Love I Corinthians 13:1 13

Transcription

1 Myers Park Presbyterian Church August 24, 2014 Dr. Steven P. Eason Love I Corinthians 13:1 13 During 2014, the other clergy and I have been preaching on a word a week, essential words for our journey of discipleship. Today we ve come to the 33 rd word in our 52 week series. The word is Love and it appears 538 times in the Scriptures. Perhaps the most famous passage on love is found in Paul s writings to the church in Corinth. * * * 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. 2 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. 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. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. * * * 1

2 Love will make you do some crazy things. When Catherine and I were dating, I was a student at Duke Divinity School. I decided to surprise her one day and drove 188 miles in 3 ½ hours to Newport News, Virginia, just to have dinner with her! (Thirty eight years later, it s an effort to go from the kitchen to the den to eat dinner on TV trays watching America s Got Talent!) Love will make you do some crazy things. One of the things love will make you do is forgive somebody. That s crazy! Someone intentionally hurts you, like an affair or a breach of confidence or a child who is totally defiant and continually chooses destructive behavior against your best efforts. Maybe it s an alcoholic brother or an abusive mother. Somebody, somewhere has done something against you and it is love that will bring you to forgive them. In spite of whatever they have said or done, something within you wants to keep that relationship. Something within you will not die or go away. That something is love. Was it not love that rolled back the stone on the tomb of Christ? In spite of the crucifixion, God so loved the world that he not only gave his only begotten Son, but raised him from the dead. Jesus just couldn t lie there and be dead. Love gets up and walks out of dead places because it refuses to die. Isn t that what Paul meant when he wrote Love never ends. (I Cor. 13:8) Love will make you do some crazy things. It will make you sacrifice. Parents with moderate to low income will do whatever they have to do to send their child to college. They ll go without whatever it is they may need in order for that child to have a bright future. It s one thing to do that for your own flesh and blood, but love will also make you sacrifice for people beyond your own family. As we begin this new school year, I had the opportunity to speak to the teachers of Billingsville Leadership Academy. Billingsville is the elementary school located in Grier Heights, which is one of our city s most impoverished neighborhoods. If you re new to the church, we ve been in a partnership with the Grier Heights community for the last several years and many of you give your time and your energy to the students and teachers at Billingsville Leadership Academy. The teachers met here in Oxford Hall last week getting ready for the school year. I shared with them our history with the school and encouraged them to see themselves as being in a mission field. Many of the students are Billingsville are young children whose parents are overwhelmed by financial stresses and other obstacles. There are bilingual challenges and a host of other mountains to climb. 2

3 I m going to go out on a limb here and say that a teacher almost has to love their students in order to do what they do. Why else would someone work for the wages we pay them in this state, putting in way more hours than they should, working out of a scarcity model but facing an abundance of challenges and obstacles? It s not for the money. We give thanks for all our teachers and ask God s blessings on them as we begin this school year. Love will make you do some crazy things. It will remain loyal, even when the odds are against it. I shared this story with some of you in a sermon years ago, but it s one of those stories that just stays with you. I met a man in the nursing unit where my mother was an Alzheimer s patient. Almost every time I went, he was sitting in the hallway with his wife who was in a wheelchair, holding her hand. There was no conversation, no eye contact with her. She was suffering from dementia. There he sat every day holding her hand. One day I stopped and introduced myself to him and learned that he was actually a member of this congregation. Trying to be pastoral, I suppose, I said to him, It must be hard for you to come here every day when she doesn t even know who you are. Then he said something I ve never forgotten, But I know who she is. We did take a vow to love each other in sickness and in health. Love will make you do some crazy things! Maybe we all need to be a little bit more crazy with such loyalty and perseverance! I wonder as a church, if we could love this city more than we do. I wonder if we could be more crazy in addressing things that are keeping people oppressed; things like affordable housing, minimum wage, unemployment rates, affordable healthcare. It s one thing to increase our budget so we can buy more food and clothing for the poor. It s another thing to address the issues that keep people hungry and homeless. Love will make you do some crazy things. It might even take us to City Council to advocate for people who have no advocate. Wouldn t that be something? The goal shouldn t be to provide more bread for the bread lines, but to shorten the bread lines so they don t exist anymore. That would be crazy! Love is just not going to be satisfied with homelessness, hunger, addictions, crime or anything else that is destructive to human life. There are a lot of things that love can do, 3

4 but one thing it cannot do is turn its head. Love can t turn its head away from someone who is in need. Paul said it; 7 It (love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (I Cor. 13:7) You ve seen it. It s irrational, it doesn t make any sense. It s the father forgiving the prodigal son. Perhaps even more, it s the elder son forgiving his prodigal brother. It s Jesus making a Samaritan a hero in the story, when everybody hated Samaritans. It s Christ standing with a woman who was caught in the act of adultery and giving her an opportunity for a new life. It s God using Paul, a once self righteous Pharisee, to write over two thirds of our New Testament. I wonder if our church is crazy enough. Why are we building girls schools in Congo or working with the church in Malawi? Why are we in Cuba? What are we doing in Grier Heights or uptown in urban ministries? That s crazy. Why do we open our doors for over 500 teenagers to come during the summer to sleep in our buildings and work in missions in our city? That s real crazy!! Why do we sleep with the homeless in the cold winter months in our outreach center across the street? Why do we bother to take our youth on mission trips to Arkansas and Washington, D.C.? Why do we visit the hospitals, the nursing homes and sit with people who are going through extremely difficult times in their lives? 4

5 Why do we ask you to support a multi million dollar budget every year, giving away your perfectly good, hard earned money to the church? Why do we keep saying over and over again, Every Member Has a Ministry in this church? Because love will make you do some crazy things! The true measure of success for any church is the measure of love that is within it. And love will make you do some crazy things. I wonder if we could begin to pray this prayer? God, make us more crazy in this world as instruments of your love and grace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Congregation: Amen 5