Words of Love

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.

—1 Corinthians 13

I could well have titled this meditation, “Words of Life,” because this text describes God every bit as much as it describes the core attribute of God, for St. John names God love. If God is the source of life, then life itself is an expression of the love that is God. 

But it is Valentines Day, so we will stick with love. 

As St. Paul tries to explain to the Corinthians the foundation of any community of Jesus, he winds up, nearly exasperated, with these paragraphs. The Corinthians, bless their hearts, had a terrible struggle existing as a community of Jesus because they had a terrible time understanding what grace does and how it reorients all of life on something other than self-interest. As Paul instructs them, he first has to stamp out all the fires of division within this particular fellowship. The Corinthians divide themselves along economic lines, religious lines, gender lines, age lines, and nearly every other possible line in a city as diverse as Corinth. They cannot seem to grasp that in Christ, there comes an inherent unity—a oneness—through the grace of Christ. In an awful reinterpretation of the Lord’s Supper, some gather to feast noisily, while others go hungry. So, Paul finally decides to spell it out, line by line, word by word—this is what love looks like.

Let’s begin with a simple observation—we might as well live in Corinth.

Seemingly, never before have we managed to so deliberately and definitively divide ourselves up. Partisanship no longer is a sports analogy about pep groups supporting a team, but now pretty well describes most arenas of life. Our politics are partisan with absolutely no willingness to speak across the aisle. To meet a political opponent is to meet someone to immediately demonize. Our economics are partisan. There is a widening gap between the top 1% of our economy and the rest, and an especially widening separation from the lower half. That breeds fear—raw, untamed fear—that leads to the demonization of whatever scapegoats those who would be in power trot across the stage—it’s immigrants, it’s the LGBTQ community, it’s women—they’re too blame, therefore, they’re to be demonized. The world finds itself torn by extremists who demonize everybody, justifying a willingness to blow up a marketplace or school or hospital. 

Actually, Corinth may have been less divided than we are.

Partisanship comes into the church, flowing straight from the world outside. The result is the same as it was in Corinth—the fellowship of Jesus resembles a gathering of gangs. Sometimes among gangs, warfare erupts. When it does, the results are uniformly awful. A church gathering becomes a battleground instead of a meeting to help us determine what we are to do. We call one another names. We declare it impossible to co-exist. We stomp off, taking our congregations with us. We speak horrific slams against people we cannot accept. Yet, we cling to the name of Jesus, somehow believing the Prince of Peace to be every bit as partisan as we are.

So, we really need to reacquaint ourselves with Paul’s definition of love, lifting it from a wedding context back into its original place as a directive for any who would gather in the name of Jesus.

What does Paul tell us?

First, without directly saying so, Paul is actually defining the presence of Jesus. Look at that middle paragraph—there it is—an encapsulation of Jesus in the world. This was the way he met the world. This was the way he interacted with other people. This was the way he redeemed. He was patient. He was kind. He was neither arrogant, nor rude. He did not insist on his own way (ironic, no?). Each marker reveals a deeper comprehension of Jesus’ way. Jesus was love.

Now, look at the lead paragraph and the final paragraph. Here is how to follow Jesus. Begin by noting that no matter how powerful we are, how eloquently we speak, how in tune we are with theology, or how much of scripture we memorize, if it does not result in our being able to love someone, then it is worthless. We are able to love someone as Jesus loved them when we realize we are children in the presence of God. We are the children whom God made. We are the children into whom God breathed life. We will never encounter another person who is not a child of God, breathed life into by God. Never. 

And here comes the hard part—the really hard part…

That means being able to confront your sworn partisan enemy and name them a child of God, breathed life into by God, no matter what perceived obscenities you believe them to think, speak, or do. 

I said it was hard. It is.

Some of us have been badly hurt by a partisan. Some of us have been witness to atrocity firsthand. Some of us have been rejected out of hand because we did not fit someone else’s paradigm of worth, value, or importance. 

Love overcomes.

Love refuses to be beaten down. 

Love chooses to transcend and transform the other through engagement, a willingness to listen, and a willingness to walk with another until there is understanding. Martin Luther King, Jr. was such a person. So, too, is Pope Francis. So was Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, we might well name them modern saints, fearing they existed on a plane we cannot achieve; yet, no, they were every bit as human as we are. They simply allowed love to consume them. Each in their own way looked to Jesus, took him within themselves, and applied him to their own lives. Each confronted partisanship and overwhelmed it, perhaps not permanently, but for a strong enough time to reveal that it was indeed possible to live by love, the love that flows in and through God. 

So, as we ponder our own walk with Jesus as the community of faith, remember well Paul’s instruction. His three paragraphs, the words of love, provide a nice framework by which to test our own walk—how do we stand against this description? how are we doing? where does work need to be done?

The more we are willing to make such an examination, the more able we will be to create a community of love, the true love of God, that can overcome our partisan world, creating a fellowship in which there is a place for every human being at the table.

And in that love, there is life, life that is rich, full, and good.