Sermon: May 17, 2020; Sixth Sunday of Easter
1Corinthians 13
Mark 12.28-31
1Corinthians 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.
Mark 12.28-31
28One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" 29Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' 31The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you and peace, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray . . .Loving Lord, you have showered your world with faith, hope, and love. Help us to be faithful to you, to offer hope to those in need, and to love all your children. Amen.
I have done quite a number of weddings over the fifteen years I have been a pastor. And if there was such a thing as compiling a ‘greatest hits list’ of the top -most- requested readings of scripture for a wedding, 1Corinthians 13 would be right near the top of that list.
I get it, there are at least a few reasons I can see for this writing of Paul being so important. First, there is the sheer beauty of this chapter. There is a flow to Paul’s poetry. There is a wondrous rhythm and cadence:
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.
And then, of course, there’s all this stuff about love; which, for a wedding, makes a whole lot of sense. After all, isn’t that what a wedding, a marriage is about, love? And wow, have I been blessed to witness the love couples have for each other on their wedding day, and the love that moves and continues into their lives joined together. I have seen grooms, big burly dudes, reduced to puddles of goo as they gaze into their soon-to-be spouse’s eyes and profess their love to them. There is a power to this expressed love that changes people.
And then, I sometimes think that people look to this bit of scripture as a recipe for whipping up a good marriage:
“Ok, we love each other; so; if we are patient and kind and not envious or boastful, never rude, never insisting on our own way, we should be good to go.”
These attributes of love expressed by Paul are taken as rules, commandments to be obeyed and followed.
I have been to weddings and heard the pastor in their sermon take and use this text in this manner. This is a good thing, but what happens when we can’t always be patient and kind and never rude, even with the people we love?
And then there is the word, “love,” itself. In the English language, we have one word, love. In the biblical Greek, the language Paul uses, and the language in which all of the New Testament is written, there are three different words and meanings for love. The one used in this text, and the one used in the gospel from Mark, is the word; ‘agape’.
Sometimes we tend to equate ‘like’ with ‘love.’ You know, I really ‘love’ a great cheeseburger,’ when what we actually mean is ‘I really like a great cheeseburger.’ The word, ‘agape’ is about as far removed from that understanding as it can be. ‘Agape’ love is a love that is a sacrificial love, an all-out-giving-everything-you- have love, a love completely devoid of any kind of self-serving, ‘what’s in it for me?’ understanding. It is the kind of love John uses about God in the John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
And it is the love Jesus talks about in our gospel for today:
"The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' 31The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
Ok, so Jesus tells us that we are to love God; with an all-in nothing held back unselfish love. And that is exactly the same love with are to share with our neighbors. Yikes, all of a sudden, this kind of love seems hard to live by, doesn’t it?
As Christians, it seems to me, we are called to limit our freedoms for the sake of others. We are called to live and love in a way that benefits our neighbors. Martin Luther wrote in the Large Catechism that the commandment You shall not kill, “is violated not only when we do evil, but also when we have the opportunity to do good to our neighbors and to prevent, protect, and save them from suffering bodily harm or injury, but fail to do so.”[1]
Dear friends, I am really worried that we are losing sight of this commandment to love. We have done a good job during this pandemic; taking care of each other, doing what we can to keep our loved-ones safe, sacrificing a lot to care for our neighbors. But I hear so much talk about rights;
“I have the right, my rights are being tread upon,” for example. And I fear we are losing sight of what is right in the sight of God; that what is right is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind,
and that we should be loving our neighbors in exactly the same way.
I know that I can be so self-focused myself. I try to look out for others, loving them the way Jesus calls us to love; but it is so hard. Ever feel this way? Well, I think, I know, that when we are honest with ourselves, we are all in this same boat. We can’t help it; we are sinners, we are human, we definitely are not Jesus. But there is some good news for us.
Let’s go back to the reading from 1Corinthians. What if we look at all these attributes of what love, what agape love is, to talk about the love of God shown in Jesus?
In spite of how much we mess up, how much we sin and fall short,
God’s faith in what God has made, including you and me is enough to move mountains! In God’s love we are not nothing, we are beloved!
God’s love for you and me and my neighbor, even those I don’t necessarily like, led to Jesus giving everything he had for us, being handed over to die on a cross .
God’s love shown in Jesus is patient, always kind, rejoicing in the truth,
bearing all things, enduring everything for us, believing in you and me.
And most importantly, God’s love never, never, never, never ends!
[1] Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 412.