4th Sunday after Epiphany
In all honesty, I have a little trouble with the text from 1 Corinthians. And I can tell you the reason why. It comes down to one word: Weddings. I can’t tell you how many weddings I’ve done over the past 28 years. Suffice it to say that it’s been a lot. Therefore, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. Suffice it to say that it’s also been a lot. It hasn’t been read at every wedding I’ve ever done. But it has been read at nearly every wedding I’ve ever done. So, I can’t help but wax a bit cynical when I read it. A: because I’ve read it so many times. And B: because I’ve seen how some of those marriages turned out.
Well, I need to get over myself. Because, let’s face it, what Paul writes here is beautiful and profound. In fact, because it’s so often used at weddings, it’s probably one of the most read chapters of literature the world has ever known. Paul goes on at length about love: 1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Paul continues, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love," he says, "never fails."
Paul also includes some other words in this beautiful chapter of poetry. They may not convey the same sense of beauty and wonder as the rest. But they are, in many ways, the foundation upon which all the beauty rests. It's the eleventh verse of 1 Corinthians 13 I'm talking about. “11When 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.”
Love, the kind of love that Paul talks about, the kind of love that Jesus shows us, is very much a grown-up thing. You might be thinking, "Hey wait a minute, didn't Jesus say that we are to be like children?" And, yes, he said that--we are to believe like children; but he didn't say we are to behave like children. There is a difference. And there is a difference between being infatuated with the idea of Jesus and living the love He teaches in the Gospel. That is a grownup matter.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture which says you're only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime. Whoever dies with the most toys, wins. Right? But living for Jesus is supposed to be different. If you’ve ever spent any time around little kids, you know that one of their favorite words is “mine”. For the mature follower of Jesus, however, there is no such thing as mine! There's only what God has shared with us.
“Merciful God, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us – our selves, our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love.” That was one of the offertory prayers in the old green hymnal, the Lutheran Book of Worship. This isn’t a terribly popular idea in America. Even in church, there are some who consider such talk to be wading into dangerous territory. Some people will call start grumbling under their breath about socialism, if you’re not careful. In our culture, your number one job is to look out for number one.
But the life of a follower of Jesus is supposed to be different. The mature follower knows every heartbeat is gift; every connecting synapse is a gift; every breath. The portion of faith we enjoy is a gift; every nickel is a gift. There is nothing we have that is not gift! Because everything is a gift, it could even be considered blasphemous when we assert that something is “mine”. Or at the very least, we sound a little childish. Just think about the church in the book of Acts. They shared what they had and by sharing they distinguished themselves as a different kind of community.
Paul meditates on the idea of love for eight verses. He says, "11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…” (1 Corinthians 13:11) But the beginning of reasoning and understanding comes with listening like a grownup. A grownup love listens. It listens to God, and it listens to the world. It hears what is said and what is not said. It hears with the heart. It hears the Spirit's sighs, too deep for words. Sometimes just listening is the best expression of love.
In my worn-out old confirmation Bible, all of Jesus' words are printed in red. And compared to the words in black, Jesus says quite a bit less than everybody else. Until you get to the final discourse in John, but that’s a whole different ball of wax. It sort of leaves you with the impression that Jesus was so deep he only needed to say a little to teach his listeners. Just drop a few well-chosen, pithy words, nudge a shift in the accepted paradigm and then it's on to the next preaching gig. Or, maybe his few words in comparison to others mean that he was just really good at listening.
Real understanding comes from real listening. And real listening, grownup listening, isn't simply waiting for a chance to speak. Grownup listening takes courage, because we might end up hearing something that challenges us, that forces us to reconsider the choices that we’ve made. If we are defensive in our listening when we should be courageous, we will very likely miss what the Spirit is trying to reveal to us.
"God is love," the Bible tells us; and yet God's first language is silence. And God only sees fit to break that silence with a "still small voice." That means we've got to listen for God and to each other. That's the only way we'll grow in God. I know this is difficult stuff because we’re a talkative bunch – all of us – with our breathless busy lives. Despite the Bible's warnings, we still measure success by verbosity and amounts of information. But if a business can be measured by its profit margin, then a grownup Christian life should be measured by how much time is devoted to quiet; by how much time is spent focused on hearing from God and from God's people. Sure, we're getting older, but are we growing up?
Paul says, "I used to think as a child." What are childish thoughts? They tend to be very black and white/right and wrong. And it’s mostly I’m right, and you’re wrong. That hasn’t changed much. Most of us still think we’re always right. What a childish thought! Preachers are not always right. Presidents are not always right. Economic policies are not always right. Husbands are not always right, and wives are not always right either! It takes a real grownup to admit that he or she is wrong. And it takes a real grownup to hear an apology and move on.
It takes some real growing up to apply the words of our faith, "If someone sins against you, go to that person directly." Notice, it doesn't say send a terse email and then write the person off. It’s childish not to use your voice and speak words of reconciliation to a brother or sister when something weighs upon you. And it's childish to brood and pout, waiting around for people to notice what you are not grown up enough to say! In another love letter to a church Paul says that “11 The gifts [the Lord] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13) As we live and learn from Jesus our childishness is being replaced with the image of Christ, through the Holy Spirit. The point, of course, is as we "grow up in the full stature of Christ," Christ's ministry in the world is multiplied. And as the world sees "that we are no longer like children tossed to and fro," by this world, the world will want to know how we've grown.
Our lives, our marriages, our work, our church, our world cannot afford for us to be anything less than Christian grownups for one day more. The Church in general, including our congregation has been challenged and tested over the past two years. Some churches will not recover. And those that remain will have been deeply changed by the challenges and testing that we’ve faced. And the ultimate question is: "What do we believe, in the face of a changing world?"
Part of the solution is growing up. Yes, we have been challenged and tested. But my sense is that we have also grown, as a result. Not in numbers, but in the depth of our faith and our devotion to Jesus. In a word, maturity. And that leaves us well-situated to meet the challenges that are now before us. We have learned and are continuing to learn how to do church in a new way. We now find ourselves in the process of transitioning to Calvary 2.0!
God’s love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Even COVID. God’s love has sustained and strengthened us over the past two years. And God’s love will lead us into a new future, empowering us to better embody the love of Jesus. Bringing it to bear upon the needs of the world around us. Enabling us to unequivocally declare God’s love in what we say and do. AMEN