I would like you to pretend for a moment. I want you to imagine that you have new neighbors. As the movers were still hauling furniture out of the truck, you went over to introduce yourself. The family is originally from India. The mother wears a sari, and has a bright red mark on her forehead. She is grateful that you came over to introduce yourself. She tells you all about her husband’s new job and her two children. These are lovely people — very nice, very friendly. You enjoy talking with her, and she obviously appreciates your gesture. She tells you that they want to have you over as soon as they have the house set up.

Sometime later, she invites you to a housewarming party, which includes dinner. You are delighted. The house is full of their Indian friends, as well as new acquaintances from your neighborhood. You see people you know from church and from the neighborhood association.

When it’s time to eat, everyone is seated at a large table. The children serve beautiful plates of food. Then the father sprinkles water around his plate, and everyone else from India does the same. He places five morsels of food on a small dish at the side of the table and says five prayers in a language you don’t understand.

When it’s over, he sees the looks on your face and the faces of his new neighbors.

"My apologies," he says. "Of course I should explain our customs. In the Hindu religion, we do not eat food until it has been offered to God. Our family worships the Goddess Lakshmi. She is the goddess of wealth, and is the consort of Lord Vishnu. The prayers are called "shlokas." In accordance with our tradition and belief, the food before you has been offered to our gods."

You look at your dinner. Then you look up at your neighbors — who are looking at you.

Well, good job! You are a twenty-first century Christian living in the United States, and you’ve managed get yourself in a situation in which you’re presented with food which has been offered to the Goddess Lakshmi, consort of Lord Vishnu. If you eat it, are you implicitly endorsing these gods you don’t believe in? And if you don’t eat it, well, where are your manners?

That kind of dilemma is probably pretty unusual for us, but for members of the little Christian church in Corinth, it was an every day challenge. Corinth is a port town, a sort of wide-open, wild-west, "sin city" kind of place with lots and lots of temples — not to Lakshmi or Vishnu or Krishna — but to Roman gods.

In ancient cities, there were few butcher shops, but there were lots of temples to Roman gods and emperors. The temples functioned like slaughterhouses. When people brought an animal to be sacrificed, a part of the animal was burned; a part was eaten by the worshipers who brought it, and a part was kept by the shrine to be sold. This was big business and provided priests’ primary source of income. In a place like Corinth, most of the meat eaten in the city would have been bought from a temple after it had been sacrificed to Roman gods.

This presented the new Christians in Corinth with a moral dilemma, and they argued about moral dilemmas just like we do. Some of them said, "We know that idols don’t exist. These Roman gods aren’t real. If you don’t eat the meat, you act as if you’re afraid of something that you say doesn’t exist. You have the true knowledge. You are in the know. So go ahead, eat the meat." So when those folks went to social functions at temples (which served as municipal auditoriums of their day), they ate the roast beef at the sit down dinner for Uncle Willie’s birthday. "We’ve got the knowledge," they said. "This can’t hurt us."

Other Christians in Corinth said, "My God, you are a Christian. You can’t eat meat that was sacrificed to Zeus." So, they argued — and wrote Paul for advice.

Paul writes back and, among other things, tells them how this is to work. When I read Paul’s letter, I feel sorry for them. His answer, which we heard this morning, isn’t easy to decipher.

So, since it’s not just crystal clear, let me paraphrase what Paul’s talking about. He says that the group that eats the meat sacrificed to idols is right. They’re right because Roman gods don’t really exist. They’re right that the meat has been sacrificed to an illusion, to nothing. They are right that there is no spiritual harm in eating meat that has been sacrificed to nothing.

But in being right, they are wrong. They are wrong because, secure in the knowledge that those gods aren’t real, they’ve ignored the effect their actions can have on others. Lawyers would say, "They’ve created the appearance of impropriety." Paul knows there are Christians in Corinth who believe it is wrong to eat meat sacrificed to idols. He says these folks are "weak," because they are so used to idols (the religion of their childhood) that they give idols power by being afraid to eat meat sacrificed to them. They are wrong.

But, Paul says, the knowledge that you are right is not enough. "Knowledge puffs up," he says, "but love builds up." You need to love these misguided people; build them up, even though they are wrong. If these people who believe it is wrong to eat meat sacrificed to idols see you eating roast beef at Uncle Willie’s sit-down dinner at the temple, your example may become a stumbling block to them, it could lead them back into the powerful symbolism of the pagan worship they grew up with. Because when they see you behaving that way, they might be tempted to do it themselves. And since they believe the idol has power, it would be damaging spiritually for them to do it because they would be worshipping the idol.

So don’t be right; be loving, Paul says. Don’t lead them astray, even if they are wrong and weak. Idols don’t exist, but idol worship does. Paul tells them not to eat meat if doing so tempts anyone to engage in idol worship.

Well, okay, that may be helpful if you discover that a Hindu (or something) has moved next door and invited you to dinner. But you probably think, "Look, whether to eat sacrificed meat just isn’t on my radar screen."

Mine either. But there is something to learn, because even though no one believes in Zeus anymore, we live in a culture with plenty of idols, plenty of false gods, of things that ask us to worship them instead of worshipping the God Jesus showed us. And no, you don’t have to be disrespectful of other faiths to find idols. No matter who moves in next door, false gods are all around us asking us to worship them.

Our culture has elevated the unholy trinity of wealth, opulence, and consumerism to the status of a god. "Devote your life to me," this idol whispers. Another idol is the belief in the Horatio Alger myth, the view that every person in this country can achieve whatever they want if they just put their mind to it and work hard enough. This view, deeply ingrained in the American character, is simply not true. It is an idol because it pretends that everyone is born onto a level playing field and it allows those born in more fortunate circumstances to say, "We don’t need to help the poor and underprivileged; they just need to get their act together and pull themselves up." It is a seductive lie. A poor black child born to barely literate parents simply doesn’t get the same shot at life that a Kennedy gets, or that I got, regardless of talents or IQ.

Another idol is the belief in inherent superiority. I hope no one here believes that we are inherently superior to anyone else because of race or orientation or gender or nationality. But what kind of example do we set? When others say something dehumanizing along those lines, whether we like it or not, our silence is complicity. If we don’t speak up in opposition, aren’t we then stumbling blocks to those who, because of our silence, are not confronted with the fact that our faith will not allow such treatment of our brothers and sisters?

Finally, I think it is easy for patriotism to become an idol in our country, especially during these times. We must always ask ourselves, "Where is my first loyalty, to God or to the United States?" If the answer is, "To the United States," then the hard truth is, you worship an idol. If the answer is, "To God," then everything the United States does must be judged by the standards of justice, peace, morality, compassion, and sacrifice given to us by our faith. (I have no problem with religious people using religious principles to critique the United States. A great deal of the time I have a problem with what they say, but I don’t have a problem with them saying it.)

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul invites us to consider what false gods our culture observes, and (most uncomfortably) asks how we may be setting examples that lead others to worship those idols. How are we stumbling blocks? How do we lead others astray by what we do, and by what we have left undone?

So I’ll leave you with this question, which I hope will be a nagging one: imagine that your Hindu neighbor becomes your closest friend. They know nothing of Christianity and you never speak of your faith, but over the course of time, they get to know you very, very well. You confide everything to them. They know everything you do. Everything.

Then another Hindu comes up to your neighbor and says, "I want to understand Christianity. You know this Christian well; what do Christians believe about wealth, class, poverty, race, economic justice, and patriotism?

How would they answer? Would they have an answer?

I’ll tell you what haunts me about that question. It’s the places where I know there’s a difference between what their answer would be if they followed me around and what their answer would be if they had followed Jesus around. That haunts me.

Sorry to do this to you, but I hope that difference in your life haunts you, too.