“Love is NOT” (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)
Intro: Chapter 13, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, is probably the most famous statement about love in the world. As we try envision what the city of Corinith is like. Think Las Vegas. Let us listen.//
The thirteen verses of first Corinthians chapter 13, are probably the best known words Paul ever wrote. This chapter is to the New Testament what the Twenty-third Psalm is to the Old Testament. It is known, loved, enjoyed, and memorized by many people. Everyone is familiar with at least some of the rhythms and some of the imagery of this passage. One often hears it read at weddings and we feel the sentiment of it and we enjoy the beauty of it. It is perhaps one of, if not the most, popular portions of the New Testament.
Too often, this passage is read in isolation from its broader scriptural setting. All or part of the reading is lifted up and taken out of its original context. We don’t have to go far to see some of these words written in fancy calligraphy put up on a wall somewhere. In offices or in homes we see in big print, LOVE IS, patient, kind and does not boast.
Because the words are soaring and beautiful, they seem to point beyond the ordinary and possible. The problem is that just holding the beauty of the words in a picture frame obscures the practical, exhorting force that Paul intends. If Paul heard how people say “Love is patient, love is kind and does not boast”, with a soft dreamy look in their eyes, I think he would get really cranky. (As Paul was want to do). When the words are taken from the whole, and the understanding of the Corinthian situation is left behind, the transforming power is weakened if not lost.
The letter he wrote was in response to questions the Corinthians raised about what they should do in response to some of the issues they were facing. Paul is not writing a philosophy paper about some abstract ideal of “what is love”. The discussion of love comes in practical terms as he speaks to their concerns. He is writing to a conflicted congregation, caught up in a distorted spirituality, and engaged in intense power struggles. These people were trying to live out their Christian faith in the midst of a city where many more people thought the “God of love” was Venus.
Paul was trying to bring a new way of thinking to the anxious and fractured members of a specific group of early Christians. In the chapter immediately preceding this, the passage, Paul addressed the Corinthian concern over proper beliefs and the distribution of spiritual gifts. In chapter 12 he used the analogy of a human body to try and get the Corinthians to views gifts of the spirit with a new perspective, as parts of a unified body of Christ. Now Paul adds the single most important component necessary for that “spiritually gifted body”, the lifeblood of love. Just as the individual organs of the body can not function without blood flowing through them, humans are nothing without love flowing through us.
Paul uses the first person throughout his letter as he writes about love. He is talking about himself as an example for them. Without love, speaking in tongues turns him into a noisy and incoherent nuisance; he or anyone with profound theological insight and total faith amount to nothing, if love is not present. Even extravagant gifts to the poor or those who suffer to boast of gain, have nothing, and have done nothing if there is not the backdrop of love as the motivation for everything.
He is not saying that spiritual gifts are useless, or that dramatic sacrifice is to be disregarded. The exercise of gifts, and the practice of sacrifice in themselves simply do nothing for the doer. It is love manifest in the person that makes these actions meaningful.
While Paul is giving ideas and advice, he avoids offering a complete and comprehensive definitions of love. Reading about love or defining it, Paul says is like looking into a dim mirror. You don’t get the full picture. The real thing happens only face to face, with one another, with God. It is in the searching for, the seeking for God’s love that we find it, on the journey with one another. That’s what Paul is saying. Look at me, and what I do. Love is as love does. Here is an example of love. Christ is the perfect example of love in action. It is in the doing that love is manifest and real.
As human beings we are created in the image and likeness of God. In the Hebrew Scriptures, faith finds God showing “steadfast love.” Always present. In the New Testament, while love is not God, God is love. So love is part of our basic make up, or stuff. It is the lifeblood of a relationship and connection to God.
Paul write “So faith, hope, love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love.” It is the meaning of life. Or at least the first hint of a whisper of a clue of finding it. As we look at these familiar words that Paul wrote, an interesting idea I’ve seen is for us to put ourselves into those verses and see how our love and lives reflect what Paul speaks of. For instance, starting at verse 4, if we substitute the word “I” for “love”, the passage reads like this: “I am patient; I am kind; I am not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. I do not insist on my own way; I am not irritable or resentful; I do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but I rejoice in the truth. I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. My love never ends.” How true are those sentences for each of us? How well do they match up with the way that we really are? (Don’t answer for anyone else sitting next to you. But think it through sometime.) Since God is love try it with God as well, God is patient God is kind. See if that shifts your perspective on God at all.
What those words show us is that love is something we do. It’s not just some feeling. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus praised a group of people by saying: “I was hungry and you gave me food.” Notice that Jesus didn’t commend the people by saying: “I was hungry and you felt sorry for me.” No, I was hungry and you gave me food. Love means doing what’s necessary, what’s needed. But really love means even more than that. It is a disposition, a way of living life. Paul brings this in at the end, Faith hope and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love. Hope expects what faith believes. Hope holds on because it has faith in the strength and persistence of God’s love for us.
Faith and hope never stand alone. They are all fulfilled in love. As Paul writes the Corinthians with their very real very human problems and temptations. He says their task is to take that truth of God’s lasting love that is present now. To take it and make it ever more real in their lives. That is our call as well. The table is here to enfold us God’s in perfect love that came to us in Jesus Christ, to feed us and to give us a glimpse of love that endures forever. God’s love. Amen.