4th Sunday after the Epiphany
January 31, 2016
Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
(Or watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2DUbFjY8RI&feature=em-upload_owner#action=share
)
I was once given a necklace with three charms on it. There was a cross, an anchor, and a
heart. The cross stood for faith, the
anchor symbolized hope, and the heart was for love. Faith, hope, and love, bound together forever
by Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 13.
And the greatest of these three, the best of them, isn’t faith, as good
as faith is. Faith will one day become
sight. Faith will turn into
knowledge. And the greatest of these
isn’t hope, as good as hope is. Hope
will one day end in fulfillment, or if you’re unfortunate, disappointment. Hope will also end. But both faith and hope are grounded, and
rooted, in love, which never ends. And
so love is the greatest of these three. We’ve
been reading the past couple weeks in chapter 12 about different spiritual
gifts, and Paul starts off chapter 13 by saying that even if he has great
spiritual gifts, like teaching and prophecy and speaking in tongues, all those
ones we talked about a couple weeks ago, even if he has wonderful spiritual
gifts, but doesn’t have love, he’s like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Even if he has faith that can move mountains,
but doesn’t have love, then he is nothing.
And even if he gives away everything and sacrifices everything, but
doesn’t have love, then he gains nothing.
And so love is necessary for all these things to have meaning, because
otherwise they don’t make any sense.
Love binds them all together.
1
Corinthians 13, even though quite often read at Christian weddings, wasn’t
written to address love between a couple.
The church at Corinth that Paul writes to is made up of several small
house-churches, with around 30 people or so meeting at each one. So, a group of people, a little bit smaller
than our gathering, who came together in someone’s house for worship. And among that group was quite a bit of
diversity, people from different classes, different backgrounds, and because of
that diversity there was a bit of conflict.
So Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is a letter to a community
that’s having trouble staying together, that’s having trouble figuring out how
to all get along. That’s why Paul talks
about love in 1 Corinthians 13. They’re
guidelines for how this small church can stay together and keep worshiping
together. Yes, good guidelines also for
a marriage, and good guidelines for a church.
I wanted to include that last verse of chapter 12 in our
reading because it really is an introduction to the whole passage. In that verse, Paul writes, “Strive for the
greater gifts,” as he wraps up chapter 12 about spiritual gifts, and then says,
“I will show you a still more excellent way,” that better way being love. However, if you look at the original Greek,
it doesn’t say a better way or a more excellent way, but something more like “a
way beyond measuring.” Love is a way that is beyond measuring. And “that is important because measuring
themselves, their abilities, and their status relative to one another seems to
have become something of an obsession within the Corinthian church. Paul wants
to move them past all of this to a way that is ‘beyond measuring.’”[1] Love is the way that can set them free from
the competition that is disrupting the Corinthian church. Competition is about measuring and comparing
and while it’s healthy to an extent, in encouraging each other to be better, it
can become unhealthy and disruptive if we’re always trying to one-up each other
or “keep up with the Jones’.”
Measurement
can be healthy when it keeps track of where we’ve been. For instance, a couple weeks ago all the
churches in our conference submitted our statistical reports for 2015, and if
you compare 2014 and 2015, there are several significant differences.
Cowenton: 2014 2015
Average worship attendance: 37 44
Children in SS 3 7
# of households giving 33 42
Apportionments $100 100%
Piney Grove: 2014 2015 2016
New Members 0 2 3 +?
Children in SS 0 6
Children in VBS 0 7
Grants 0 2 2
Hispanic Ministry 0 started
These are measurements that
are achievements to be celebrated, not causes for remorse. This is looking back at where we’ve been and
where we are now, not for disruption or mourning but in a loving way that
honors our past and accepts where we are now.
That’s why love is a way that’s beyond measuring, beyond
competition. My husband and I both have
a healthy sense of competition and at times fall in the trap of trying to outdo
each other on who had to deal with the worse event of the day: a two hour
commute in traffic in the rain, or a blow-out diaper? And the thing is, that kind of comparison
isn’t healthy and it wasn’t helpful or nurturing to our relationship. What we need, when we talk about bad events,
isn’t someone trying to say, well, I had it worse, but what we’re looking for
is sympathy for our plight. Someone to
say, “Yeah, that was awful. I’m sorry
that happened.” A listening ear is what
we need, not a competition. When we’re
hurting, or when we’re celebrating, when we’re sharing, we want to be received
with love, not with a measurement.
Verses 4-8a contain sixteen statements about love. “Here, love
is a busy, active thing that never ceases to work. It is always finding
ways to express itself for the good of others.”[2] Love shows patience. Love acts with kindness. Love does not give in to jealousy and it does
not brag. Love doesn’t compare
negatively because it doesn’t even keep records of wrongs. Those statistics are not a record of wrongs,
they are simply a record of where we’ve been, for better or worse, which is how
love is. Love doesn’t end, it’s there
for better or worse, for the good times and the bad times. That’s what love does. Concrete things like shoveling snow for a
neighbor or at the church, visiting the sick, feeding the homeless, working to
build up our life together, doing the little things that need doing around the
church, listening to those who are hurting, helping out where you can,
refraining from criticism and unhelpful comparisons. This description of love that Paul writes
isn’t meant to a flowery abstract explanation, “but of what love does, and
especially what love does to one’s brother or sister in the church.”[3] What Paul has been talking about all along
here is getting along in the church, how to be Christ’s body together. And so he tells us about how love works and
what love does, love that is real love, unconditional, steadfast love that
comes from God. Love never ends, the
last of those sixteen statements, because God’s love never ends or fails or
falters. We are to love each other how
Christ loved us, laying down his life for his friends. Not to be trampled on like a doormat or
abused, because Paul does say that love “isn’t happy with injustice”, and yet
he also says that love is patient and kind.
Love doesn’t put up with excuses, and so God calls Jeremiah out on his
excuse, telling him, “Don’t say you’re too young,” or too old, and at the same
time reassures him, “Don’t be afraid, I will be with you.” That’s how love works.
And it’s interesting, because Paul doesn’t ever talk
about how love should make us feel. He
doesn’t say that if you do all this, you should feel good about yourself. He doesn’t actually talk about feelings at
all, which is kinda funny, when you think about it, since love is supposed to
be a feeling, at least according to our pop culture. But here, “love isn’t measured by how good it
makes us feel. In the context of 1 Corinthians, it would be better to say that the measure of love is its capacity for
tension and disagreement without division.”[4] And that’s the beauty of the witness of the
church, when it works well, when we truly love each other. We don’t always get along. We’re not always going to see
eye-to-eye. The church is not meant to
be a group of like-minded individuals; we’re meant to be the family of
Christ. And in families, there are
always disagreement. However, in healthy
families and relationships, there is room for those disagreements and they
don’t tear apart the family. We can
still stay in relationship with each other, because we love each other, and
that love comes first, before any other opinion or fact. Love trumps all, and when we know that, then
we have room for differences without division.
I know that has been a problem in the past, and it’s a problem whenever
you have two or more people together.
But it’s like Isabel explained to me in the car this past week on the
way home from school: “Nathan is my best friend. But he doesn’t like purple. I like pink and purple. Nathan doesn’t like purple. That’s ok.
I just like purple all by myself.”
To be best friends, you don’t have to agree on everything. To be in the church, we don’t have to agree
on everything. And when we know we love
each other, and that all that is said and done is out of that love, then we can
weather all kinds of storms, whether they break records or not.
You see, “when folks enjoy being together, share
celebrations, and walk through hard times with grace and love, the beauty of
their shared life is deeply compelling.”[5] And something about us is compelling enough
that people want to join us. This
morning we’re welcoming new members. They’re
coming in with their eyes open, they’ve been among us for a while and they know
that there are some differences among us, but they also know that we love each
other and we have come to know and love them as well, and so this morning we
welcome them with open arms. If you’d
please turn to page 33 in your hymnals and if _______ would please come up,
we’d love to make you official members here among us.
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