Love, Love, Love

Text: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

This passage is one of the best known in the Bible, at least by folks who are at least nominally Christian and looking for something to read at their weddings. Over the years I have had at least a couple of couples who have asked about “that scripture that’s all about love - I love that.”

The thoughts expressed by the apostle Paul in this letter can stand on their own, but I think it is important for us to look at why Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth.

Paul mentions speaking in the tongues of men and angels. This is called speaking in tongues - ecstatic utterances in other languages that we associate with Pentecostal Christians. Appears the Corinthians had decided this was a very important spiritual gift. Paul saw this as a problem.

So he starts by saying you can be totally immersed in the Spirit, ecstatically speaking in human and heavenly languages, but if you don’t have love first, you might as well just be making noise.

Or you can know everything there is to know about God and the mysteries of religion, be able to see the future, or even have enough faith to move a mountain, but if you don’t have love, you’re nothing.

Or you can sacrifice everything for others, giving away everything you own, even being willing to give up your life, and if you don’t have love there’s just no point.

Paul isn’t talking about the emotional kind of love between two people that are dating, the huggy, kissy kind of love.

He’s talking about a deeper, richer form of love - the kind that reflects the love God has for us.

Wanting to be clear, Paul defines it for the Corinthians. And my guess is that he goes into a lot of characteristics because the Corinthians were not displaying this kind of love to each other.

So Paul tells them love is patient and kind, not arrogant or boastful, not rude or envious. It doesn’t insist on its own way, its not irritable or resentful.

What’s funny as I look at my own life, and maybe this applies to you as well, the people I supposedly love the most, are the very people I’m least patient with or kind to. They’re the one ones I get irritated or resentful at the easiest, and as far as insisting on my own way, well, I’m not even going to go there.

This is hard stuff!

What else does Paul say about love?

Well, it doesn’t gossip, or give its attention to people who are doing the wrong things - in other words, it doesn’t read much of the newspaper. But it’s happy when good things get done.

And it is strong enough to last through the worst that the world has to throw at it. It doesn’t cut and run because things aren’t going well, but puts up with the worst, believes in the good, hopes eternally for the future, and endures everything.

Love, it would seem Paul is saying, is the greatest force in the universe. Forget the atom bomb, forget gravity or the explosion of a supernova. Forget all of that, it’s love that changes everything.

But this isn’t the only scripture about love.

The most quoted verse in scripture, so well known that all you have to do is put John 3:16 on a billboard and people all over the country can quote the verse - For God so loved the world...

Jesus said that the greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. Jesus said that the world would know who his disciples were because they loved each other.

The greatest sin of Christianity is that through the ages we have continually, and repeatedly forgotten that love is at the core of the gospel message.

Some Christians, have used scripture to abuse people in the margins of society. They’ve used doctrines to belittle and exclude those who’ve differed. They’ve used manmade and natural disasters as a lead in to increasing their viewers and contributions.

We saw it with September 11th, we saw it with Katrina, and we heard it again with the earthquake in Haiti.

Now you and I know that they don’t speak for all Christians. We know, and we stand for, a different view of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

Paul says that we can have the deepest faith, believe with complete certainty some set of doctrines. And we can have the greatest hope, for our salvation and the promise of eternal life.

But that is as nothing compared to the power and the necessity of love.

Sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Sounds dated and simple and all touchy-feely.

Easy to conceive and difficult to live out. Easy to forget in the everyday stuff of life.

But it is life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Reading on: Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Love - it is all we need.

-Rev. Roger Osgood