God Is Love
First Congregational Church of Evanston
January 21, 2007 Third Sunday after Epiphany
I Corinthians 13 - 14:1a
Rev. Dr James E. Roghair, Interim Pastor
First Corinthians 13:1-14:1a
13: 1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And 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. 3If 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.
4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love 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. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When 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. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, 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. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
14:1 Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts...”
Love in the Arctic Winter
“The writer, Annie Dillard ... in The Writing Life [tells] of an event that comes out of one Arctic winter. An Algonquin woman and her baby were left alone... Everyone else in the winter camp had starved. The woman walked from the camp where everyone had died and found a small stash of provisions. She found no food, but she found one small fishhook. She rigged a line, but had no bait and no hope of finding bait. The hungry baby cried.
“She took a knife and cut a strip from her own thigh. She fished with the warmth of her own flesh and caught a fish; then she fed the child and herself. She saved the fish guts for bait. She lived alone at the lake, on fish, until spring, when she walked out with her baby on her back and found people.
“She said nothing about what had happened to her until someone noticed the scar on her thigh.
“The apostle Paul was right: ‘Love is patient; love is kind ... it is not irritable or resentful ... It bears all things, [or possibly translated ‘love passes over all things in silence (The New Interpretor’s Bible),] believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things ...(1 Corinthians 13:4-7).’
“The Algonquin woman would have understood Paul's words. Love at best is always something we do. (Emphasis, p. 38-39)” She might be for us the ultimate example of the meaning of Paul’s “Love Chapter.” Bearing patiently the pain and the anxiety of losing her village, of giving her own flesh to save her child, she demonstrates in the extreme what it means to love. What does it mean to us to love?
The Love Chapter
This chapter of 1st Corinthians is surely one of the most well-known passages of Scripture. There is Psalm 23 and then Lord’s Prayer. The Love Chapter is third. But we do not know it in its Biblical context. It is a jewel that stands by itself. Where we commonly encounter this chapter is in the wedding ceremony. And I am sad to say that in that setting, it often becomes a part of the decorations, along with the beautiful dresses, and the flowers, and the special music chosen by the bride and groom.
Have I contributed to this trivialization as one who has performed many weddings over the years? I have tried, to make sure that I interpret it at least a little. I say that these verses are not about some love fog or mist that drifts down on us only to drift away. That love as Paul talks of it, is not something that happens to us, but something that we do – day by day. Romantic love has its place in making the world go around. But this passage is not really about that. It is all about what we do – about how we put love into action. And the action of Love is never a 50/50 relationship.
But I don’t think very many people hear much of what we say at weddings. The bride and groom, their attendants, the bride’s father, and a more or less restless small ring bearer or flower girl are all standing right there. They are patient, but ready to get on with it! Not to reflect on what Paul may or may not have to say to us about real love.
And so it is with great pleasure that I find this passage as the lectionary reading for this Fourth Sunday after Epiphany – the Sunday before Superbowl Sunday – the Day of this Church’s Congregational meeting.
Love Chapter in Context
Someone has suggested that instead of being the love chapter designed for weddings, that this is the “church fight chapter (Emphasis).” It is set in the midst of a discussion of the great argument that was going on in the Church in Corinth about who is the most important in the life of the Church. Although the particular language of their quarrel may not resinate with us, because we do not fight about Spiritual gifts, it is not uncommon for Church people to have very different opinions about what is most important in the life of the church.
We might have arguments about: Do we serve primarily the people who come to worship, or are we primarily called to mission to bring good news to the rest of the world? We might call that the polarity between the inward journey and the outward journey. We might have an issue with the use of the resources of the past, and what is the most important way they can be used – preserving them for the years that lie ahead or investing them in the needs that we see today? And none of the arguments have easy answers.
But chapter 12, which we looked at last week, reminded us that we are all one body. No individuals are more important than any others. There are ministries and concerns of the church that are very different from one another which cannot be placed one above the other. We are called as a people to have an inward journey and an outward journey.
As in the body, the muscles pull against one another and against the bones of the skeleton to hold everything in place, so in the church we have different functions that pull against one another to keep the body fit. And so disagreements and arguments – the discussions of life in the church – are healthy and of ongoing importance. In Paul’s language they were fighting about the gifts of the spirit. What is the most important?
There is one glue that holds all of the body together. There is one gift that stands above all the rest. Paul finishes the 12th chapter saying “I will show you a still more excellent way.” And that way opens before us with the words of chapter 13 – the preeminence of love above everything else.
An Encomium of Love
There is a literary genre, in which this chapter fits. It is called an ‘encomium.’ It is in praise of a certain person or a virtue. It has some relationship to a eulogy – which we know almost exclusively from funeral rites. This is an encomium on love. As Paul discusses love, he does it using standard parts of an encomium: There is the prologue, which begins “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal...etc.” It moves to a recounting past actions worthy of praise, which begins with the words, “Love is patient, love is kind....etc.” Then there is a comparison to other persons or virtues beginning with the words, “Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end...etc.” Finally there is the appeal for emulation, which we find in what is numbered as the first part of the first verse of the 14th chapter: “Pursue love, and strive for the spiritual gifts...”
Some have proposed that this is an existing piece that Paul got from somewhere else and dropped in here, or that this was inserted here by a later editor. It could be. But the themes and the ideas fit the argument Paul pursues in the previous and the later chapters. I can accept it as belonging here, and that it is Paul’s writing at its best (The New Interpretor’s Bible).
God Is the Source of Love
Elsewhere in the New Testament we read that “God is Love.” And in this context it is clear that God is the source of the love we are discussing and that any love that we share with one another is a reflection of the love that God showers upon us in Jesus Christ. We love because God has first loved us.
We cannot love one another without the love of God. Our love for God and our love for one another derivative. Love is one of the gifts of God given continually to God’s people.
The Love of God Defines the Church
I encourage us to foster God’s love among us as a primary way of understanding church. There is really nothing stronger that pulls us together to be the church than the love of God. Oh, we may have people or things that brought us into this fellowship – that keep us in it. What are they? Isn’t it the love of God for us, and our reciprocal love for God, that really ties us to the church?
Look beyond any of the other things that seem important to you in being a part of this fellowship, the church. Observe the love of God for you and for others you love. Recognize that even when we don’t see it, the love of God is indeed drawing the church into being, and our response will be love for God, love for God’s people, and love of the church. Our love is responding to God’s love for us.
I invite you to recognize that – to celebrate the love of God. Ask yourselves: ‘How can we share the love of God with one another?’ And ‘How can we be the channel of the love of God for others?’
The Love of God in the Annual Meeting
Today we come to the annual meeting. I hope and pray that it will be a lovefest. That people will take on responsibilities to be a search committee because they are overpowered by the love of God. That they will take on responsibilities to do work on teams and committees that make the church life go, because of the love of God. I pray that no one will take on any responsibility grudgingly and because they feel pressured to do it.
The financial gifts that we give to the church are like that, too. Can we give because we love the church? Because we love the things God does in and through the church? Because we love who we become within the life of the church?
Final Words from the Prophet
Kalil Gibran was a Lebanese poet living from 1883-1931. Born into a Maronite Christian family, he wrote poetry in both Arabic and English. His drawings are exquisite. He attempted to transcend the Christian/ Muslim divide in Lebanon. I find his work, The Prophet particularly important. A few months before its publication, Gibran summarized his work: “The whole Prophet is saying one thing: ‘you are far far greater than you know -- and all is well’.”
I want to close with some words about of the Prophet which are in the chapter called “Work, ” I hope that they help us focus on why we would do what we do in the life of the church.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
“And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night (http://www.leb.net/~mira/).”
Amen.
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2008