All You Need Is Love
Jan. 31, 2010
1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
How many times do we hear Paul’s words from the Corinthian correspondence read at weddings? His riff on love is probably the most common scripture used in nominally Christian weddings, and it probably gets read at services of other faiths and no faith at all.
That’s understandable: Paul could write a bit and these famous words about love are beautiful and powerful.
But I’m willing to bet that no wedding service has ever paired Paul’s words in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians with the strange little story from Luke’s gospel.
After all, nobody wants to leave a wedding thinking about an angry mob trying to toss someone off a cliff – no matter what the circumstances of the wedding.
So why bring them together now? What word from God can this odd pairing of ancient texts have for us today? On a joyous day when we welcome new members to this community? Does anybody want to leave this service thinking about an angry mob and a cliff? Is that what it means to join the church?
Perhaps, to begin, we ought to own up to two truths: First, we’re not Jesus, and, second, Paul is not talking about us at all.
Paul’s words on love were never meant for weddings because they do not describe erotic love nor, to push the point, human love at all. Paul is talking primarily about God’s capacity to love, and how that love for creation can shine through human interaction and give meaning and weight and purpose to our actions.
“If I speak in tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understanding and knowledge and faith but do not have love I am nothing. If I give everything away and practice great piety but do not have love I gain nothing.”
In other words, I can lead a conventionally moral and ethical life but be nothing save a lot of noise if I do not ground that life in God’s love.
Why?
Because that love – the love of which Paul speaks – is steadfast and unfailing. It is the foundation upon which we build lives that matter, it is the faith that sustains us and the hope that we cling to when those lives are shattered by circumstance.
That foundation, that faith, that hope, guides Jesus journey, and it can guide ours as well.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus preaches a prophetic word and the crowd wants to throw him off a cliff.
Why?
When he speaks of Elijah and Elisha, Jesus tells the stories of a widow and a foreign military officer, and he suggests to the hometown audiences that God’s love is not their private property. Indeed, Jesus tells them that God loves other tribes who are not their kin at all. According to the generally accepted moral codes, it was perfectly acceptable to dismiss the needs of other tribes altogether because their concerns were not of vital nation interest – to employ a phrase that I hope suggests clearly that we are not that different from Jesus’ first audience.
This initial public pronouncement prefigures the entire trajectory of Jesus’ ministry. He will reach out to those on and beyond the margins of polite society, he will touch the untouchable, he will break bread with the undesirable, he will embody the love of God for the ones most hated or feared by the conventionally moral and acceptable citizenry of his home town. Is it any wonder when they try to toss him off a cliff?
Still, I confess that I’ve always found this story difficult to fathom. Why would merely demonstrating that God has always had concern for ones unlike you lead you to violence?
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Why should it matter to say that the God you worship loves someone else, too?
Of course, the “someone else” that Jesus indicates is, in fact, a despised outsider; and the declaration that God loves this despised other carries with it also the conviction that now we must walk through the broken barriers and reach out to the despised other ourselves.
I did gain a small bit of personal insight into this dynamic about a decade ago when I preached, on the Sunday of the Martin Luther King holiday, a sermon suggesting that Dr. King would include “straight and gay” in his litany of those who would join to sing their liberation along with “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” and that same-sex marriage was a civil right worthy of the concern of the church.
No one threatened to throw me off a cliff, but they did ask me to resign about two weeks later.
And when we announced our same-sex marriage policy at Clarendon about five years ago the stack of hate mail was impressive, as were the calls promising that I was going to hell and it could be sooner than I anticipated.
Why does suggesting that others be regarded as equal to ourselves – no matter how we define otherness – bring out the tribal instinct to mark territory and punish any who would transgress the boundaries?
Moreover, why does this instinct seem all too prevalent among communities of faith, and especially among those who call themselves followers of Jesus?
It’s easy to point out the most egregious examples: the Pat Robertsons declaring that Haitians are being punished for following the wrong God, or the U.S. General who claimed that America would win in Iraq because our God is bigger. It’s more painful to point out the examples that look back at us from the mirror: the times we demonize someone who has the temerity to disagree, or the cynicism that invades our conversation, erodes our faithfulness and blinds us to the gifts of others in our midst.
Jesus’ entire ministry was about boundary breaking love, and if we confess our faith in Jesus and commit to follow in his way we, too, are called, in spite of ourselves, to be ministers of boundary-breaking love. That’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That’s what it means to join his church.
Consider Paul’s audience. He writes his stirring words on love to a congregation clearly divided. He opens the letter with an urgent request:
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
Even among the faithful there are divisions of insiders and outsiders, of Cephas’ people vs. Apollos’ people. In our own time the divisions are just as readily apparent, and it is all too easy to dismiss those who disagree with us, too easy to mistrust and then to abuse them.
Where is love in this?
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels when urging the church to change its ordination standards or its views on marriage, but do not have love for those with whom I disagree, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal or self-righteous gasbag. Quite quickly, the temptation to view myself as Jesus in this story gives way to the truth that I am but another in the crowd wanting to toss my opponents off any convenient cliff.
Play the scenario out in your own situation, your workplace or neighborhood, your family even. When the situation calls for speaking or hearing a difficult truth how do you speak it? How do you receive it? Are you able to speak the truth in love? Do you want to toss the one who speaks the truth out the nearest window?
Obviously Jesus does not back away – ever – in his ministry from speaking a word of faithful, loving agitation. After all, he does call his opponents within the religious establishment a “brood of vipers.” At the same time he weeps for Jerusalem, the seat of religious power, and the city that kills the prophets, and he prays for those who spitefully use and abuse him, even those who hang him on a cross to die.
Clearly, speaking truth to power and speaking the truth in love is a profoundly difficult balancing act, but it is what we are called to do.
One of the reasons that I am passionately committed to the work of Christian Peace Witness is the ethos of love that guides the work of this ecumenical coalition, and why I still believe that CPW’s work is worth my time and yours even in the midst of seemingly endless war. There are clearly policies with which we utterly disagree and policymakers with whom we have profound differences, but we are clear in spirit, in worship and in action that we are rooted and grounded in love. And, we are equally clear that we are not up to that task left to our own devices, our own limited vision and our own constrained capacity for love.
That is equally true for the broader ministry and mission at Clarendon, to which we welcome new members this morning. We can do so with joy because this difficult ministry is not up to us alone.
The good news in all of this lies precisely where we began this morning: in the recognition that the love in which we root and ground our speech and action is not our love but is, rather, the love of God.
The plain and simple truth is this: we are not capable, on our own, of love that is patient, kind, never envious, boastful or arrogant or rude; that does not insist on its own way or become irritable or resentful; that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but in the truth; that bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all thing, and that never ends.
We don’t love like that, even in our best moments. God does, even in our worst moments.
When we stand rooted and grounded in the love that comes from our creator God, then we can begin ministries that break down barriers, that right ancient wrongs, that create bonds of community where once there were walls of mistrust and fear, that speak gospel truth to the powers that be, and speak that truth in love. Amen.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
How many times do we hear Paul’s words from the Corinthian correspondence read at weddings? His riff on love is probably the most common scripture used in nominally Christian weddings, and it probably gets read at services of other faiths and no faith at all.
That’s understandable: Paul could write a bit and these famous words about love are beautiful and powerful.
But I’m willing to bet that no wedding service has ever paired Paul’s words in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians with the strange little story from Luke’s gospel.
After all, nobody wants to leave a wedding thinking about an angry mob trying to toss someone off a cliff – no matter what the circumstances of the wedding.
So why bring them together now? What word from God can this odd pairing of ancient texts have for us today? On a joyous day when we welcome new members to this community? Does anybody want to leave this service thinking about an angry mob and a cliff? Is that what it means to join the church?
Perhaps, to begin, we ought to own up to two truths: First, we’re not Jesus, and, second, Paul is not talking about us at all.
Paul’s words on love were never meant for weddings because they do not describe erotic love nor, to push the point, human love at all. Paul is talking primarily about God’s capacity to love, and how that love for creation can shine through human interaction and give meaning and weight and purpose to our actions.
“If I speak in tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understanding and knowledge and faith but do not have love I am nothing. If I give everything away and practice great piety but do not have love I gain nothing.”
In other words, I can lead a conventionally moral and ethical life but be nothing save a lot of noise if I do not ground that life in God’s love.
Why?
Because that love – the love of which Paul speaks – is steadfast and unfailing. It is the foundation upon which we build lives that matter, it is the faith that sustains us and the hope that we cling to when those lives are shattered by circumstance.
That foundation, that faith, that hope, guides Jesus journey, and it can guide ours as well.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus preaches a prophetic word and the crowd wants to throw him off a cliff.
Why?
When he speaks of Elijah and Elisha, Jesus tells the stories of a widow and a foreign military officer, and he suggests to the hometown audiences that God’s love is not their private property. Indeed, Jesus tells them that God loves other tribes who are not their kin at all. According to the generally accepted moral codes, it was perfectly acceptable to dismiss the needs of other tribes altogether because their concerns were not of vital nation interest – to employ a phrase that I hope suggests clearly that we are not that different from Jesus’ first audience.
This initial public pronouncement prefigures the entire trajectory of Jesus’ ministry. He will reach out to those on and beyond the margins of polite society, he will touch the untouchable, he will break bread with the undesirable, he will embody the love of God for the ones most hated or feared by the conventionally moral and acceptable citizenry of his home town. Is it any wonder when they try to toss him off a cliff?
Still, I confess that I’ve always found this story difficult to fathom. Why would merely demonstrating that God has always had concern for ones unlike you lead you to violence?
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Why should it matter to say that the God you worship loves someone else, too?
Of course, the “someone else” that Jesus indicates is, in fact, a despised outsider; and the declaration that God loves this despised other carries with it also the conviction that now we must walk through the broken barriers and reach out to the despised other ourselves.
I did gain a small bit of personal insight into this dynamic about a decade ago when I preached, on the Sunday of the Martin Luther King holiday, a sermon suggesting that Dr. King would include “straight and gay” in his litany of those who would join to sing their liberation along with “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” and that same-sex marriage was a civil right worthy of the concern of the church.
No one threatened to throw me off a cliff, but they did ask me to resign about two weeks later.
And when we announced our same-sex marriage policy at Clarendon about five years ago the stack of hate mail was impressive, as were the calls promising that I was going to hell and it could be sooner than I anticipated.
Why does suggesting that others be regarded as equal to ourselves – no matter how we define otherness – bring out the tribal instinct to mark territory and punish any who would transgress the boundaries?
Moreover, why does this instinct seem all too prevalent among communities of faith, and especially among those who call themselves followers of Jesus?
It’s easy to point out the most egregious examples: the Pat Robertsons declaring that Haitians are being punished for following the wrong God, or the U.S. General who claimed that America would win in Iraq because our God is bigger. It’s more painful to point out the examples that look back at us from the mirror: the times we demonize someone who has the temerity to disagree, or the cynicism that invades our conversation, erodes our faithfulness and blinds us to the gifts of others in our midst.
Jesus’ entire ministry was about boundary breaking love, and if we confess our faith in Jesus and commit to follow in his way we, too, are called, in spite of ourselves, to be ministers of boundary-breaking love. That’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That’s what it means to join his church.
Consider Paul’s audience. He writes his stirring words on love to a congregation clearly divided. He opens the letter with an urgent request:
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
Even among the faithful there are divisions of insiders and outsiders, of Cephas’ people vs. Apollos’ people. In our own time the divisions are just as readily apparent, and it is all too easy to dismiss those who disagree with us, too easy to mistrust and then to abuse them.
Where is love in this?
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels when urging the church to change its ordination standards or its views on marriage, but do not have love for those with whom I disagree, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal or self-righteous gasbag. Quite quickly, the temptation to view myself as Jesus in this story gives way to the truth that I am but another in the crowd wanting to toss my opponents off any convenient cliff.
Play the scenario out in your own situation, your workplace or neighborhood, your family even. When the situation calls for speaking or hearing a difficult truth how do you speak it? How do you receive it? Are you able to speak the truth in love? Do you want to toss the one who speaks the truth out the nearest window?
Obviously Jesus does not back away – ever – in his ministry from speaking a word of faithful, loving agitation. After all, he does call his opponents within the religious establishment a “brood of vipers.” At the same time he weeps for Jerusalem, the seat of religious power, and the city that kills the prophets, and he prays for those who spitefully use and abuse him, even those who hang him on a cross to die.
Clearly, speaking truth to power and speaking the truth in love is a profoundly difficult balancing act, but it is what we are called to do.
One of the reasons that I am passionately committed to the work of Christian Peace Witness is the ethos of love that guides the work of this ecumenical coalition, and why I still believe that CPW’s work is worth my time and yours even in the midst of seemingly endless war. There are clearly policies with which we utterly disagree and policymakers with whom we have profound differences, but we are clear in spirit, in worship and in action that we are rooted and grounded in love. And, we are equally clear that we are not up to that task left to our own devices, our own limited vision and our own constrained capacity for love.
That is equally true for the broader ministry and mission at Clarendon, to which we welcome new members this morning. We can do so with joy because this difficult ministry is not up to us alone.
The good news in all of this lies precisely where we began this morning: in the recognition that the love in which we root and ground our speech and action is not our love but is, rather, the love of God.
The plain and simple truth is this: we are not capable, on our own, of love that is patient, kind, never envious, boastful or arrogant or rude; that does not insist on its own way or become irritable or resentful; that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but in the truth; that bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all thing, and that never ends.
We don’t love like that, even in our best moments. God does, even in our worst moments.
When we stand rooted and grounded in the love that comes from our creator God, then we can begin ministries that break down barriers, that right ancient wrongs, that create bonds of community where once there were walls of mistrust and fear, that speak gospel truth to the powers that be, and speak that truth in love. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:28 AM
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