There’s stuff. And things. And other stuff. And… go!
Luke 4:21-30; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Psalm 79:1-6; Jeremiah 1:4-10
Most of the time when we hear 1 Corinthians 13, we’re at a wedding. Have you ever noticed that? I swear it’s likely one of the most popular Bible passages out there. At weddings, it’s often used to say this is how the couple’s love should be for each other. Patient, kind, not envious, all that. Sometimes it’s used as just a cutesy description of what real love looks like. It is that, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood passages in the Bible, due mostly to its sheer popularity.
You see, a lot of folk have a nasty habit when reading the Bible to pay attention to the parts they like and ignore the rest. Or to just pull out random verses willy nilly without really paying attention to the things around them. One shining example is the section in Ephesians about wives submitting to husbands. The whole section is about submitting to onehe husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church but that’s neither here nor there. The bigger point is that when reading and quoting the Bible, its a fairly common mistake to ignore context and just get at what you want.
1 Corinthians 13 is in the midst of a rather long discussion about the worship. Just so you know how long this is, there are sixteen chapters in 1 Corinthians. The first seven are basically about how believers should act toward one another, as the church in Corinth was having some issues with that. The rest are about how we should best worship God together. Curiously enough, the whole letter is really about how Christians should deal with other Christians, it just covers so many bases that it seems like it’s talking about more.
Anyways, Paul starts out talking about whether or not a Christian should eat food that was the leftovers from a sacrifice to an idol, most likely one of the Roman pantheon. That leads into discussion on what exactly Christian freedom is, and then some more talk about idols. Then we get to chapter eleven, where there is a good deal of talk about Holy Communion, then into things like spiritual gifts. Chapters 12 and 14 are about spiritual gifts: things like prophecy, words of knowledge, healing, teaching, helping, and the like. Chapter 12 gives some things on what the gifts are, chapter 14 is some more teaching about how they’re used, yet nestled in the middle is chapter 13, with all this business about love.
Well, it’s a little complicated, but only because the lectionary typically leaves out the transition between chapters 12 and 13. As we’ve heard the past few weeks in 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ is compared to the human body, and different people are different parts. Just as not everything in the body is an eye, ear, nose, head, or food; the body of Christ is not all gifted equally. Some are apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some do miracles, some speak in tongues, some are gifted to be administrators. Paul basically is saying that not everyone can or should be everything. Yet chapter 12 ends with him writing, “Now let me show you the best way.” And we’re into chapter 13.
Remember, chapter 12 is all about how different members of the body of Christ have different gifts. So Paul begins by basically saying, all of that stuff – speaking in tongues, prophecy, faith that moves mountains, giving away all your possessions to the poor, dying for the sake of the faith – is done without love, it is worth absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Etc.
Then he describes what love is: patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, not rude, not self-serving, not irritable, keeps no record of wrongs, rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, never ends. These are all good things about love. But remember what this letter to the Corinthians is all about. Paul is talking about the whole body of Christ. This is not just the love between a married couple. This isn’t just the love God has for each one of us. This is about all that, and the love we have for other Christians, and for all people.
Too often this image of love is shown as an ideal to strive toward but never actually reach. I disagree. I think this kind of love is what we are called as Christians to share with one another. Love is what makes the all the spiritual gifts, given by Holy Spirit to us, something worth having. I said two weeks ago that the point of spiritual gifts is to give glory to God. Without the kind of love Paul is describing, those gifts would only give glory to ourselves and would eventually hurt the body of Christ. We’d have the same kind of talk Paul, in chapter 12, was trying to avoid.
When Paul starts talking more about spiritual gifts in chapter 14, the first thing he says is “Pursue love”, because he spends most of chapter 14 teaching about how the spiritual gifts can be used lovingly and in ways that glorify God. Paul wants us to be loving toward one another, to build one another up, to be whatever place we are in Christ’s body, the church. In another place in Scripture it says that when one is suffering, the Church suffers with them; when one is rejoicing, the Church rejoices with them. That is love, sharing in joys and sorrows without envy or disdain – and pursuing love, perfect love, above all else.
To be honest I never really viewed the true love that was in my face most of my life until it wasnt there anymore; my parents use to fight tooth and nail and do the most horrible things to each other and yet, they forgave each other. In contrast they have known each other since they were kids but through thick and thin their love was never extinguished by any wind, burning without wood or oil.
And here I am, later in life, with a similar situation when so many times I felt like murdering and bleaching the body. Somehow if I am able to forgive and forget, with the patience and kindness my parents have shown to be true love, maybe this is the one.