PAST SERMON 2010 #5
by Reverend Judith Alltree, delivered on Sunday January 31, 2010,
at the Church of the Holy Spirit.
What Is Love? (1 Corinthians 13)
“How surprised the apostle Paul would be to discover that his most challenging and grace-filled ode to love has become a staple of secular and quasi-religious marriage ceremonies! No wonder, given the absence of any reference to God or Jesus Christ in the text itself.” (p. 302, “Feasting…”)
Several years ago, in another parish, I received a phone call from a young bride, who gushed enthusiastically that she had found this, like, totally cool reading all about love and it was, like, totally on the internet!!! Awesome!!! Like. When I explained that it was actually from a book in the New Testament, in the Bible, her immediate response was “no way, I, like, found it on the internet”. I knew her family, I knew there was a bible in her household so I gave her the reference and asked her to look it up. She did, and was quite miffed to discover I was right. After that she decided she wasn’t going to use a reading for her wedding that someone might be in danger of discovering was from, like, the Bible! Her friends might not think she was so cool anymore.
“How surprised the apostle Paul would be to discover that his most challenging and grace-filled ode to love has become a staple of secular and quasi-religious marriage ceremonies! No wonder, given the absence of any reference to God or Jesus Christ in the text itself.” (p. 302, “Feasting…”) Paul did not write this letter for Corinthian brides; this was written to a very cranky church congregation church in Corinth. While it may in fact be a beautiful passage to read at a wedding, unless the bride and groom understand the full import of Paul’s words, it shouldn’t be read at a wedding. Instead, perhaps the words of this passage should be engraved on the front doors of every church – or perhaps every home – in the world.
Last week, we reflected on chapter 12 of this same letter, in which Paul compared the members of the Christian community to a body – the Body of Christ – and spoke of how important, actually vital each part of the body is to the other, in order that the whole works together properly. St. Paul had heard that some members of the Corinthian church were trying to enhance their individual status within the church on the basis of the particular spiritual gifts which they had; this letter, in which he used the analogy of the Body, was meant to counter this by asserting that all spiritual gifts are manifestations of the Holy Spirit, therefore have one source, God. In other words, it is not through our own efforts that we acquire spiritual gifts, and in case anyone is in doubt, the thirteenth chapter of this letter should dispel them: Love, Paul says, trumps all gifts.
The first verse of the letter is a very powerful statement: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love...” (1Cor. 13:1) In other words, if I have the spiritual gift of “speaking in tongues”, but fail to recognize it’s source – that is, God – and furthermore, use this gift without God, the source of love, in it, the gift itself is useless: like “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal”. Without recognizing the love of God who gave it to you, or by failing to use the gift in love, the gift is worthless, makes no sense, and is, in fact, a waste, a noisy waste. That’s a pretty harsh assessment.
“[Love] is a state of being. It constitutes that fundamental relationship to God without which “I am nothing.” (v2) I would like everyone to look up at our Vision Statement, on the west wall of the nave. It states that we are a “community of faith [who] focus our love and gifts on enriching our lives and the lives of those around us.” How amazing is that? Without realizing it, we wrote a vision statement that reflects 1 Corinthians 13!
Our love and gifts – and here I mean gifts of the spirit, sharing the talents that we have for the benefit of the community in our church, and in the greater community which surrounds us, gifts as apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, translators, those who can offer various forms of influence or assistance, and those who have the gift of leadership within the community, all of which taken together make this community, this Body, the Body of Christ, operate smoothly.
As Paul says, not all gifts are the same, but that’s what makes it all work, each one doing their own part, sharing their own gift. It is when one or more of us determine that, for whatever reason, our particular spiritual gift trumps those of the other members of the community, is better or more important, or more substantial for some reason: when that happens, the body becomes out of sync with itself, and we all begin to suffer.
If, however, before we begin to get to that point – and we are all human, subject to the frustrations we may feel when living and working in community, when everyone doesn’t think exactly the same as we do – if we remember that God’s righteous love trumps our own self-righteousness, and to pull a layer of love over our thoughts and actions, before we think or act, we won’t go wrong.
So this is what happened in the church in Corinth: there were always factions who were trying to outdo one another, to take charge and lead with a “my way or the highway” attitude. Instead of beating them up about all that was wrong with the community, Paul used a more subtle approach: Love. To use his words: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor 13:4-7) Love bears, believes, hopes and endures all things. All things. And on top of all that: love never ends. Everything else will fade away, but not love. It never ends. In the end, it is the love of God that we can, individually and as a community, depend on with our whole hearts. The proof of this love was given to us on a Friday afternoon, 2000 years ago, when God’s own Son allowed himself to be brought up a hill outside of Jerusalem, where he was crucified and died for us. That was love. And it never ends.
Paul ends this part of the letter by reminding the Corinthians, gently but firmly, to grow up. Children have to learn they can’t always have their own way; the “what do you mean the universe doesn’t revolve around me” state of affairs that infants must be taught from an early age. Some members of the Corinthian church were acting like babies, to be blunt. Paul gently, but firmly, admonishes them by reminding them when they were children, they thought and acted like children, but you’re all grown up now, he says, so time to put childish things away. To seek not the dim image in the mirror, but to seek the love of God, through which all will become clear, the “face to face” visions that will eventually be revealed to us through the love of God.
“The love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is a love we experience as God’s unshakeable grasp upon our lives.” (p. 306, “Feasting…”) It is this love that we reflect to one another in all our relationships. It is this love that enables us to bear, believe, hope and endure all things. It is, as Paul says, the greatest thing. 1 Corinthians 13 is not a cute little reading for weddings found on the internet for weddings, but is one of the most profound statements of faith and love ever written.
AMEN.