:  MAY we eat this food?  They should also be asking, WHAT EFFECT could eating it have on my friends?  For, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 15:3, Christ did not please himself.  When we see Jesus, we see the character of that God who condescended to be among us, to communicate with us, the One whose humility is unspeakable.  And we are to be like Him.  So we pick up the train of St. Paul in our reading at this point:

But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse. But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.

For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.  (I Cor 8:8-9:2)

What we do with food does not “commend” us, does not win us brownie points with God.  We are free to eat as we like, of course, taking into consideration matters of health and balance.  BUT, says the apostle, there are some who are not completely settled on the matter that an idol has no independent existence.  There are some who believe that touching things connected with a so-called god could harm them, and I need to be aware of such scruples. The character of God is both free, and completely loving, as we see in Jesus, who was bound by no man (a legion of angels could have set Him free) but who went willingly to the cross.

My theology may be perfect, but if I do not act in love, it does me (and others) no good.  The question of eating food offered to idols is not a live one for many Christians today.  But the foundations remain:  our faith is one that proclaims not simply that God is ONE, but that this one God has shown His nature in Jesus, and calls us to be like Him.  As we approach Great Lent, the reminder is salutary.  The wisdom of our fathers is to remind us, as we enter into a time of ascesis, that doing without is not of value in itself. It does not commend us to God.  Rather, it is a tool, and one to be used not only for ourselves, but with others in mind. The epistle reading is a continuation of the same theme with which we began the Triodion—the formal religion of the Pharisee is of no value, and indeed can put others off, can be a stumbling block to them.

 

The prophets knew this, long before the time of freedom from the Law. Amos pictures God has crying out:

“I hate, I despise your feasts,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

I will not look upon them.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

To the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  (Amos 5:21-24)

All the religious observances of the Jewish people were hated by God, says the prophet, if the people did not love Him with their hearts. And the prophets also knew that the idols were fake gods, either demons passing out of existence, or having no reality except in the minds of those who wrongly worshipped them.  The prophet Isiah actually mocks the stupidity of people who think that they can create a god in their own image, or after the image of something in creation:

An idol! A craftsman casts it,

and a goldsmith overlays it with gold

and casts for it silver chains.

He who is too impoverished for an offering

chooses wood that will not rot;

he seeks out a skillful craftsman

to set up an idol that will not move.

Do you not know? Do you not hear?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

who brings princes to nothing,

and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. (Isaiah 40:19-23)

 

There is a place, of course, to mock ignorance.  But in our reading today St. Paul calls us beyond mocking, beyond putting a distance between ourselves and the ignorant.  He calls us to actively love them by our actions:

But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak… And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

This Lent, then, we are called to dedicate ourselves afresh to the living God whose love is unspeakable, because it reaches out to the rebellious and ignorant, as we ourselves have experienced.  This dedication will include discipline, but also compassion and understanding of others.  In a world that does not understand, our challenge may be different than those of the first century.  Perhaps for us the challenge is not that others will see us eating in liberty, but that they will misunderstand our abstinence as bondage, or as a rejection of the good things of this world that God has created. And so we will not want to parade our piety in public, for the sake of those who do not understand the purposes of fasting. (And yet, of course, we will not want to use the misunderstanding of others as mere excuses to abandon the Lenten race!) in everything that we do, we will want to show in our lives, our actions, our words, the character of the true God who both gives us liberty, and calls us to sacrificial love.  St. Paul was pleased that the Corinthians, with all their flaws, were a sign, the “seal,” of his apostolic workmanship.  May God look upon us, the vineyard that He has planted, with even more pleasure, seeing in us both love of the truth, and love of others.  May this holy time be not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others who do not have the knowledge that God has given us of Himself.