If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. 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 it keeps no record of wrongs it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end as for tongues, they will cease as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. - 1 Cornithians 13: 1-13
I am very excited today to talk about love. I don't know about you, but I am scared and angry and frustrated and overwhelmed a lot of the time these days. I think we all need a little time with love in our lives these days, to be reminded how we are loved and how we are called to love one another. To dwell in love is to experience moments when we are not afraid.
These words from Paul’s first letter to the forming community of Jesus followers in Corinth is incredibly well known. It is often read for weddings, put on walls, cross stitched, it is on all manner of Christian art. Love is patient, love is kind, love bears all things, believes all things…
Many of us can recite at least part of it by heart. An important thing to keep in mind when reading this (and and of Paul’s letters) is context. This is a letter bring written to a specific community at a specific time for a specific purpose, and how (or if) we apply it in our own lives and contexts depends greatly on what we know about what’s going on here.
This relatively new community at Corinth is having a lot of conflict, largely centered in people creating hierarchies of importance based off of who has what spiritual gifts. Who has the most faith, who is the most self-sacrificing or giving, who has the most wisdom. They are competing to be the best follower of Jesus for power and glory and destroying the community in the process. Paul is calling them out for their behavior and letting them know that the center of the christian life is Love. He is calling them away from impatience with one another, from lack of kindness, from envy and pride, from lies and calling them into a way of being that will sustain and grow the community they are trying to build the the name of Christ. Passive-aggressiveness, seeking control over others through power, lack of kindness -- these things do not build up, they tear down.
Love as THE primary value and mode is incredibly important to Paul because this was the primary way early Christian communities grew. They had no official scripture, and in many places they couldn’t just walk up to people and start telling them about Jesus. People saw the love and they wanted to join in. Christianity grew precisely because of a centered ethic of love and every other part of their life together flowing out of that love.
Joanna Macy, Buddhist author and enviornmental activist, shares this story of her conversion to Buddhism that I think is so important for us as Christians to hear. Raised United Methodist, Macy joined the Peace Corps and worked among refugees in Nepal. She noticed how, in spite of the horrid conditions these people were living in, they radiated peace, and she wanted that. Imagine if Christians radiated God's love so powerfully and consistently people looked at us and thought, "What is that? I want some of it!"
I strive to be the kind of person that people look at and see love and want to know where that love comes from and to be a part of that. I… am still working on that. I want us to create communities that radiate love to boldly and powerfully and gently and tenderly that people are drawn in by the burning fire of our love. And this is exactly what we need right now. Love. To grow in our love so that our love becomes an unstoppable force. Love is the force on our side right now. To many, this may sound weak, as if this is calling people to be nice to each other, or to inhabit some fluffy cloud, fairy tale word. But that is not the love of which Paul speaks.
In his writings over years, Dr. Martin Luther King made distinctions between eros - romantic love - philios - brotherly love - and Agape love - God’s love for us and the love we are called to have for one another. In Pilgrammage to Non-Violence he writes:
“Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to sacrifice in the interest of mutuality. Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community. It doesn't stop at the first mile, but goes the second mile to restore community. The cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go in order to restore broken community. The resurrection is a symbol of God's triumph over all the forces that that seek to block community. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. In the final analysis, agape means recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers.
To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. For example, white men often refuse federal aid to education in order to avoid giving the Negro his rights but because all men are brothers they cannot deny Negro children without harming their own. They end, all efforts to the contrary, by hurting themselves. Why is this? Because men are brothers. If you harm me, you harm yourself.
Love, agape, is the only cement that can hold this broken community together. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, to meet the needs of my brothers.”
This is the love to which we are called as Christians, and this love is our highest call and our greatest strength right now. In a time where there is so much fear, so much hate, so much exclusion and harm, we have love. We are rooted in the knowledge that God loves us unendingly and when we sit in this knowledge, when we sit and spend time with this fire with which we are blessed and let it alight within us, we can do nothing else but go out and love in ways that stand in direct opposition to the violence being done around us. We can be transformed and transform the world through the power of our love.
Placing love at the center of all we do, ensuring our good works or prophecy or teaching or healing or giving all flow from the font of love within us will not only leave us fulfilled, less afraid and less alone, it could draw others into the community of love that we create. God’s love saves us and the church from sin and death and restores us to life and community in this world and the next. Love never ends. Love survives. Love makes all things whole. Let us walk together into this unknown future overflowing with love, calling others into this work, that we may build a new future together in love.
Amen
