Better Than Right
Sunday 28 January 2024 11:30
But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. (1 Corinthians 8:12)
You can’t go wrong if you just go right ‘cause right’s the proper way
That’s what my dear old Grandad always used to say
And that I will remember until my dying day
You can’t go wrong if you just go right ‘cause right’s the proper way
My, I had to dredge that up from the past. It’s nice to be right, though isn’t it? At least I assume it must be. I wouldn’t know - I’m married. Let’s admit it. When we’ve had an argument with someone, we sometimes get a smug sense of satisfaction out of being right, don’t we?
That’s part of what’s going on in this passage. For context, this is a letter to the Corinthians. Of course it’s to the Corinthians. It was always the Corinthians when stuff like this came up. Paul would get reports about what was going on in the church at Corinth and he’d think, “They’re doing what??” and fire off a letter to them. He wrote at least four, two of which we have in the Bible and the ones we have often seem to a reflect a church where one group were trying to lord it over another because of their social status, or the spiritual gifts they were displaying or, as in this case, just being smug in being right.
What’s going on here is this. Corinth was a major trading centre with ships coming in from all over the Mediterranean and it was chock full of temples to gods and goddesses from all over the place, each of which would contain a statue of the deity. Folk would sacrifice animals to these statues and the meat would be sold in the city’s markets. One group in Corinth are saying that it’s perfectly OK to buy and eat this meat and they’re feeling smug in their certainty that they are right
Paul agrees but he knows the Corinthians too well to stroke their egos. He’s worried that with people who are a bit weaker in their faith, or who don’t fully understand the reasoning involved, they may get to think, “Well if eating meat sacrificed to an idol is OK, then maybe a wee libation on the altar is OK too,” and back they’ll go sliding into worshipping idols.
That’s why our text is important. What Paul is saying to those folk who eat meat from the market is, you think you’re right, don’t you? Of course you do. Everyone does. But OK. You’re right. But being right isn’t enough. There is something better than right and that something is compassion; the compassion you should have for those you think are wrong; the fellowship you are meant to have with them and the duty of care you have not to make them feel small or stupid. Better than right is love.
Elsewhere Paul writes to someone he disagrees with saying, “I am in the right here and I hope one day you’ll see that. Until you do let us go along together in what we share.” If only we’d better at that down the centuries. As it is, as soon as the Church got its hand on the tiller of state under Constantine in the 4th Century we were suddenly knee-deep in arguments over heresy and couldn’t get enough of wounding each other’s consciences in the assumption that we were right and they were wrong.
Sometimes it provoked massive splits in the church, one side denying that the others were members of Christ’s body at all, and sometimes over things we can’t possibly know for sure. My favourite? The inclusion of the word filioque in the Nicene Creed which literally split the Church in half over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son. I don’t know. I’m not sure I even know what the question means, but it was so important to be right, even if it mean wounding a few consciences
In Scotland we were brilliant at this. We wounded each other’s consciences over whether folk should swear an oath to the king, or whether the state should be responsible for getting people to church. On an even more local level I heard of one church in America that split over where they should put the teas and coffees after services.
This is what Paul’s getting at in our text this morning. It doesn’t matter how right you are - or even whether you are right; if your need to be right causes you to turn away from your brother or sister in Christ, or if the way you treat them when they are wrong causes them to turn away from you, then you’re missing the point. In we wound each other’s consciences in our self-belief then we miss the point. What saves us isn’t whether we are right or wrong over some point of doctrine or worship. What saves us is the love of God in Jesus Christ. What saves us is faith in that love, whether we are right or wrong because in that love we are neither strong nor weak. We are simply loved.
Maybe that’s what we are meant to communicate as the Church now in the 21st Century: that better than right is love. If we can reach across the boundaries of denomination and dogma to embrace each other as brothers and sisters in Christ; if we can reach across the divisions of disagreement and tradition to love one another as children of God; if we can learn that better than right is love and live that way, then we have a precious gift for the world.
The gift of hope. The hope that in a world riven by divisions and, it seems, perpetually at war, that love will ultimately, somehow win. Not because we are right but because we love one another and our neighbours, whoever they are
Father we will always disagree with each other. When we are right let us not be proud. Let us not use that to lord it over each other. Let it not divide us. Rather let us serve one another in love
Preached at Eaglesfield parish church