A few years ago, a local resident in Bryn Mawr purchased a small house just down the road from the rectory on County Line Road. Positioned right next to Bryn Mawr Hospital, this small dwelling was in a bad state at its purchase. When the new owner undertook a renovation, he surprisingly discovered a 300-year old house beneath five layers of exterior material.
The bones of this house date to 1704, making it one of the oldest houses in Pennsylvania. The original house was a log cabin, but after centuries of neglect and barnacles of building materials hiding the real skeleton of this property, the original wood of the cabin was rotting and in poor condition. So through a fastidious renovation, the owner ultimately restored the house, using eighteenth century wood and carefully preserving certain historic features.
Today, the house is easily lost in the more modern houses surrounding it, not to mention in the shadow of the towering hulk of Bryn Mawr Hospital next door. But the newly-exposed edifice is a visual reminder of the historic epicenter of what is now the village of Bryn Mawr.
In a 2017 Philadelphia Inquirer article, the restorer of this house noted the significance of the historic structure amid “the concrete jungle” surrounding it. He described the cabin as “the house where all that came from.”[1] Sometimes, you have to get down to the bones to remember where you came from.
Reading the apostle Paul is something like discovering the bones of where you came from. Paul has been unjustly maligned over the years. He has been labeled a misogynist and homophobe. Many struggle to read his words because they can’t get past the barnacles of interpretation and anger pasted onto his words over the centuries.
Without denying some of Paul’s particular viewpoints, with which we might not agree, we would yet benefit from going down to the bones of what he has to say. Like a 300-year old cabin hiding beneath years of more modern external material, the core of Paul’s theology brings us back to our roots if we strip everything down to the studs.
We might use Paul’s own words to help us in this theological excavation endeavor. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” The translation we have been given even puts knowledge in scare quotes to interpret Paul’s own assessment of this supposed knowledge. In other words, what many perceive as knowledge is really not knowledge at all. Those who think they are wise are really lacking in true knowledge. Knowing God usually has a way of popping the bubbles of our conceit.
But love, Paul tells us, builds us. If we strip everything down to the studs, we will find an original love. It will not be some sentimental product marketed by Hallmark, but a self-giving, sacrificial love that puts others before self. This true love comprises the bones of our communal edifice, whose sole foundation is Christ.
Diving into 1 Corinthians, like any Pauline letter is like listening to one side of a phone conversation, to quote one of my seminary professors. Paul is confronted with a particular problem posed by members of the Church in Corinth, and we hear his side of the phone chat. The question is whether Gentile converts to Christianity could still partake of food that had been offered as sacrifices to idols in pagan worship. Those who claim to have “knowledge” and know full well that such idols do not really exist had found no harm in eating the sacrificial meat. They knew that there was no merit to idol worship. But Paul strips everything down to the studs and goes deeper than mere “knowledge.” It’s really not about knowledge after all.
Paul seems to doubt whether the self-righteous Gentile converts were as sophisticated as they supposed. Paul grants that the idols have no reality in relation to the one, true, living God. Paul even suggests that whether we eat certain foods or refrain from eating them does not really matter. What really matters is how the actions of certain members in the community affect others.
Eating meat sacrificed to idols might not be in and of itself sinful, but if eating such meat has adverse effects on others who are not as spiritually mature, then it is indeed sinful. For Paul, sin is often less ontologically defined than it is contextually defined. The root of sin is failure to abide in love with others, in spite of differences.
For Paul, the presumed knowledge and spiritual maturity of those who have no regard for idols are puffed-up layers of self-importance and arrogance that have papered over the bones of the house of love. Paul reminds us to dig beneath the layers of sophisticated information to the bones of the house, where there should be nothing but the studs of self-giving love.
It turns out that when the owner of the 300-year old house in Bryn Mawr got down to the studs, they were in a poor sort and rotting from years of neglect. And it’s the same with the studs of our communal edifice. We have become so used to papering over our shared life with individualism that when we strip things down to the studs, we find the skeleton of our collective edifice desperately in need of attention.
The moisture and fungi of fear, greed, and human conceit have gradually eaten away at the supporting structure of our shared house. Evil and great tragedies follow when perceived rights take precedence over the common good. Individual wills ramrod their agendas and self-righteousness over the well-being of others, and the loser is the common good.
And yet Paul is clear that no matter how many layers of pride and knowledge are piled on top of our original house, one day the rotting skeleton of our once-strong house will be exposed to the daylight. It’s just a matter of time.
In some sense, this seems to be where we are now in the Church. Our foibles and sins have been shown to the world. We are ever reminded that we live in a fish bowl. What we do and how we live matters because people take note, and the future of others’ souls is somehow connected to our actions. No matter how convinced we are of our faith and knowledge of God’s ways, if our actions do not build others up, we have sinned against them and against God.
To call oneself a Christian and then to perform atrocities that are utterly anti-Christian is to sin. To proceed blindly with one’s own desires based on one’s own perceived spiritual maturity is to become a stumbling block to the weak.
It is perhaps we first-world Christians who are most in danger of offending the weak. In our quest to claim God’s will based on our sophistication, we risk shutting out the rest of the body of Christ.
But thankfully, our house is not built solely on our own efforts. Our house is built on one foundation alone: Jesus Christ himself. And this foundation is comprised of the original love that can be layered over but never extinguished. When everything has been stripped down to the studs and the rotting timbers have been exposed to the light of day, there is yet hope for the house to be rebuilt.
And we have to start with the foundation. Our foundation is God who has revealed himself in Christ. He has revealed himself as the One who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, as St. Augustine tells us, and as the ground of our being who knits us all together into one. No piece of wood in the frame of the house can be compromised without affecting another. No crack in the edifice can exist without potentially having disastrous results for the rest of the structure.
There is no question that we live in a world that has largely forgotten this. We, in fact, seem to live in a Church that has forgotten this. Too many self-professed Christians live only to themselves, rather than to God and one another.
It could be that the reason some do not like the apostle Paul is that he speaks an uncomfortable truth. Offense at his perceived bigotry may be no more than a puffed-up excuse for disliking a man who tells us exactly what we need to hear. And it’s a truth that pierces to the bones and hurts.
The Gospel that Paul preaches actually does us a favor. It cuts through our layers of deceit, pretense, and self-importance and exposes the studs of our collective house. It shows them to be in dire need of attention, but it also lets us know that our common house can survive. It will survive by God’s grace, if we listen to Jesus’ Gospel.
If we are going to live in it together, we are going to have to see one another, learn to love one another, and make room for one another’s messiness. We are going to have to find a way to put our own self-interests aside out of concern for the well-being of our neighbor. We are going to have to learn that it’s not all about me, but all about we.
Yes, the house will survive. Its studs might be in bad shape at the moment, but its foundation is certainly sure. And God is not going to let this house fall down.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 31, 2020
[1] The Inquirer, July 3, 2017, https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/montgomery/bryn-mawr-man-finds-300-year-old-log-house-beneath-stucco-facade-20170630.html