A Fourth Church Sermon by Victoria G. Curtiss

February 1, 2009 | 6:30 p.m. Vespers

For the Sake of Your Neighbor

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1–13

Years ago the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Holland Hendrix, told a story to a graduating class about to embark on their ministries.

Once upon a time a rabbit wrote his thesis on the subject “The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.” First a fox and then a wolf, each intending to eat the rabbit, laughed at the rabbit’s title, at which point the rabbit encouraged them to go into her hole to read the thesis. Neither the fox nor the wolf came out again. Finally, the rabbit invited another rabbit friend into the hole, where the friend discovered two piles of bones and a “large, lip-smacking lion” in the middle of the room. Hendrix said, “The moral of the story is that it doesn’t matter what your title is. What matters is who your advisor is.” (Union News, 1996)

President Hendrix went on to urge the graduates never to mistake who their advisor was. As Christians our advisor is Jesus Christ, who taught us to be rooted in the way of God and to seek God’s guidance. That’s so important if we are to be faithful, because Jesus’ teachings don’t match the advice we often get from the world around us. As the prophet Isaiah said, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and our ways are not God’s ways (Isaiah 55:8).

Our culture tells us to look out for ourselves, because no one else will. It says that those who are happy are those who get ahead, and that if you fall behind, it’s not only a bad thing, but it’s your fault.

Those are not God’s ways. In God’s realm, things seem turned upside down and backward: the last shall be first; the person who worked only one hour gets paid the same wages as those who worked all day; the tax collector who confessed his sin is praised and not the self-righteous Pharisee. We are to love, not hate, our enemies.

This goes against our inclination. On this Super Bowl Sunday, I’ll use a sports illustration, even though the fact you are here probably means you don’t care much about the Super Bowl.

One game I played a lot growing up with my brother and sisters was croquet. In that game the goal is to win by getting your ball through all the wickets and hit the stake before anyone else. It was always an advantage if you hit another’s person’s ball along the way, because that allowed you either to take two extra shots or to take one extra shot after knocking the other’s ball as far away as possible—never a popular move. It wasn’t until I married my husband, Kent, who loves competitive games and is good at them, that I learned an additional dimension to the game called “Poison.” Once your ball goes through all the wickets but has not yet hit the stake, your ball is poison. You can go back and try to hit the other players’ balls, and whenever you make contact, they are “dead”—immediately out of the game.

This game has been played in a totally different way:

There were once some missionaries in the Philippines who set up a croquet game in their frontyard. Several of their Agta Negrito neighbors became interested and wanted to join the fun. The missionaries explained the game and started them out, each with a mallet and a ball. As the game progressed, opportunity came for one of the players to take advantage of another by knocking that person’s ball out of the court. A missionary explained the procedure, but his advice only puzzled his Negrito friend. “Why would I want to knock his ball out of the court?” he asked. “So you will be the one to win!” a missionary said. The short-statured man, clad only in a loin cloth, shook his head in bewilderment. His “civilized” neighbor was suggesting something absurdly uncivil. Competition is generally ruled out in a hunting-gathering society, where people survive not by competing with one another, but by working together.

The game continued, but nobody followed the missionaries’ advice. When a player successfully got through all the wickets, the game was not over for him. He went back and gave aid and advice to his fellows. As the final player moved toward the last wicket, the affair was still very much a team effort. And finally, when the last wicket was played, the “team” shouted happily, “We won! We won!” (“Knowledge vs. Love,” sermon by Sarah Buteux)

Seeing victory as being when everyone gets through the wickets rather than just when the first one does certainly changed the behavior of the players. The goal one seeks to achieve determines the norms by which one chooses to live.

In our scripture text, the Apostle Paul is giving advice to the church in Corinth, lifting up a new goal that changed the norms. Many religions abounded in first-century Corinth, and most included the sacrifice of animals and other foods to various gods and goddesses. Often the priests within the various religions were permitted to eat the food after it was offered to the idols. But within the young Christian community in Corinth, there were some who believed that food sacrificed to an idol was defiled and should not be touched by anyone.

Paul believed that idols cannot defile food, because idols represent gods that do not exist. So food offered to idols is really food being sacrificed to nothing, because there is only one true God. Paul wrote, “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” (1 Corinthians 8:8). This new knowledge led to new liberty for Paul and others.

But not everyone understood or believed this. In fact, if some were to see others eating food that had been offered to idols, they might stumble and fall in their faith. So Paul gives a new norm: don’t automatically use your enlightenment to live into your new freedom. Even if eating certain food won’t do you harm, it could harm your neighbor. The goal is not to be right nor to convince others to your way of thinking nor to be most knowledgeable. The goal is to respect and support your neighbor. Base your behavior on how it may affect others.

I grew up in central Illinois around Apostolic Christians whose religious beliefs led them to shun television. It would have been disrespectful to persuade my Apostolic friends to go to a movie or watch TV. When we entertain Jewish or Muslim or vegetarian friends, we best not serve pork, even if we eat it ourselves. In my family there are starkly opposing political views, which we’ve chosen not to argue for the sake of our relationship (even though I know I am right!) When our church serves communion, we offer nonalcoholic grape juice in part so that those who struggle with alcohol may fully participate. When we gather with those who have little income, we need to refrain from activities that require money they don’t have or dressing in ways that make them feel like misfits.

I recently saw a movie called Lars and the Real Girl, which is based on a premise that seems an unlikely source for inspiration. It focuses on a man who falls in love with an anatomically correct life-sized doll he purchased on the Internet. But the film is not the least bit kinky nor scoffing of those who live with a delusion. Instead it portrays how Lars, a good but painfully shy, lonely, and socially awkward man, is fully embraced by his brother and sister-in-law, the local psychologist, and the rest of his small, tight-knit town, most of whom are members of Holy Grace Lutheran Church. They all know that his girlfriend is only a doll. But they don’t use their knowledge to ridicule Lars or try to convince him he’s wrong. Instead they choose to do what they think Jesus would do. They reach out to Lars in the midst of his confusion and accept his new friend, Bianca, as one of them. Their acceptance and kindness help Lars push past the many barriers that have kept him trapped for years. Their support eventually frees him to be open to Margo, the “real girl” who truly loves and cares for him.

The screenwriter of the film, Nancy Oliver, included a scene in which Lars asks his older brother, Gus, “How did you know you were a man?” After an initial vague response, Gus replies, “It’s not like you’re all one thing or the other. You’re still a kid inside. But you grow up when you decide to do right. And not what’s right for you, what’s right for everybody, even when it hurts.” Lars says, “Like what?” And Gus replies, “You don’t jerk people around. You don’t cheat on your woman. You take care of your family. You admit when you’re wrong, or you try to anyway. That’s all I can think of. It sounds like it’s easy. But for some reason it’s not.”

It isn’t always easy to restrict our own freedom for the welfare of our neighbors. But Paul makes clear that love takes precedence over knowledge. Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Let us interact with others in ways that convey God‘s love for us all.