Food Which Kills

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28; Romans 14

One of the things my wife and I do is we try to go to the movies about once a month. Since we moved here, we’ve found that the Mall Theatre has matinee pricing all day and evening on Tuesdays. We’ve found that a movie date and dinner helps to keep us connected when the demands of jobs and kids drive us crazy.

A few years ago, my wife and I went to see a movie. That particular evening, we decided that the movie to see would be the George Clooney movie, “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, which was about a supposedly super-secret Pentagon program to develop psychic soldiers who could stare at a soldier and stop his heart with just mental force. Clooney and the others practiced, by staring at goats.

Well, we saw the movie and then we headed home. Along the way, we stopped at the store and Saundra got a quart of mint chocolate ice cream, which is my favorite. Unfortunately, Saundra purchased the brand that was on sale, which was a sugar-free ice cream. Now, NutraSweet and aspartame are known to make some people sick, and also are known to cause MS-like symptoms in some people, so those sweeteners affect the mind. We got home, I had a bowl, and we went to bed around 11 o’clock.

About midnight I woke up with a terrible feeling in my stomach and I headed downstairs to the bathroom and became violently ill. After tossing my ice cream a couple of times, I settled down into a routine where I laid down in the floor, drifted off to dreamland, and woke every half hour or so to throw up again. And all night long, there were goats dancing in my dreams.

Finally, about 4 am, I realized that I was getting dehydrated, but by this time I was too weak to yell upstairs for help or get up. So I prayed for the Holy Spirit to wake Saundra and about a minute later she knocked on the door and was able to get me some water. God is good.

Well, I think most of us have been through times when we thought something we ate was going to kill us, but in ancient times, food was intimately tied up with religious worship. Some food killed us spiritually – and some food gave us spiritual life.

For example, in the town of Corinth, a town in Greece where Paul ministered for a couple of years, most of the meat in the town came from the temples. It was quite a racket.

If you were a believer in a particular Greek god or goddess, you took your cattle or sheep to the temple to become a sacrifice. There was a long history of the temple priests being entitled to eat the sacrificial leftovers. Since Corinth was a large city with many travelers, there were more sacrifices than the temple priests could eat, so they took the extra meat and sold it in the marketplace. Almost all of the meat sold in Corinth and in many other cities had been offered as a sacrifice to some particular god or idol. This food was deemed by believers of that particular god to be superior, to somehow have spiritual value, and would help that person become a better follower of that god. And the people of the Christian church in Corinth had written to Paul asking him what he thought about eating meat that had been offered to idols.

There were two opinions about this, and Paul mentions them in his response. First, there were the people who said that eating meat offered to idols was supporting a false religion, and in some way this meat was now evil, because eating it demonstrated a belief in that idol or god.

On the other hand, there were people, a bit more sophisticated in their beliefs, perhaps, who said, “Idols and other gods are not real, so meat offered to them in sacrifice is the same as offering some meat to your doorknob – how can a piece of wood make the food evil? Besides, it was the best meat in town and it was even difficult to buy meat that had not been offered to some idol.”

But Paul said for us to look a little bit deeper. Paul said that we are free to eat the food, agreeing with those who said the idols were just pieces of wood and metal. But, Paul continued, we still should not eat it, because other people, new to the faith, might see us eating the food and think that we were still supporting those idols and gods. That fact that we were eating the meat meant that our action of eating would kill the faith of another person – and kill them eternally. And so, out of love for God and other people, we should avoid eating the meat, and Paul would go so far as to avoid eating meat altogether so others would not be harmed. Paul wrote more about this in Romans Chapter 14, which you might want to read.

Well, today we don’t have this particular concern about meat. Except in some very limited cases, meat today is not offered to idols.

But there are similar cases where Paul’s principle applies.

As we walk throughout our life, there is a tension which is constantly at work in the Christian life. On one hand, our relationship with God, and our heart-change that occurs in baptism means that we have freedom – the freedom which comes from being set free from sin and bondage to sin. We are truly free to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit and do what is right.

But on the other hand, we hear from many people that Christians must live a holy life, and we are told that there is a huge list of things Christians must not do. So the question arises: Are we free or did we just go under a new list of behaviors that binds us worse than the sins did before we found Christ?

Let’s look at this in some detail.

Before we encounter Jesus and choose to follow Him, there are two things at work in our life. First, to be good, we try to follow the Law. Now this may be the Law of Moses, or it may simply be our own list we’ve pulled together about what is right and what is wrong. “Don’t drink, smoke, or cuss” is an example of “the Law” which we might follow. “Be nice to your parents and don’t speed when driving” is another example.

But we can’t follow the law. No matter what the list of do’s and don’ts, we break those laws.

And then, there is bondage to sin. The natural person who has not yet admitted weakness and asked for help from God is under bondage to sin. That sin varies with the person. You may find you can not stop with a single drink of alcohol, or you must have coffee every morning. You might find that you tell lies even when the truth would be better. You gossip about neighbors and friends, or you sleep through your alarm every morning. Perhaps you can’t help insulting people. I’ve had people say to me, “This is who I am” even though it has cost those people friends, money, health, and happiness. They are in bondage to their particular sin, feeling that they cannot break free. Their sin has enslaved them.

But when we admit to God that we cannot follow the Law and are in bondage to sin, He takes over for us. When we are baptized, God reaches down into our hearts and sets us free from that bondage to sin – and that need to follow the Law. Now we are free, truly free.

But what about “acting like a Christian”?

That is not what you think it is. The Law is not what governs our behavior.

When we were under the Law, we found some odd situations happened. We found that if we followed the Law, people got hurt. In fact, our need to follow the Law was what hurt them. Breaking the Law would do more good than following the Law. Let me give you an example.

There are some people who say that a Christian should never go into a bar. Now this is a reasonable rule to follow – most of the time – because there are many people in this world to whom going into a bar is very dangerous. These people are alcoholics – or potential alcoholics. You may be one. If you take even one drink, you will end up drunk. Taking a drink is simply poison for you – and puts you under bondage. It is sinful.

But there are other people for whom alcohol holds absolutely no attraction. There are people in this world who have no desire to drink and if they did drink they could drink a half glass of wine and stop immediately, never desiring it again.

These “alcohol-immune” people can actually do good ministry in a bar setting. They can go into a bar, meet people, listen to them, become friends with them, and help them with their problems, the problems that brought them to the bar in the first place, problems of loneliness, problems of despair, problems of desperation.

But it depends upon the person. If the wrong person goes into a bar, they will fall into the darkness. The law is good in that it tells people to avoid a place where they can fall into trouble. But it is important to know who you are. For others, following the law of avoiding bars condemns other people to a life of misery without hope. And so blindly following the law leads to more misery than following Christ.

When Christ came, He pointed out that love trumps the Law. Never, ever let the Law keep you from doing good to people. Time and again Jesus associated with people who were committing terrible sins, even though the Law of Moses told everyone not to associate with those people. Rather than blindly follow the Law of rules – Jesus followed two simple rules: Love people, and bring them to God. He demonstrated what freedom is: Freedom from the constraints of the Law and of sin which keep us from doing good. The use of wisdom and the Holy Spirit to help us to understand when to follow the law and when to break the law so we can do good.

So what about “acting like a Christian?”

Here is what a Christian should act like: Real Christians love God and other people. They are constantly looking toward their own behavior and how it attracts people instead of repelling people. For you cannot be effective in loving other people and bringing people to God if your behavior is obnoxious and abrasive, if it keeps you from other people, if you demand that we follow rules that keep us from helping people.

Too often, we use the phrase “act like a Christian” to mean that OTHER people should act differently. We go back and pull the Law down upon other people while ignoring it ourselves. We tell people to dress this way and don’t dress that way. We tell people to do this and don’t do that. We tell people how to live and how not to live. And then we complain because other people ignore the Law. And because we ignore the Law, people call us hypocrites and that makes us angry. But the real problem is that we have chosen to attempt to control people by using a club on which we engraved the words “Christian behavior”.

Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law and not destroy the Law. He came to show us how to follow the Law AND love other people. And here’s how He did it.

Jesus personally followed the Law. But He never insisted that the person He was talking to follow the Law. Instead, He just asked them to follow Him. In a modern context, Jesus would not order a man or woman to stop drinking. He’d just ask them to follow Him, and watch and imitate Him. And then, they’d see He never got drunk, yet was able to be happy, and they’d ask Him how to keep from getting drunk. He respected them enough to understand that adults need to work through their own issues and ask for help. Respecting others is part of loving them. Being humble enough to ask for help is a necessary part of developing a mature spirituality and relationship to God.

You see, you can’t be someone else’s Holy Spirit. My job – and your’s, if you want to follow Christ fully – is to connect people to the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, and then help them listen to that Spirit. When you listen to the Holy Spirit yourself, and read the Word of God yourself, much greater things will happen than anything I can teach you.

Now this is not to say you shouldn’t teach your children what the Law requires. Teach your children the Ten Commandments, teach them right and proper behavior, teach them what is good and wholesome and to avoid evil.

Part of what needs to be taught, though, as they grow older is the basic respect for other images of God, other people, where we remember that the Holy Spirit of God is in all baptized Christians, and can speak to the pastor – and the Sunday School leader – and the newest person in the church equally well. The only differences between us are how well we listen.

Teaching adults right and wrong behavior should only happen when the adult asks us for advice, asks us to be taught, voluntarily comes to us and says, “teach me.” And on the other side, when you ask someone to teach you, go the extra mile and learn when to apply the rules – and when to break the rules. For the rule of “love thy neighbor” is second only to the rule of “love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength”. “Love thy neighbor” never comes behind “unless your neighbor drinks, or does drugs, or beats his wife, or doesn’t take a shower, or uses rude language, or has bad English, or creeps you out or has hurt you in the past.” “Love thy neighbor” has no qualifiers and it does NOT mean “Control thy neighbor’s behavior” as much as we want it to mean that.

But how and why do I tell another person about God and Christ if I can’t tell them how to live?

If you have to ask that question, you’ve missed the point. Christianity is not about a code of ethics and a set of rules for living. That simply happens after we get the important stuff under control. No, Christianity is actually about reconnecting with the God who created you, about developing a deep relationship with the Being that built and maintains the Universe. Christianity is about falling in love with the One who has loved you since the beginning of time. All of Christian ethics, Christian attitudes, and Christian behavior is simply our response to that deepening relationship with the all-powerful God, initiated by an encounter with a caring Jesus Christ, and communicated through the Word of God and the gentle whispers of the Holy Spirit.

The best way to tell people about Jesus is first of all to be a pleasant and attractive person. If you are joyful, if you are pleasant, if you show a smile when things are going wrong, people will follow you. And then, if you are always sincerely giving credit to God and Christ for your joy, the good that happens in your life, and loving God when bad happens, people will always be asking you why. Why are you so happy? What is your secret? Why aren’t you falling apart? And then you tell them that it is your faith in Christ that keeps you going, your friends in Christ that lift you up, and your love of Christ that sustains you. “By the way, where do you go to church?” you can ask back, and you can tell them more about the God you love.

But notice that you are not telling people how to live. Once again, that is the job of Christ, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit. They will speak to your friend. Give advice if asked, but not unless asked. Instead, simply attempt to follow Christ’s example of being attractive – and different, set apart from the normal cares of the world. You, simply put, are to be holy.

So jettison the rulebook for others. Instead, follow Jesus and do what the Holy Spirit and God’s Word ask you to do. That’s what freedom in Christ means. That’s what “acting like a Christian” truly means.

In Paul’s day, the question was whether or not eating the wrong food would spiritually kill you. Today, that issue is behind us, but we still have a final question: How should a Christian behave?

The answer is simple. Love God. Love others. Be personally holy. Do what shows the most love for God and the people around you. And remember that the single most important thing you can do for another person is not to stop them from “drinking, smoking, or cussing”, but it is to introduce them to Jesus Christ in such a positive manner that they choose to follow Christ. That is the only thing you can do for them that has eternal consequences. Helping a smoker stop smoking may give them an extra 5 years on this planet, but bringing a friend to Jesus gives them eternal life, ten thousand years or more of wonderful time in New Jerusalem.

Remember Paul’s principle: “if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

Or we might state it this way: “If what I do causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never do it again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”

Thinking of others first is a key part of loving others. Be conscious of those around you who watch you, Christian. Be holy – don’t control others.

Let us pray:

Holy God:
As we go about our way this week, send us into situations which will grow our faith in You.
As we go about our way this week, send us people who need to have a faith in You.
As we go about our way this week, guide us to demonstrate for others our faith in You.
And when the week is over, let us look back and say, “You were truly with us this week, and we have new friends in Christ because of You.”
This we pray in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.