1^st Corinthians 13:1-13  

               January 31, 2010 

“IF WE DON’T AGREE WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME?”

            Most call it “the wedding passage,” but 1^st Corinthians 13 was not written with marriage in mind.  Oh, what Paul wrote certainly applies to marriage and all other meaningful relationships, but when Paul wrote 1^st Corinthians 13, he had just finished writing 1^st Corinthians 12, that beautiful chapter liking the church to a human body.  As the human body is made up of thousands of pieces and parts, all important, all having purpose, so the Body of Christ, the church is created with multiple people with multiple varieties of spiritual gifts, all important, all needed, and all connected to one another to create a healthy whole.

            You remember.  Paul wrote in chapter 12, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

            You remember.  Paul wrote in chapter 12, “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?  If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body each one of them, as he chose.”

            You remember.  Paul wrote in chapter 12, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’  On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect.”

            You remember. 

            So, why do we have 1^st Corinthians 12 or 13, or 1^st Corinthians the entire letter at all?  Because there was division in the Christian Church at Corinth.  Because there were folks who believed their personal spiritual gifts were more important than those spiritual gifts that were bestowed by the Holy Spirit upon others.  Because there were some Christians who thought they would be able to function so much better if other parts of the body were not around.   Oh, there were wonderful spiritual gifts in that faith community!  God had been so very generous with spiritual gifts for that particular pocket of the Body of Christ, Christ’s body.  So, Paul spends considerable time affirming the specific spiritual gifts of the Corinthian faith community, but Paul is very quick to say that all spiritual gifts are spiritual, all spiritual gifts are gifts, and all spiritual gifts are equally important and needed for the Body to remain alive and healthy.  All the gifts were needed.

            Then Paul provides the bigger picture in 1^st Corinthians 13.  The gifts are all important, but the love of Jesus Christ behind those gifts was most important of all.  In fact, it was the love of Jesus Christ that was the motivation for gifting believers in the first place, that the people of God were empowered to live these spiritual gifts as gifts wrapped in the love of Christ.  So, when the gifts were to be shared, they were to be wrapped in that same Jesus-love.  It all falls apart, Paul wrote, when we think that the gifts are more important than the love that launched them.  It means nothing, Paul wrote, if we possess a mountain’s worth of spiritual gifts but don’t channel those gifts through the love canal.  We are nothing, says Paul, when there is not love, no matter how gifted we think we might be.  The love we are talking about in 1^st Corinthians 13 is the love of Jesus Christ that is given, the love of Jesus Christ that is given in order to be shared.  The love of Jesus Christ is the foundation for everything else.  One author says that Christ’s love in the Christian’s life trumps everything else.

            So, it is all about Christ’s love.  Christ’s kind of love is patient and kind.  Christ’s kind of love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Christ’s kind of love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.  Christ’s kind of love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.  Here comes the trump part: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”  And Paul is talking Christ’s love, Christ’s kind of love.

            Some of you remember that I attended a synod leadership gathering from last Sunday through Tuesday.  Being a part of the synod worship committee, our task for the gathering was to create and lead worship services throughout our time together.  We were asked to create worship services of hope, because the theme for our gathering was: “Being Lutheran in Michigan: Promise and Challenge.” 

            I could name the challenges, and so can you.  The struggling economy of Michigan in most communities means a struggling economy in Lutheran congregations.  People leaving Michigan for the promise of jobs in other states also affects Lutheran congregations in Michigan.  And there are numerous congregations in Michigan and elsewhere in America that are trying to figure out what our life together might look like after the decisions regarding sexuality were made at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly in August.  Some of our congregations are experiencing struggle, pain, and division in the midst of all of these challenges.  There is another challenge: to find the hope in it all.

            As we were planning the worship portion of the gathering we decided to set up chairs along the side walls of our room facing the middle.  That meant that for two days we would be looking into the eyeballs of those on the other side of the room.  I also took our baptismal font and Christ candle with me.  We placed those two reminders of who we are as the children of God right in the middle of the room, so as we looked at one another, we had to look through the font and the Christ candle.

            Oh my!  There were stories, and the shared stories were filled with passion, pain, and truth in the hearts and minds of those speaking.  There were many different messages, much different sharing, and no one, including our Bishop, knew how those two days would be lived.  Which part of 1^st Corinthians 13 would be lived…the arrogant and rude parts … or the patient, kind, and enduring parts?  Would there be any love remaining when Tuesday arrived?

            Here is what happened.  We could all quickly acknowledge that we were individually at different points and places in our understandings, our convictions, and our emotions.  We were going to hear things with which we could identify, and we were going to hear things that were upsetting.  What would keep us there?  Who would keep us there?

            To my knowledge, no one left.  In an age that only allows us to take sides, that demands that we either be “fer” or “agin”, that assumes that we are either blue or red, that we are either black or white and that our judgment is shot at those on the other side, we were all able to stay.  I don’t think anyone left that gathering in a different place than when they arrived, but something had happened.  The Spirit was bigger than the differences.  Love became the bigger issue.  Prayers for those who thought and felt differently were shared.  Unity in the midst of diversity was affirmed, and we all left in some semblance of hope.  We all realized we see in mirrors dimly.  We all realized that we possess some of the truth, but not all of it.  We all heard and remembered that one of Martin Luther’s main teachings was that we are saints and sinners at the exact same moment and time.  And we all have spiritual gifts, we all have a place within the Body of Christ, and we are encased in and bound by the same love of our crucified and risen Lord.  When we look through the font, we realize we are all God’s kids.  We were seeing face to face.

            I wrote down many statements, one-liners that I had heard.  The one that struck me the hardest and deepest came from a pastor whose congregation had voted last Sunday, prior to our gathering, whether to remain a congregation within the ELCA or to leave.  One of this pastor’s own personal, raw feelings as she looked over the congregation prior to the vote was: “if we disagree will you still love me?”

            That, sisters and brothers of our Savior, is addressed quite clearly by the Apostle Paul in 1^st Corinthians 12 & 13.  That is the question.  Will there still be love within the Body even when the Body disagrees?

            The very last passage we together recited at the closing worship service last Tuesday was the powerful text from Romans 8 … “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

            The greatest of these is love.  That is my hope.                     Amen