Love Never Fails

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

The text we read this morning, 1 Corinthians 13 is commonly read at weddings in front of starry eyed couples getting ready to live a life together in holy wedded matrimony. However Paul was not writing this for a wedding. These beautiful poetic words were written for a newly formed church in Corinth whose members were anything but in love each other.

There was much infighting in the church in Corinth, many of its members fighting amongst themselves, jockeying for position telling each other things such as “my spiritual gift of healing is better than your gift of working miracles,” where others would say, “well I can speak in tongues, top that!” to which the response would be, “and we’d wish you’d stop disrupting our worship with your very special gift thank you very much.” Paul was notified by the church leaders in Corinth that all was not fine in paradise and they asked him to intervene. I sometimes refer to this particular book as Paul’s letter to the cranky church telling them to “cut it out.”

Many of us would like to believe that where ever there is love, there is no conflict. Like that famous line in the movie Love Story, “Love means never having to say your sorry.” We think that if people would just love each other strong enough, that there will be no conflict. We also think that this should be true of churches, that if we are strong enough Christians, faithful enough people, kind enough to each other that we will not have conflicts. That if I love like Jesus did, that I can make peace with anyone. What we forget is that the church is a human institution and whenever any group of humans get together, there will be disagreements, especially in times of change and transition. Conflict in and of itself is not a bad thing, it is how we choose to handle the conflict that makes it good or bad and this morning’s reading provides us with a Christian way of dealing with conflict.

Going back to the church in Corinth, we find Paul having to deal with an anxious church wondering if their individual gifts will provide what they need to keep their newly formed new church going. We remember that the church in Corinth was struggling because they were a faith community living in opposition to the culture around them. In a city where the many Roman gods were worship, the church of Corinth claimed Jesus as their one and only Lord. In a city where the wealthy and the poor don’t mix, here in this church the rich and the poor shared a common meal in the context of worshiping together. Where the Jews and the Gentiles were separated by the ritual purity laws of the Jewish tradition, in the church in Corinth, Jews and Gentiles were in community together. With all these differences within the Corinthian church, it is no surprise that tensions arose in several ways. One way this happened in the Corinthian church was a conflict over whose spiritual gifts were better than whose. Paul tried to ease their tension by reminding them, “there are varieties of gifts but the same spirit and there are varieties of services but the same lord…To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.” (1 Cor. 12: 4-7).

After affirming the gifts that the individuals in this community have, he then tells them that without love, these gifts are nothing. The key word in this morning’s text is love. He states, “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. 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.” (1 Cor 13: 1-3) If you look at the original text as it was written in Greek, you will find that Paul uses the Greek word agape when he speaks of love. This is a special kind of love that is different from the love shared between friends or romantic love. This is a self-sacrificing love that is unconditional and given freely. Agape love is more difficult than other loves because it calls us to love in spite of not because of. It calls us to share not because it is to our advantage, but because it will advantage others. In our consumerist culture, agape love does not make sense, but now in the aftermath of an unbridled economy, agape love is the only thing that will sustain us. Many times we have heard the message that the greatest commandment of all is to love God with all our heart, and all our strength and all our soul and to love our neighbors as ourselves. The love that we are called to share with our neighbor is agape.

Listen again to the words of Paul,

"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. Love never fails." (4-8a)

Love never fails. If left up to our own devices, it is hard to truly love each other. It is all too easy to be jealous, to take each other for granted, to be short tempered or to resent each other, especially when times get tough. Love is a deliberate decision to do loving things. Agape means loving without the expectation of being loved back. It means giving out of what you have without strings attached. It means giving to folks just because they are children of God. It means giving not to make yourselves feel good, but rather giving just to contribute to the good of all humankind.

When I was ordained three years ago, I had the text of 1 Corinthians 13 read at my ordination. I needed to be reminded that whatever I do in my ministry, that I needed to do it in the spirit of love. I knew that it would be all too easy for me to become arrogant, boastful and even rude because I had a degree hanging in my office with the words “Master of Divinity” written on it in big bold letters. What I learned in ministry is that it doesn’t matter how much book knowledge I have about all things religious, if I do not share my gifts in the spirit of love, they are nothing. Now doing ministry in the spirit of love does not mean that I won’t encounter disagreements because really disagreements will exist anywhere there is energy for change. which really is quite healthy. Like many of you I am not comfortable with differences of opinion however I know that in order to effectively work within the church I needed to “put an end to childish things,” and do whatever I can to stay connected even with those who disagree with me.

What it really comes down to is this, everyone one of us is needed here in this community of faith to continue the building of God’s kingdom here on earth. We need each others different gifts, perceptions and opinions to be able to see the whole. For as Paul says, “we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end… 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.”(13:9-10. 12)

Paul did not negate the disagreements of the Corinthian church or sweep them under the rug. He named the tensions in the church and lifted them up. He gave them tools so that they could communicate with each other in healthy and open ways where all would feel safe to speak and all will be heard.

In the months to come we will continue discerning together what God is calling Smalltown Congregational Church to be in this time and this place. As we embark upon these conversations, let us keep on the forefront of all that we do and say to each other the spirit of Agape love. “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (13:13)

May it be so.

Amen.