A man fresh out of prison was so happy to be free that he swung his cane around in the park, shouting that he was free. In the process, the tip of the cane hit an older gentleman in the nose, and the older man calmly pointed out that his freedom ended where someone else’s nose began. This story opens a sermon about what a follower of Jesus is free to do, rooted in Paul’s words about meat offered to idols (1 Cor 10:14-33). It turns out that Christianity is not a list of commands and prohibitions, but a map and a compass: everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial and not everything builds up. Listen if you want to check whether your freedom serves God’s glory and the path of others to Jesus, or only yourself.
What Am I Allowed to Do?
Church: Real or Ideal?
Many people make no secret of their disappointment with the Church and wonder why they should bother with it at all. Others keep moving from one community to another in search of the perfect one, yet none matches their picture of the ideal, because everywhere there are very imperfect people. Perhaps, though, by looking only at what we can see, we miss part of the picture. The Church is God’s idea. It is a place where we can learn to live together and to love people who can be difficult. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul helps us see the Church from a wider perspective and find our place in the tension between the real and the ideal.
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