Crossing Boundaries

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany – Year B

February 1, 2015

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords — yet 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 through whom we exist.

It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. "Food will not bring us close to God." We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

There are few things in the world that it can safely said are shared as actions by pretty much every single living thing on the planet. One of those things is eating. Now, eating happens to be one of my favorite pastimes. I truly enjoy sitting down and biting into a wonderful dish. I love my pizza, I love my burgers, I enjoy a good beer at the end of the day. Eating is wonderful, is it any surprise that Jesus is recorded spending a fair amount of time with his disciples and followers sitting around eating? Should it surprise us that one of the central acts of the church is gathering around a table together and sharing in a holy meal? Food unites us in a way that few other things do. But, what if you can't eat it?

In recent years there has been a rather incredible increase in the incidence of food allergies. There are whole schools that have been declared peanut free due to the high number of students that have a severe allergy to peanuts. One of my nephews recently discovered he has an allergy to, well, just about everything. One of my best friends back in Iowa has Celiac's disease, and even the smallest amount of gluten can cause serious, potentially fatal problems for her. I think most of us know someone who has to be careful about the things they eat. And so, we tend to be careful about the food we have when they come over for dinner, or if we go out to a restaurant. Whether the person just can't stand mushrooms, is an alcoholic, or is deathly allergic to shellfish, their dietary situation can turn into a real boundary that can keep them or us isolated.

Now that I think about it, boundaries are also something that pretty much all of us have to deal with in one way or another. We see signs that serve as a boundary just about every day: no entry, wrong way, private property, keep out, employees only, authorized individuals only. And then there are the boundaries that we all know, but the signs are invisible. You know what I mean, places where you feel like you don't belong because you don't have the right upbringing, your bank account isn't big enough, your skin color is wrong, you don't speak the right language or you speak with an accent, you fall in love with the wrong people, you dress differently; there are lots of boundaries that our culture likes to throw in our paths.

Back in 1971, the Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band, wrote a song called Signs. The song is a declaration about the many signs that could be seen at the time, signs that limited the expressions of people. The refrain of the song proclaims, “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind. Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?” In the final verse, we hear of what happens when a church is visited. “And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray" But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a penny to pay. So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign. I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine." We may not think about it, but there are signs all around us, even in our churches.

And those are the boundaries that other people put up, what about the ones we put up? In order to protect ourselves from things that are strange, or frighten us, we put up boundaries. We surround our homes with fences, we put in security systems in our houses and businesses, we obsessively lock our doors. But, if there is anything that we should know by now, it's that all those things we put up to protect ourselves really can't keep anything or anyone out. If someone wants to get in, it doesn't matter how high the fence is, how many locks are on our doors, or how good the security system is – people will always find a way to get in, around, over, under, through any and all barriers. All those barriers really don't keep others out, so much as they keep us locked in.

Boundaries and barriers between ourselves and others are nothing new, and in our reading from First Corinthians, it's apparent that the Apostle Paul was dealing with an issue that was serving as a barrier between people of faith. The issue may have started with whether or not it was permissible for Christians to eat the food sacrificed at the temples of other gods, but in the end it really came down to the much larger question of how a person of faith interacts with the world around them. Do you separate yourself from the world, seeking to escape from the problems and issues of the world; or do you live your life in the world, engaging the problems of the world with your faith. It's clear that for Paul, this was not an easy question. He was someone who seemed to want it both ways when it came to living apart from and in the world.

Paul's division within himself was a result of some deeply held beliefs. He approached all things with the firm understanding and belief that there was only one God, and that in Jesus Christ we have all been set free from having to live in fear of the world around us – the evil in the world could do whatever it wanted to us, in the end we had heaven to look forward to. Jesus did not interact with the world with the understanding that the world and the people in it were evil, he looked upon the world with the viewpoint and understanding that wherever we are, God is there, loving us, nurturing us, drawing us into the joy of God’s life and love. With this at the core of his interaction with the world, we find Jesus crossing all kinds of boundaries and joyfully engaging the world around him. Thus, there would be no danger to a Christian in crossing that boundary and eating food that had been offered up to a god that didn't exist in the first place. Those were the two positions that Paul found himself seeking to balance.

It wasn't a balance Paul found easily. There seems to have been some boundaries that Paul just couldn't bring himself to cross, and Christians gathering with their friends and eating with them in ritual meals in pagan temples was one step beyond where Paul could go, even with his deep belief there was only one God, and all other gods were just made up. To be fair to Paul, we have to recognize that he was raised within Judaism that had a long history of devout faith in one God, while surrounded by countries and faiths that declared multiple gods. So, that Paul would have had a gut-level reaction against even the visual possibility of recognizing another god shouldn't surprise us. Even Paul's clear conviction that there is only “one God” and “one Lord” didn’t enable him to step over that boundary.

In the church, we tend to lift up Paul, recognizing his holiness and teaching. Much of our Christian understanding and theology is based on Paul's teachings. Because of that, we have a tendency to overlook those times when Paul may have made a misstep, places and issues where Paul (despite his wisdom) may have led us down a problematic path, like the way he thought about the role of women in the church. This is, I believe, another one of those instances. Rather than using this as an opportunity to live out God's grace in a very real way, to “become all things for all people” as Paul says, he retreats behind his Jewish culture and training. And that reaction of not crossing that boundary has been passed down to us over the last two thousand years. Instead of engaging the world the way Jesus did, all too often, we draw lines that separate us from the world around us.

We are in the season of Epiphany, that season in the church year when we celebrate God's presence with us, when we reflect on the encounters we all have with the holy. It is the good news of Epiphany, the good news of Emmanuel, the good news of God being with us that should be our guide when it comes to boundaries and barriers. If we believe that God is with us wherever we go, then what have we to fear from crossing boundaries in order to engage the world with our faith? I’m not saying anything goes—there are some things that are incompatible with loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But if God is constantly surrounding us with life and love, then what are we afraid of? What do we have to fear from leaving our safe places of sanctuary, our places of refuge we have surrounded with our fences, boundaries, and limits and encountering people who challenge us with their different lifestyles and faith systems and cultural expressions?

The God who is always there, always with us, wherever we are, does not call us to live lives of separation or isolation, but to live lives of community and engagement. Our God set the model for reaching out when God reached out and came to us, delivering the message of love and grace in Jesus Christ. The God who came to us, calls us not to withdraw but to reach out. The God for whom no one is beyond the scope of mercy and love calls us not to retreat behind walls and barriers, but to take our faith out into our world that is so full of challenging diversity. And the same God promises to be with us, everywhere that calling takes us.

May we respond to God's call, leaving behind the walls and boundaries we have built, and go out into the world to tear down boundaries and walls as we share the love and grace God has shown to us with a world that is so in need of hearing that message. Amen.