February 1, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson)

Scripture Lesson                                                            I Corinthians 13:1-13

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. 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 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 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. 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. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

            --------------------------------------------------------------

February is the month in our North American culture when an infant wearing diapers, blindfolded and brandishing a bow and arrow, is the recognized symbol of love. Cupid is this symbol of romantic love, an understanding of love that will lead to pain and a mess to clean up. How different an understanding of love is found in this 13th chapter of First Corinthians. This chapter is bold enough to declare that without being possessed of God’s love, we are simply noisy clangers, show-off believers desperately in need of validation.

John Claypool, an Episcopal clergyperson with the gift of preaching who delivered the Beecher lectures at Yale over twenty years ago, once said in a lecture I heard him give that God’s love should be diagramed not as a circle but as an arc. Think about this for a moment. Most of the experiences of love that we know are indeed like a circle. The love goes out from us to the other person in order to bring back into ourselves something in the other we value or need. It could be pleasure, beauty, a self-esteem boost, a sense of control, a taste of power over the other person. Something in the other is desired by us, and we give our love in order to bring back into ourselves something that makes us feel good or alive or happy. That is love diagramed as a circle: love goes out to the other and comes back.

Too often that’s the reality of romantic love. It is also why such love can’t sustain itself and why relationships based on this kind of love can’t last. They are characterized by immaturity, recklessness and lack of self-control--all that Cupid stands for. Relationships based on this kind of love will dissolve under the weight of the other person’s imperfections and our own insatiable needs.

Let me tell you how this works. You fall in love. What we don’t know is that too often we are falling in love with being in love. We enjoy the way the other person makes us feel. The relationship is intoxicating. But over time no one can be responsible for making another person’s life happy or meaningful. Soon the other person no longer satisfies our needs and begins to feel not like a source of happiness but a lead weight. This is the outcome of love that is understood as being like a circle: a love that goes out to the other in order to bring back a reward to ourselves.

It is really self-love. Something in the other person attracts us, and we want it. Sexual gratification, self esteem, a feeling of dominance or control, a neurotic need to “rehab” losers—it could be anything. We simply want to acquire more of it. So, when you really think about it, romantic love is mostly about acquisitional love. There is something in the other person that we want to acquire, but usually we are not honest enough to name, and therefore as the years roll by, such love dissipates as our needs and wants change. This is a sure recipe for a broken heart and a broken congregation. Remember chapter 13 wasn’t originally written to be read at weddings but to a congregation in trouble, a congregation basking in emotion but the emotion more characteristic of acquistional love.

But think of God’s love, this love given to us while we were still sinners. This is not acquisitional love. This is gift-love. This is love which is diagramed like an arc. It simply goes out to the other to enhance the other. It goes out to the other not to bring something back but to give. This love is not interested in the returns from the relationship, but this love is interested in empowering the other person for his or her own good and his or his own joy and freedom. This love is experienced not as a lead weight as time goes by but as a joyful self-giving that frees, frees the one you love and frees yourself as the lover. This is God’s love.

This is the special love described in First Corinthians chapter 13. This is the love that is the more excellent way for the congregation to seek to travel together. This is also the love that will enrich relationships, lead to successful marriages and friendships. It is giving love, not taking love.

I find it is impossible for me to produce this kind of gift love without God’s spirit. But I am not the only one in this predicament. The Corinthian congregation was deeply troubled with so many problems. The wealthier members who didn’t have to work were showing up early at the fellowship meals and the communion services and getting drunk before the working class members could arrive for the food and drink. In addition, the members were suing each other in the pagan courts. People were bragging about who had baptized them and how impressive it was. There were cases of sexual inappropriateness. This was behavior typical of acquisitional love after a while.

Yet many in the congregation were acting like they were super Christians--Christians seeking to wow others with their ability to praise the Lord, to give testimonies, to display publicly the raw emotion of their religious faith, to show how their knowledge of God was superior and basically how anyone who was anyone would go to their church. I once heard someone who resides in Woodway actually say that anyone who is anyone in Woodway went to a certain church in Woodway, a church which I shall not name. How’s that for choosing a congregation based on what it can do for you! That’s love understood not as what I can give to a congregation but what that congregation can do for me.

Paul says to the Corinthian congregation: I will tell you of a more excellent way than show-off religion or religion to entertain or gain, a more excellent way than religion characterized by mountain peak experiences of praise and excitement, a more excellent way than magical religion which is based on the idea that if you believe hard enough and eliminate all doubt (which you never can do but pretend you can), if you believe hard enough, muster up enough
faith, then you can move mountains with your faith, a way more excellent than religion that is expressive of a special knowledge of God because a small group claims to have mastered the divine secrets of the “YaYa Biblehood.”

No, Paul says I will show you a more excellent way. Chapter 13 highlights this path. It is the road not of acquisitional love, love diagramed like a circle, but gift-love, love diagramed like an arc. This kind of love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It’s why over and over I tell you that God is the One who knows us the best yet remains the very same One who loves us the most.

One of the big ideas of the New Testament is that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. This is love that is interested in empowering others rather than impressing others, or controlling others, or taking from others. The symbol of this kind of love is not Cupid but a Cross. Until we behave with gift love, we are simply noisy clangers.

 

 


First Presbyterian Church • 1100 Austin Avenue • Waco, TX 76701 • (254)752-1665

Questions, comments, or broken links? Please email the webmaster at bgilliam@firstpreswaco.org.

Unless otherwise stated, all material contained in this web site is Copyright © 1999-2005 First Presbyterian Church of Waco, Texas. Right is hereby granted for any congregation or governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to copy and use this material only as long as proper credit is given as to its source. The scripture quotations contained within are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All quotations from the Book of Confessions are reprinted by permission and are Copyright ©1996 by the Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (USA).