"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

The church in Corinth, like our own parish, was filled with many gifted people. Some of them had grown so strong in their faith that they could even dare to accept an invitation to dine with their pagan friends in a temple with meat from an animal that had first been sacrificed to an idol, or to purchase at the local market some of the meat left over from such a sacrificial feast. They knew that an idol was nothing more than something made of silver or gold, fashioned out of the vain imagination and skill of human beings. This knowledge, based on their faith in the one true Lord, Jesus Christ, allowed them to eat this meat without falling under the toxic influence of the spiritual reality that the idol was meant to represent. Other members of the congregation in Corinth, however, were not as strong. They could not eat such sacrificial meat without thinking and feeling that they had, in fact, betrayed Jesus.

This ancient state of affairs has been compared with the struggle of many modern Christians who are afraid to consume alcoholic beverages, believing that they pollute the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit and that any amount of drinking is, in effect, the modern equivalent of worshipping the ancient pagan god Bacchus, and is therefore a betrayal of the one true Lord, Jesus Christ, who calls the consciences of these Christians to total abstinence.

Many devout Roman Catholics might also compare the spiritual challenge that Paul addresses in Corinth to the challenge they now face with respect to birth control becoming a mandatory benefit in our new national health care legislation, that to be forced to accept such a liberty in their own Catholic hospitals or to ask their Catholic brothers and sisters to be forced to support such a benefit or even to be tempted to exercise such a liberty themselves would be a betrayal of their Lord, Jesus Christ, deliberately reducing human sexuality to mere physical intimacy apart from the procreative, God-ordained potential of such intimacy, and therefore, if you will, degenerating into a modern form of worshipping the pagan goddess Aphrodite.

Paul is at great pains to appeal to those in Corinth who know they can act more freely than their brothers or sisters in Christ, without falling under the influence of those spiritual forces that would take away the freedom of their weaker brothers and sisters and, in some cases, even corrupt and destroy them, to recognize that their strength should be used to actually limit their own freedom as an act of love, to abstain from eating meat offered to idols, to offer the kind of loving sacrifice which, in the end, is the only way any of us are built up in Christ and strengthened to exercise the freedom which he gives us most fully, not for our own sake, but increasingly for the sake of others.
On this day when we hold our one official annual congregational meeting to elect new leaders for the vestry and to reflect on the many ways in which God has blessed and strengthened us in the past year, Paul reminds us that God blesses all of us in the Body of Christ when those of us who are stronger, whom, when we are wise, we choose and support as our leaders, are those who have loving regard for the weaker members of our parish family.

I don’t have enough time to mention all of you who understand and have acted on what Paul is talking about, who value the fact that it is love, and not knowledge, which builds us up and makes us strong so that we can help strengthen others, not by demonstrating to them how much we know, but by how much we are able and willing to sacrifice for them, but I do want to mention a few of our stronger leaders who have been an encouragement to me and to so many of us in the past year.
Cyndi Landes, for example, who has finished her first full year as directress of the altar guild, has supported both me and the members of the guild by going the extra mile when someone has been sick or otherwise unable to complete their assigned duties.

We celebrated Palmer Wood’s retirement in May, bringing to a fitting end his lifelong dream to serve God and the church as a deacon, strengthened by your loving support throughout his preparation, ordination and years of faithful service to us.

Dickie Brawley, Mark Parlier, Kaleigh Wright, Denise Stembridge, JT Turner, Les Calkins and Phyllis Calkins all traveled to Honduras last February to encourage and strengthen the faith of our brothers and sisters in Christ there by digging and setting post holes and stringing barbed wire between them for a fence on their new church property made possible by a generous and anonymous couple in our parish.

Paige Turner, Alan Skipper and many other volunteers planted and nourished the seeds of faith in the young children who attended Vacation Bible School. Paige’s additional sacrifices for our children on Wednesday evenings, week in and week out for several years now, has been a labor of love which has inspired and sustained my own Christian education efforts with our adults.

Few people have given more unselfishly of their time to strengthen the weak in our community than Tomi and Max Blackburn at the Thrift Shop, and in so doing, strengthening the bottom line of our parish budget, thereby enabling us to offer the kind of staffing and programming and outreach grants which continue to strengthen the life of our parish.

You were kind to allow me to take a three-month sabbatical so that I might be renewed and strengthened by a ten-day silent centering prayer retreat, a course at the Anglican Center in Rome, and four Teaching Company courses on becoming a better teacher, making better decisions, writing more effective sentences, and appreciating how modern game theory helps illuminate many individual and group interactions, all of which will enable me to complete the course that God has set before me here: a sabbatical made possible in large measure by our senior warden, Chip Thullbery, our parish administrator, Lisa Carter, and by our associate, Joanie Brawley. Lisa even found time while I was away to reorganize the library, following up on the efforts of Virginia and Chuck McClellan several years ago.
I was proud of our vestry when they converted Palmer’s discretionary fund balance into a missionary grant for Sara Norton, who is over halfway around the world on her yearlong journey to bring the gospel to many remote and spiritually impoverished communities.

Our annual meeting today marks the tenth anniversary of Steve Carter’s service as our treasurer, faithfully managing our financial resources, even during a season this summer of personal loss. I was so proud when I learned on my return that Penny Updike took the opportunity, in the face of Janet Carter’s death, to organize a large group of volunteers to provide meals to strengthen any of us when we need extra support.

Most recently, my faith in the future of our parish was strengthened by all the young fathers who accepted my invitation to read one of the lessons at our service of lessons and carols. I was especially encouraged by Craig and Wendy Merson, one of our young couples, who led a Financial Peace University course for twelve weeks last fall. I pray that all of us will do our part in the coming year to strengthen and encourage our young husbands and wives, fathers and mothers to take their place in the life of the parish, setting an example for their own children.

Saint Paul is right when he reminds us this morning that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. May it be our joy to use the grace and strength that God gives us to continue to love one another, especially those who may be weak in one way or another, discovering again and again that as we strengthen others, our own faith is strengthened and our loyalty to Christ is deepened and confirmed. AMEN.