St. Mary's & St. Peter's Church, Bagillt
Epiphany 4, Year C, 2019
May the words I speak and the words you hear be God’s alone.
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5a). How many times have we heard these words sitting in a pew at a wedding? I’m not sure if it is as popular a choice here as it is in the US—in full disclosure it was one of the readings at my wedding—but there can be no denying the beauty of Paul’s poetry in his first letter to the Corinthians.
What a lovely choice for a wedding—I can just imagine the happy couple sitting together, listening to someone describe the pledge they are making to one another. Love “… does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (vv. 6,7). Chapter 13 is a great choice of scripture for people in a committed relationship.
However, it might interest you to know that this part of the letter was actually not intended to emphasise romantic love at all, but was instead written to a Christian community in strife.
Corinth was the capital of one of the Roman provinces. The booming metropolis was a great centre of activity and a perfect place for Paul to spread the good news of Christ to a large audience. The newly Christian Corinthians were apparently a lively bunch, perhaps at times going overboard in their devotion to Christ. They were also a divided community because of competition over who was taught by which faith leader.
Paul writes this letter to the worshiping community that he founded, answering their questions, providing guidance and wisdom, and correcting misunderstandings and problems.
Last week we heard Paul describe Christians as the Body of Christ. Each person in the community has value and brings their own unique gifts to the table, just as each part of the body serves a unique and vital purpose. Some gifts are more crucial than others, but we need everyone’s gifts in order to be a functioning faith community.
Today we hear Paul name the motivation behind these gifts. “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” (v. 1). The Corinthians emphasised the gift of speaking in tongues, but if their motivation was to be a spectacle rather than to bring people closer to Christ, then the words they were speaking were just a bunch of noise. “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” (v. 2). Some of the Corinthians apparently tried to impress people with their abilities, intelligence, and faithfulness in an attempt to achieve a higher social status. But higher social status is not the end goal of Christian life, so it is an exercise in futility. Finally, “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” (v. 3). It seems that some of the Corinthians were so concerned with their image that they would openly give away possessions or even risk their lives in an effort to appear pious. But when the motivation is not love, these sacrifices appear insincere and hypocritical.
Instead, Paul says that love in a Christian community should be humble, patient, considerate, and kind, rather than boasting or drawing attention to itself. Love should involve compromise between equal parties rather than be something dictated from a superior. Love should be accepting, hopeful, enduring, and faithful.
This next part I can imagine Paul saying, “Love is unending, but these gifts you have that you are so proud of, they will not stand the test of time. They will go with you when you go. And anyway, we only have a very limited understanding of what goes on in this life. Get it together, children. Grow up. I grew up; now it’s your turn. The time will come when all will be revealed to us. But now is not that time.”
Ultimately what Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians is that the goal of Christian community is not about how much we know or what we do. Any action we take or goal we pursue should be a reflection of the love that Christ has for us. “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (v. 12b).
We are fully known by God. Think about that for a minute. God sees us as we are, with all of our flaws and failures, our selfish desires, the ways we tear each other down to build ourselves up, the ways we inflict pain on one another, the way we hate ourselves. God sees all of that, and still decides to come down to earth to help us out. Jesus not only teaches us and lives his life as an example, but offers his own life so that we might be able to join him in paradise.
Jesus is the perfect example of what a life motivated by love looks like. This is what we strive for in our own faith community. We aren’t just passive observers but active participants in the greatest love story of all time, that of God for God’s children.
Image found here
