 1 COR 13:1-13
Over the years I have officiated numerous weddings, and without question the most popular request for scripture reading is this morning’s passage, the 13th chapter from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth that focuses on love.
Beginning at verse 3, 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.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It 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.
I suspect over the centuries this morning’s passage has inspired couples, at least while it’s read, to engage in the tough struggle of evolving as individuals and collectively in order to avoid the disheartening conclusion that besieges so many couples as they of look across the dinner table privately thinking: “What happened to the one I thought I knew, when I said, ‘I do?’”
Ironically, for as much as this passage is used during the wedding ceremony as couples exchange their vows, and understandably so, the reason it was originally penned has little to do with romantic love.
Paul wrote this letter to correct what he saw as erroneous views in the Corinthian church. Several sources informed Paul of conflicts within the church at Corinth. Paul then wrote this letter to the Corinthians, urging uniformity of belief.
In general, divisions within the church at Corinth seem to be a problem, and Paul makes it a point to mention these conflicts in the beginning. Paul wants to bring them back to what he sees as correct doctrine, stating that God has given him the opportunity to be a “skilled master builder” to lay the foundation and let others build upon it (1 Cor 3:10).
Could we not conclude that Paul’s struggle with the church in Corinth remains God’s struggle today with the church in New York, New Zealand, Paris France, Paris Texas, not to mention the church in San Francisco, Oakland, as well as the church in Berkeley?
God wants to bring God’s church back to what God sees as the correct doctrine, not that God’s people will serve in lockstep but that there would be one unifying force that would allow the world to identify God’s people simply by their actions alone; and that would be their commitment to what I so often preach about: Inconvenient love.
We can agree that the concept of love is the shared Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian belief about ultimate reality where these differing religious traditions coalesce into a harmonic symphony.
It has been my experience that we use this term love interchangeably as it relates to biblical text and to our daily lives.
A strong argument could be made that love is the most casually used word in our language. I love my spouse, I love my children, I love my dog, I love my Oakland Raiders, I love my soap operas, I love my car. Each sentence used the verb love, but does it mean the same thing in each case?
And that begs the question: what type of love is Paul talking about when he writes his first letter to the church at Corinth?
While the English language carries multiple meanings using the same word, the Greek language uses three words for love. It talks about eros. Eros is an aesthetic love. It has come to us to be a romantic love and it stands with all of its beauty. I would also add this is the love that couples tend to hear when they are repeating their vows. But when we speak of loving those who oppose us we’re not talking about eros.
The Greek language talks about philia and this is a reciprocal love between personal friends. This is a vital, valuable love. But when we talk of loving those who oppose you and those who despitefully use you we are not talking about eros or philia. The third love in the Greek language is agape.
Agape love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all. It is generally understood as God working in the minds and hearts of humankind. It is an overflowing love, which seeks nothing in return. And when we come to love on this level we begin to love our neighbors not because they are likeable, not because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them.
Agape is the love practiced least among the three forms offered in the Greek language because it is the most inconvenient, which means it practice is not based on whether it is a good time us. We are still held to the “Love your neighbor as yourself” edict regardless of our personal challenges in the moment. My father’s recent passing does not let me off the hook from engaging in God’s inconvenient agape love.
It is a love that is not measured by how we feel about the other person, rather it is a love measured by how we feel about ourselves and how much we trust in God’s love, grace and mercy.
Was that not the scene at Calvary? After they placed a crown of thorns on his head, after they pierced him in his side, he cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” On the basis of our faith this continues to serve as the pinnacle of inconvenient agape love.
It is inconvenient because it calls us to love even when to don’t feel like loving the other person, and it is what Paul is writing about in this first letter to the church at Corinth.
It is in this context that we see the gospel according to John the 13th chapter and 34th verse in a new light of appreciation where Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Given what we’ve already said about the inconvenience of agape love, Jesus’ command is a lot easier to implement on paper than it is in the reality of the human condition.
Loving one another is not optional; that’s why it’s inconvenient. And our commitment to this inconvenient love measures not whether or not we love our neighbors, but rather our trust in God.
Inconvenient love requires courage; it requires a trust in God and a belief in Jesus that says whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say it is well with my soul.
It’s one thing to talk about love in the cozy confines of church. But its quite another to make it your goal because Christ has made it the goal when you’re dealing with absurdity. I liken it to what former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson once said about the importance of having a fight plan when one enters the ring.
According to Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get hit.” Likewise, everybody can love until they get hit.
I have little doubt you can love when everything is going your way. But what happens when you’ve taken the blows of absurdity, been knocked down by tragedy, pummeled by heartache, sucker punched by failure, left on the canvas by disappointment, God wants to know can you love after that? Can you engage in the inconvenient agape love after that because that’s what’s required to be an active participant in Jesus’ movement?
Inconvenient agape love is the most difficult because it’s all about you, it is not predicated on the other person whatsoever. But it is only by accepting the challenge of inconvenient love that we can realize the benefits offered in the kingdom of God. Inconvenient love unlocks the door to grace and mercy; it provides the combination to peace and joy.
And though the risk of engaging in inconvenient love can always lead to unjust suffering, we are also reminded that it is unjust suffering that is redemptive to the soul.
So when Paul writes love is patient, that’s not a general statement; that is specific to us. Your love, my love, must be patient. It is impossible to have a love that is not patient. It is difficult to have love that is patient and maintain the impulses of immediate gratification.
Ours must be a love that is enduring, tolerant, long-suffering, it must be like fine wine that improves with age. The patients that our love exemplifies today ought to be greater than it was five years ago, but nothing compared to what it will be five years from today.
If patients is not part of our love ethic we are indeed as Paul says, sounding brass and tinkling symbol.
Conventional wisdom suggests the opposite of love is hate, but actually it’s fear. John writes in his first epistle, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear.” Fear is the true enemy of the soul, of the community, and of the nation.
The impulses of love and fear can become warring factions that cause a civil war in the soul rivaled only by Gettysburg, Antietam, or Chancellorsville.
This country has been at its worst when it has made fear the dominant value, by which it would set its moral compass. However you feel politically, I believe fear is at the core of our problems today, doing everything in its power to keep the nation beholden to the status quo.
In 1963, Martin Luther King took on Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham. As much as the prevailing myth suggests that the historical black church spawned civil rights movement, the facts suggest otherwise. Though there were 500 black churches in Birmingham and the surrounding areas, less than 20 actively participated with King—some went as far as to parrot the same language as their segregationist oppressors by calling King an outside agitator. In Birmingham 1963, fear had created an unholy alliance between victim and victimizer. As Sloane Coffin said, “Nothing scares me like scared people”—scared of terrorists, scared of illegal immigrants, scared of certain foreign nations, scared of an America and some Americans the way it truly is rather than the myth they’ve been led to believe.
We can’t end two wars without first addressing the fear, can’t do what is necessary to turn the economy around without first addressing fear, we can’t have universal healthcare without first addressing the fear that plagues the nation.
Fear, in the short-term conveniently represents the opposite of God’s inconvenient agape love.
Fear is convenient, expedient, arrogant, it insists on its own way, indifferent to wrongdoing or truth, beholden only to its own self-interest, offers little risk, its externally focused, more concerned with that which it is afraid of than self-reflection.
Notice if you will, Paul write in verse13, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Why is love greater than faith and hope? Because it is the one feature of this present life that will be found unchanged in the future life. As Paul puts it in verse 8, Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away, as will fear.
That does not mean that the recipients of God’s love will always act in a way that is in accordance with having received that love, but that does not change that God’s loves does not fail.
Notice, in contrast to all else, love abides; love never fails. Love is the one power in this life that can generate itself. It is the one reality in time that goes into eternity unchanged. Love will never need to be stopped or transformed into something better. Because love is the one perfect reality of this life, it abides throughout this life and into the next—unchanged, unmoved, and undeterred by the unpredictability’s of life. Evil has no power that can compare when God’s inconvenient agape love has been committed to heart and entrenched in the soul.
God’s love does not guarantee there will be no difficult times, but it does promise to abide through those times. God’s love does not eliminate the need for painful or hard conversations, but it does promise to abide in the midst of those conversations. God’s love does not take away our racing hearts when we have to make difficult decisions, but it does promise to abide in the midst of those difficult decisions. It is God’s unceasing, unyielding, unwavering inconvenient love that abides in the midst of our darkest midnight.
This is a love, which gladly and willingly makes sacrifices for the good of the other. This love seeks to give rather than to get. It keeps on loving even when the other person doesn't respond. It loves without asking for anything in return. It is a love that turns the heart towards the other and away from ourselves.
A love that was fortified when the horizontal cross beam of human imperfection intersected with the vertical cross beam of God’s perfect love. From a hill called Calvary we can see forgiveness when it was inconvenient, compassion when it was inconvenient, and comforting others all while it was inconvenient.
It was an inconvenient love that prompted Joseph to tell his brothers: “You plotted evil against me, but God used it for good.” It was inconvenient love that allowed Job in the midst of his own pain and suffering t cry out: “Thou he slay me yet will I trust him.” It was an inconvenient love that inspired to David say: “Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning.”
It is inconvenient love that demands that we love our enemies, bless those that curse us, do good to those that hate us, and pray for those that despitefully use us.
It is a love willing to stop on the Jericho road, to affirm the humanity of those who dominant culture has disregarded. For it is only through inconvenient agape love that we can commit to feed the hungry, clothed the naked, comfort the sick, to declare the year of the Lord’s favor. Moreover, God’s inconvenient love is the pathway to our peace, the gateway to our grace, the route to our redemption, and the road to our resurrection. For it is Reinhold Niebuhr who reminds in the Irony of American History, "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness."
And as Martin Luther King once said, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Because of this, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth as well as to this listening community: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love,” God’s inconvenient agape love—Amen.
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