The Greatest of These
Once upon a time, as a wedding gift, I received these words from 1 Corinthians 13 elegantly hand lettered on parchment, framed with the numerous drafts by the calligrapher behind the final, a tradition in the art of calligraphy, I was told. The work was rendered by a friend. It was obviously a lot of work, a sweet and thoughtful hand-made offering in celebration of how he understood the love between two people.
I was vaguely aware, at 22 tender years of age, that I felt some responsibility for the time and effort that had gone into the piece – especially because that verse was not even a part of our wedding. It felt so “traditional” to hear those words, and really, deep inside of me, I didn’t know much about scripture or frankly about love – I just knew that A LOT of people used these words as part of their wedding celebrations.
That was 31 years ago, and that feels like a lifetime. Through my many experiences over those years, it is safe to say that I have a different view of love today.
And yet the words remain in the same order, in the same structure. Here they are again. I’ve preached on them for a wedding and a funeral in the past six months. Today in our hearing, these words are the center-point of a series – calling us to remember that LOVE NEVER ENDS.
As we have journeyed these past few weeks with Paul and the community at Corinth, Paul has been responding to tensions within the community that are causing division. The last two weeks, Paul has been addressing a disagreement about spiritual gifts – quelling the notion that some gifts are greater and more valuable and more esteemed than others in the body of Christ. In fact, Paul continues to address spiritual gifts in the next chapter as well.
That means this passage about love is situated in the center of Paul’s discourse on spiritual gifts. And the “center” matters here.
While these words from Paul’s letter from the church of Corinth are often read at weddings to allude to the work of love between two people, they were written originally to describe an ideal love that members of a community should strive to practice together.
And they were written to a community really struggling with that practice.
To put it another way, these words were something of a scolding or a correction. Paul was naming the ideal in order to call people into better behavior.
By placing it in the center of a discourse about spiritual gifts, Paul is centering love as the fuel for how each person’s gifts should be put to use in the community. Love fuels how each person should act and serve in the community.
Often, we think of love as a feeling, a result, a product of something…but Paul is centering love as a set of actions, a way of being in the world, and specifically, a way of being in community.
In verses 4 – 7, the scripture as you heard it read has been limited by translation, and describes how love is rather than how it acts, but the original Greek suggests love is much more active. Perhaps the translation of these verses from The Message capture it better:
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Paul’s words express an ideal that when enacted makes the world more full, more multi-dimensional, more beautiful, more giving, more bearable for everyone touched by love.
Given the conversation that is taking place in the church at Corinth about gifts, Paul is calling people to remember do use their gifts in love. He suggests reminds them that love never ends. Somehow, as Paul describes it, love exists and surrounds us, and it us up to us to make it part of how we seek to move and share our gifts in the world.
These words from Paul call us to an ideal the world needs so dearly right now.
We are living in a world where love has been reduced in many cases to a romantic ideal, to a rare person to person commitment, often limited to those that we CHOOSE to be recipients of our love. And if we are honest, our selection of who we love often has to do with what we receive in the exchange.
In truth, biblically speaking, love is work and action and commitment, and it surrounds each of us as God’s love for us as beloved creation. Engaging that love, moving it beyond something we want to be surrounded by and acting it out with others feels so very hard. Especially right now.
As Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary writes,
For me, one of the hardest lessons of the pandemic to stomach has been the clear and recurring realization that there’s so little love in American society. The selfishness. The lack of regard for people at risk. The callous policies. The contempt people show for their community. Clearly we need to learn how to do Christian ministry in a landscape in which a lot of people simply don’t give a damn if their neighbors live or die. In a world in which multitudes actually don’t long for a deeper sense of community. In a context in which love is a sign of weakness at best and an opportunity for exploiting a sucker at worst.[1]
I wonder.
As we gather together today, are we choosing to love one another?
As we claim this community called Faith, do we do it in love?
Is our love active?
Does it radiate out from each of us and then from Faith Church as a shared gift in the world?
Does our love
take pleasure in the flowering of truth,
put up with anything,
trust God always,
Always look for the best…
Are we willing for these words from Paul to be the foundation for how we will love one another deeply?
As I said at a recent wedding:
The ideal of love is hard – patience, kindness, honest, faithful, eternal. There will be mistakes. But in the striving, there is life. And in the striving, there is a beautiful flow of energy that radiates and touches others. That kind of love changes things. It will shape you and everything you touch.
That is the work of a lifetime. It is good work. Holy work. Ongoing work.
It has already started. And we bless its continuing.
May it be so.
Amen.
[1] Staggering Love, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/staggering-love, 2022 Jan 23.
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