Lessons from Corinth

The Epistle lesson this week is a text from Paul's first letter to the Church in Corinth, addressing a controversy facing the infant Christian community.

Ancient Corinth, like other cities in the Roman world, had become very diverse culturally, and all the cultures that arrived at Corinth brought their local religions.  Virtually all ancient religions centered in perpetual ritual sacrifice.  There were sacrifices for everything, to mark occasions, to seek intercession, to ask for forgiveness.  And most of these sacrifices involved food.  Once the sacrifice was over, the food was sold in the market, marked down.

Here was the issue facing the Church in Corinth: was it proper to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols? Did this constitute idolatry? Paul's advised the Corinthian Church that it was not improper, because the gods of other religions were not real, so the sacrifices were actually not being made to anything, and it was thereby not improper.  However, Paul also advised the more mature Corinthian Christians not to eat the food that had been sacrificed to idols, because it might cause the new members of the community to become confused: in virtually all ancient religions, it was believed that you could practice more than one religion.  Therefore, Paul reasoned, if the new members of the community that were still being acclimated to what discipleship was all about saw the mature members of the community eating food sacrificed to idols, this might confuse them and lead them to believe that the mature members of the community practiced other religions.

The lesson for the contemporary Church doesn't lie in Paul's answer to the theological question itself.  The worship of other gods and food sacrifices vanished thousands of years ago.  The lesson lies in the fact that Paul says that there is something more important than disciples having the right answer: the impact on the Church as a community.  What is implicit in Paul's response to Corinth is that the collective holiness and spiritual growth of the community matters more than individual disciples in Corinth knowing the right answer.

The Church today has largely become relegated to a place where individuals go to get right answers to questions and then go back into their individual lives throughout the week to apply the right answer.  Paul says that the Church is a community, rather than a collection of individual believes.  And as a community, what is best for the community trumps the welfare of the individual.  This is necessary for the Church to fulfill the great commission; for those already within the community to become holy, and for those outside the Church to be brought within.