What We Endorse--October 4, 2022

What We Endorse--October 4, 2022

"Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols, or that an idol is anything?  No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God.  I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy?  Are we stronger than he?" [1 Corinthians 10:18-22]

Okay, here's something of a conundrum. Jesus had a way of associating with all the unacceptable people--and yet I think it's right to say there are some things that Jesus is not to be associated with.  Jesus was willing to be in the presence of demons, and even to strike up conversations with them from time to time to hear the gospels tell it, and yet Jesus did not endorse the demonic agenda to wreck people's lives and sow destruction wherever they went. Jesus wasn't afraid of being in the presence of "sinners" or "pagans" or even of the devil himself, and yet he was clear not to let himself get co-opted by someone else's agenda.  He can invite himself over to dinner at the house of Zacchaeus [the notoriously crooked tax-collector who admitted he cheated people], but he doesn't publicly endorse bilking people out of their money.  He can stand before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate without fear or revulsion, and yet he does not pledge his allegiance to the Empire Pilate represents.  Jesus can even have a conversation with Satan in the wilderness, but he doesn't for one second align himself with the tempter's agenda, not even when all the kingdoms of the world are being offered.

So it's not that Jesus is too fragile or fearful to be in the presence of sin or evil. Neither is it that Jesus will have nothing to do with those who perpetrate evil or commit heinous sin--after all, he can even pray forgiveness for those who are murdering him--while he is bleeding out on the cross.  It's that Jesus won't let himself get hijacked by evil or turned into its mascot.  Being able to distinguish between those two can be difficult, but that's the key here, both to this passage and to a lot of the thorny questions we face in our day about where we draw lines and hold to them.

Part of what makes this passage from First Corinthians so difficult is that the issues seem so foreign from our daily experience.  We don't live in a culture where there are temples to Zeus, Apollo, and Artemis alongside shrines to Zoroaster, Mithras, and Isis, set amid official imperial worship of Caesar and Roma, the goddess of Rome, all right along the street on the way to the grocery store.  We are not likely to be invited to "give our hearts to Jupiter" alongside an altar call to "give our hearts to Jesus," so it can be hard for us to understand why Paul can seem so rigid about boundaries in one moment here and then flexible at other times. A few chapters back, he said it didn't matter whether one ate meat that had been sacrificed to an idol or not, since idols aren't real anyway--and yet now here, he is sharply condemning idols or participating in the act of ritual sacrifice to those idols.  So what makes the difference?

Let me suggest a thought experiment.

Imagine you get into a crowded elevator in a busy office building. You have no way of knowing who anybody is, what beliefs they subscribe to, what their politics are, or whether or not they are clutching to some deeply held bigotry.  It's possible their clothing or small-talk could give some hints, but just as likely that all of those cards are kept close to the vest.  You don't stop to interview each person in the elevator before getting on, just to make sure they are not members of the KKK or some white supremacist organization, or some hate group or neo-Nazi organization.  You just get on the elevator and wait for your floor.  And yet, at some point, we've probably all been on elevators with people who are committed to some pretty terrible bigotry, racism, or other kinds of ingrained hate.  We don't know it at the time, and yet we go on with our lives because we all recognize that sharing an elevator with someone is not an endorsement of whatever ideologies others in the same elevator may or may not hold.  

Now, let's take it a step further.  Let's imagine that you're on the elevator with the same crowd of strangers, and the fire alarm goes off, and the elevator car is stuck between floors, while you start to smell smoke.  Everyone in the elevator decides you need to evacuate the elevator, and somebody pries open the doors so that you can get out on the most easily accessible level.  You would help whomever else is there in the elevator to get out to safety, without knowing anything else about them, right?  Of course--you help whomever is in need of help, and you don't stop to ask whether anybody in the elevator is a member of the Klan or a neo-Nazi militia.  But that also means, in a sense, that yes, any time we do good for a stranger, we are taking the risk that we are helping someone who thinks or believes something terrible.  We do it anyway, because the nature of loving your neighbor is that we don't stop and ask whether our neighbor is worthy of the love we show.

But... now contrast either of those situations--just standing in an elevator with strangers, or helping to assist those strangers out of the elevator in an emergency--with what you might do if you do help everybody out of the elevator when the fire alarm goes off, and one of the fellow passengers looks at you gratefully for the assistance, and then says to you, "I'd like to thank you for your help--would you like to be my guest at a Klan rally we're having next weekend?" I imagine you would be aghast, and once the shock had worn off, you'd immediately refuse to go, whether in outright rejection or with a polite demural.  

Why?  What makes the difference?  Ten minutes ago you were all standing politely in the elevator together as perfect strangers, and no one had a problem.  Five minutes ago you were helping this person out of a stuck elevator when the smoke alarm went off.  You were in closer physical proximity standing inside the elevator car than you would be outside at a rally, and yet, clearly you can't accept the invitation.  Why the change? Well, now you are being asked something different--you are being asked to endorse, implicitly or explicitly, the particular ideology of racial hatred and white supremacy of that group.  You would not be merely standing near someone or helping a stranger, but if you went to the rally it would be expressing approval of their message.  And while you are free to help someone who believes something abhorrent to you if they are trapped in an elevator, there is a difference between helping them and endorsing their ideology.  It is good to help a neighbor, including neighbors who are strangers.  But that is not the same as endorsing whatever agendas they may also have.

Maybe our thought experiment seems a bit unlikely, but I hope it's at least helpful for clarifying.  The issue is never "Who are we allowed to be in close proximity with?" and it's not even, "Who are we permitted to show love to?"  There we are utterly free to love all in the midst of all, whether we like them or not, whether we agree with them or not, and even whether they also happen to subscribe to truly terrible ideologies or not.  The image of God in them is worthy of love, respect, and care no matter how reproachable we may find their worldview.  There is a difference, however, in whether we endorse or affirm the agendas of other people around us.  And we are under no obligation to let ourselves--or Christ--be co-opted to become the mascot for someone else's agenda.

So let me suggest that Paul is proposing something similar here.  While Christians in the first century were free to, say, buy meat from the market that had come from a pagan sacrifice [over which they had no control or awareness], there is a difference between buying meat and actively participating in the ritual sacrifice to another god or goddess.  One is the crowded elevator, and the other is the invitation to the Klan rally.  There is a difference between just getting some supper prepared and a whole-hearted endorsement of something wicked.  You can be on an elevator with strangers, and even help them in time of crisis.  You are not, however, obligated to go to Klan rallies or neo-Nazi parades with them as well.

In our day, the invitations tend to be more subtle.  But the point is still the same--as followers of Jesus, we are indeed called to love everyone, but we are not called to endorse everyone who comes along looking for Jesus' endorsement on their agenda.  And there are lots of voices looking to co-opt Jesus for their political platforms, their runs for office, their pet hatreds, or their rotten ideologies.  We do not have to let them.  We do not have to let Jesus be made into someone's mascot.  We may not have a local cult of Zeus looking to mingle followers with the church, but we do have plenty of agendas seeking Christ's favor.  Paul would remind us that our call is always to love people, but we do not have to give Jesus' stamp of approval on the agendas that are not of Christ.  We can leave the endorsing questions to him anyway.

The bottom line is that while Jesus absolutely does love everybody, there is a difference between that love and becoming a celebrity spokesman for what does not align with the way of Jesus.  And maybe in the places where we have let ourselves get those mixed up, today is a day to get some clarity once again.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear your voice strongly enough to know where you are leading us, and where you are not.