"Love is . . ."   1 Corinthians 13

A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 1, 2004

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY  13214 

Phone:  315-446-0960

                                                                           phillchu@twcny.rr.com

I could count on one hand, and I probably wouldn’t need all my fingers, the number of weddings at which I’ve officiated over the last 26 years, where St. Paul’s sublime passage on love (1 Corinthians 13) was not read. I’m sure it was read at our wedding, and probably at yours. It’s not hard to see why. The language soars. It lifts up love as the only thing that abides when everything else passes away. It speaks of love as the only thing in human life that approaches the divine. It speaks to love’s power to overcome and to endure. This is all good stuff to have before us and to remind us as we celebrate the love that two people have found for each other. This passage does have something to say to brides and grooms, and maybe even more to those whose marriage has begun to show the wear of years - but the full meaning of this text is bigger than any expression of married love.

Weddings are those kinds of occasions where we expect to hear words which point to the beauty and wonder, even the mystery of love. We take them off the shelf - biblical words or poetic words - dust them off, and let them speak again as they have always spoken across generations. In this sense they are timeless; the beauty of the words themselves make them appropriate to what weddings are always about. Marriages, of course, are not lived in timeless bliss, but in the day-to-day, year-to-year realities of life, where love is often tested, and love’s endurance is not guaranteed, certainly not without intention and effort.

The Apostle Paul didn’t get to this passage until he was 12 chapters into his letter to the Corinthian Christians. He didn’t pull it out of the air. To get a sense of the ground he covers before he gets there, the context in which Paul wrote this famous chapter, I want to share a short piece by Tom Troeger, a professor of preaching, who calls this piece "Ideal Conditions for Preaching a Great Sermon." He imagines the Apostle Paul as the pastor of a not un-typical present day church.

"The trustee meeting was a minefield, and people managed to step on every mine in the room. The nurture and care committee ended its meeting in a volley of fierce exchanges between two factions. The administrative assistant reports a number of angry phone calls about a decision you made that you thought was a done deal.

"You go into your office to collect your thoughts for Sunday’s sermon. To get things out of your system you let your mind float among the scriptural passages you have been studying for this month of Sundays. You recall the command to ‘celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house’ (Deut 26:11), and you grumble about the bounty of minefields among the trustees. You hear the distant echo of Christ saying, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch’ (Lk 5:4), and you imagine yourself commanding the nurture and care committee to set out into the deep water of great human need that calls for their attention. You consider the angry phone calls and Christ’s voice returns to you yet again, ‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets’ (Lk 6:26). Trusting Christ can take it, you emit a bitter retort: ‘Yes, but it feels like hell when it’s happening.’

"You walk to the office window and look out. You say to yourself, ‘How can I preach to this ornery, conflicted community?’ You open the window to get some fresh air. You read the familiar sign on the church’s front lawn: ‘The Church of Paul the Apostle in Corinth.’ A wind blows through the window, and you begin typing rapidly. The words almost make your heart stop because you know they did not come from your tangled soul: ‘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. . .Love is patient. . . It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’"

They are beautiful words, not just for the language itself, but for where the words take us. Paul begins with himself. Speaking of the variety of spiritual gifts in the Corinthian church, and over which they were arguing about which gifts make you the most spiritual, bring you closest to God, Paul says, "I can speak the spiritual language of tongues, and write eloquent passages that move the heart. I have powers of understanding. I’m in touch with the mysteries of God. My faith is as strong as anyone’s. I’ve given away nearly all I have for the sake of Christ. I’ve even done jail time for him. I expect to die for him. But if I don’t have love, it’s all just a bunch of noise." They are of no value if not motivated by love - not the feelings of romantic or sentimental love, but "agape" love, love that seeks the well-being of the other, that sets aside one’s own concerns to attend to the concerns of the other, the kind of love that lifts up the lowly and regards them no less than the mighty - the kind of love that God has shown us in Jesus Christ, the kind of love that Christ exemplified in his own life, in his death. Without this, Paul wrote, "I gain nothing."

So far, so good. The sermon is moving along nicely. Paul moves on in verses 4-7 to characterize this kind of love. Married couples can surely find good advice there - love isn’t arrogant or rude, not jealous or boastful. It isn’t irritable or resentful. It doesn’t rejoice in what is wrong, but in what is right. It bears, believes, hopes and endures all things. Love does have tremendous power. We have witnessed human loves that have endured through turbulent times. We know of the strength love can give to bear, and believe, and hope when love is shaken and severely tested. But for all its power, we also know that our human loves are fragile. They are easily bruised, and not always capable of being healed. Sometimes human love breaks beyond repair.

"Love never ends," the preacher says next. Taken as one of those "gems" you pull out at weddings, they are words infused with hope in feelings which at the time seem eternal. But here Paul is pointing to more than the persistence of love.

Take us deeper, preacher Paul. Tell us why these other expressions of faith - tongues and prophecy, knowledge and understanding, courage and sacrifice - tell us why they are empty without love. We need more than is within the power of our own love to endure. We have seen love break down too much. We have seen that good intentions to settle conflicts often result in people walking away from each other with their own positions hardened - from marriages to churches to international relations. We have seen love moved to the edge while bitterness and anger take center stage. Our love, our good intentions, our knowledge aren’t enough. Take us deeper into the mystery of God’s love, preacher.

Paul takes us deeper into the mystery of love. He speaks of what is partial and temporary, and what is complete and eternal. Our greatness, our gifts, our strength and intelligence and achievements - all of it passes away. They are "imperfect." It is not that love is better than these other gifts. But without love, they are incomplete. We cannot fully know those who are closest to us. We cannot even fully know ourselves. And the truth be told, we don’t really want to. We live, the preacher says, as if we’re looking at a cracked and tinted mirror. We can see enough of ourselves and reality to make out the basic lines and shapes and contours - but imperfectly, incompletely. For now, that’s how it is - partial knowledge, partial understanding. Love is what completes the picture. Love is what heals the broken image, what enlightens the darkened reflection. It is not our light that does it, not our knowledge that completes it. For us, it is impossible.

It is God alone who fully knows us, more fully than we know ourselves, or want to. For God to know us is to love us, for God is love. To know yourself as fully known by God, and so loved by God, is what we call "grace" - frightening, liberating, amazing grace that would save one such as me. Captured by that grace, we are freed to accept and love ourselves, as no one can love and accept us. This is where love of others comes in - not just to treat others as we would want to be treated, but to love others as God loves us, in the love of Jesus Christ, whose love was perfect and complete.

Paul’s first words of the next chapter of his letter to the conflicted church in Corinth are, "Make love your aim. . ." Pursue this love - translate it into a congregational life-style. "Take aim" on love. Make it the focus of your life together. Do not be distracted by what is partial and incomplete, by what you "know" and "understand" because by themselves they can only lead to divisions among you.

Thank you, preacher Paul, for being open to the fresh wind of the Spirit. We’ll pray that God would help us keep our aim straight. We’ll pray that God would help us love others, not just as we would love them, but as God would love them. We’ll pray to find our completeness there, our wholeness, our life.               Amen.

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