I was in my early to mid-twenties when I really started to take my faith

Transcription

1 SERMON: Simply Love TEXT: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 I was in my early to mid-twenties when I really started to take my faith seriously and to make it a priority in my life. During this time I briefly dated a man who had no church background or religious upbringing. We got into a discussion one evening about God, and he tried to summarize: So, you re saying that God is love? Well, actually, I had been trying to say much more than that, so I was frustrated that this was all he was getting. It wasn t wrong; it was just too simple. Later, after I d been ordained into ministry and was serving a church, I mentioned to a friend how nervous I got about the possibility of forgetting or losing my sermon manuscript. What would I do? She suggested that I have a back-up sermon ready, with the message God is love. How hard could it be? Then there s the love passage from First Corinthians; the passage most often used at weddings. And because we hear it at weddings, when everything is beautiful and everyone is happy, these ideas sound so lovely, so easy. 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

2 wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. The unfortunate truth is that we throw the word love around an awful lot especially in the church but it s never as easy as it sounds. Paul was writing to the church at Corinth because they were experiencing a good deal of division in their church and community. They argued over leaders; should they follow Paul or Apollos? Marriage was controversial, as was social status. Food and idols, how one should dress at public prayer, and the gifts of the spirit were also issues that caused conflict. So, the love chapter was intended for all people especially Christians to remind them how lovers of God must act out their love for one another. One Biblical scholar related this passage to our world today. We are no strangers to the kind of division in communities of which Paul speaks -- racial, denominational, and political. And our strategies for negotiating these divisions leave much to be desired. It often comes down to choosing sides, as if the spectrum between the two poles did not exist. It would be better if we only chose sides. Instead, we choose which side we are on and then, to make ourselves feel

3 better or justified about our decision, we proceed to suspect, demonize, and tear down the other side. But as Elias Chacour ( Archbishop Emeritus of the Melkite Catholic Church [in present-day] Galilee, says, The one who is wrong is the one who says I am right. (Karoline Lewis, Love Never Ends, January 31, 2016) No, there is nothing simple or easy about love. Another theologian pointed out that Paul never says that such love feels good. Such misunderstanding creates trouble not only for expectations regarding the day-to-day realities of marriage, but also for the realities of the church. Because of our disordered assumptions about what love actually is, we often act as though the mission of the church is to gather like-minded and likeable people together. We think that in such a community it will be easy for us to love or, more honestly, to feel the love. But true love is not measured by how good it makes us feel. In the context of 1 Corinthians, it would be better to say that the measure of love is its capacity for tension and disagreement without division. (Brian Peterson, January 31, 2016) Though love is never simple, when it comes right down to it, the thing that God wants most from us is to SIMPLY LOVE. Among all the important issues in this world, what s most important is love. Not money, not possessions, not fame

4 or intelligence or beauty or talent or accomplishments. 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. 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. We are nothing without love. More accurately, our lives mean nothing unless we learn to act in loving ways. The scholar who said that love doesn t always feel good also emphasized the active nature of love. Paul s claims are that love shows patience and acts with kindness. Here, love is a busy, active thing that never ceases to work. It is always finding ways to express itself for the good of others. The point is not a flowery description of what love is in some abstract and theoretical sense, but of what love does, and especially what love does to one s brother or sister in the church. (Brian Peterson, January 31, 2016) When we worship together, it is to remember God s amazing love for us, to show our love for God, and to learn how to live in love for our brothers and sisters in Christ, for neighbors, strangers, even enemies.

5 And when we baptize infants and young children, it is in recognition that God loves us and chooses to be in relationship with us before we are even able to understand what that means or to return that love. Life is complicated. Relationships are complicated. Loving each other is so much harder than it sounds. But God s love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God s love never ends. If we want to live in faith and hope, may our goal always be to SIMPLY LOVE to the glory of God! AMEN.