Food Fight!

A theme from the readings for Sunday, February 1 is the relationship between knowledge and love. In Deuteronomy we hear the promise that God will raise up a prophet like Moses from the people of Israel who will lead the people in true knowledge of God. In the reading from Mark we are confronted with the disconnect between knowledge and love: the demon knows exactly who Jesus is (the “Holy One of God”) yet opposes God’s kingdom. In the reading from I Corinthians the church in Corinth knows that only the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus Christ, is real and that all idols are false and imaginary, yet they are tempted to use their liberty in a way that tears others down. In Paul’s words, knowledge (even true knowledge of God) puffs up, but love builds up. To skip ahead to I Corinthians 13 – the famous “wedding chapter” – faith, knowledge and prophecies are useless without love.

Our readings from Numbers highlight the strange relationship between knowledge and love. Balaam is something of a prophet, but he is a prophet allied with Israel’s enemies. On the one hand he acknowledges the God of Israel as true but he is forced to curse the Israelites by his king. The readings from Acts, I Corinthians and Jeremiah give us glimpses of how the church has helped followers of Jesus bring knowledge and love into a fruitful relationship with one another. The Acts reading is an attempt to allow Jews and Gentiles to share table fellowship with one another while respecting the traditions of the Jews and the honoring the liberty of the Gentiles. The compromise was to go back to the covenant God established not with Moses (which had very specific food laws) or with Abraham (which required male circumcision) but with the covenant God established with Noah, allowing for both the honoring of Jewish custom and Gentile liberty. Jeremiah’s instruction to Jewish exiles in Babylon and Paul’s teaching on marriage remind us that the place to balance knowledge of God’s will and love for God and one another is not in some future utopia, but here and now, when life is less than perfect.

In what ways do we struggle to bring knowledge and love together? If some of the major struggles and causes for division for the early church was over proper eating habits, what are the struggles that threaten to divide us? If the biblical story of God’s covenant with Noah helped bring clarity and resolution to these “food fights,” what biblical stories can help bring resolution to the conflicts we face? Below are the readings that help us reflect on this Sunday’s readings.

Monday 2/2
Numbers 22:1-21
Acts 21:17-26

Tuesday 2/3
Numbers 21:22-28
I Corinthians 7:32-40

Wednesday 2/4
Jeremiah 29:1-14
Mark 5:1-20

Read Psalm 35:1-10 each of these three days.