Love, agape, the love of Christ, is the only way to live, the only way God will heal all things, and the one thing that makes your gifts healing and blessing to the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lectionary 4 C
Texts: 1 Corinthians (12:31), 13:1-13 (adding in that extra verse)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Early in my ministry I got knocked back by a seminary professor.

Ordained for about three years, I had a half hour conversation with a professor with decades of experience, not from my seminary. We talked about Christian ethics, and I shared my growing conviction that the dominant New Testament ethic, from Jesus to the letters, was love of God and love of neighbor.

This professor said I was too simplistic, that I hadn’t factored in all the other ethical considerations to really understand what I was talking about. And, he said, love isn’t enough of an answer. You’ll have to define what love is, he said, and that’s where all the disagreement happens.

Now, I hadn’t yet connected all the dots of my thesis, and I was pretty wet behind the ears. So I didn’t have this snappy comeback: “Well, Paul seems to have pretty clearly defined love in 1 Corinthians 13.” So the professor went on his way having properly put the naïve pastor in his place.

25 years later, I still hold the same conviction, only much more deeply and with far greater certainty. It’s simply too clear in Scripture. And today we hear Paul’s magnificent proclamation of love, agape, that centers it all, the wisdom he gave his fractured church at Corinth.

It’s true, saying love of God and love of neighbor is the heart of Christian ethics might be simple. But the last thing you can say about Christian love is that it’s easy.

You want to know what is easy? Do what you normally do.

If you want me to get angry, I can do that right now. I can be rude without thinking, arrogant without noticing. It comes as naturally as breathing.

Insisting on my own way? Easy as anything. I expect many here are the same. There’s nothing easier than being irritated at someone who bothers us, or resenting other people, nothing easier than losing control and being unkind.

Now, I’ve met people who seem to have Paul’s Christian love genetically written into them. They appear to be naturally kind, gracious, not boastful or arrogant or rude. Maybe they’ve been working on it and it was hard for them, too. But for most of us, that’s not our natural tendency.

Paul writes to a faith community that’s the opposite of this chapter. They’re divided and fighting, and it’s easy for them. So Paul tells them of this most important gift of the Holy Spirit. “Strive for the greater gifts,” he says. “And let me show you this still more excellent way.”

Paul’s argument has three parts. The first is simple: everything you value in yourself has no value if you don’t have love.

It’s an eye-opening argument. He’s just spent a lot of ink talking about the many and various gifts of the Spirit, how each member’s gifts are different and important to the body of Christ. Paul is our greatest proclaimer and describer of the gifts the Holy Spirit pours out on the Church and on individuals.

But now he says: none of these gifts have any worth if they aren’t accompanied by love. Without love, there’s no point to anything you do as Christ. It doesn’t matter how well you speak (he says to preachers like me), if you don’t have love, you’re just noise. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if you don’t also love, it’s worthless. A prophetic voice in a world of injustice means nothing without love. And even faith. Remember how Jesus said just a tiny bit of faith could move mountains? Paul says, even if you have such faith and move those mountains, if you don’t love, who cares?

All the things we most value about ourselves, gifts of God, things that can make a huge difference in the world for God, if we have no love wrapped around them, flowing out of us, we might as well be a lump of rock.

Ah, but – our professor complains – love is too simplistic a term. What do you mean by it? I’m glad you asked, Paul says. Let me tell you part two.

“This is what I mean by love,” he says.

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious, love isn’t boastful. Love is not arrogant, love isn’t rude. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. Love isn’t irritable; love isn’t resentful. Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing – even in our enemies – but love rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, love endures all things. Love never ends.

Oof. There are literally no loopholes here. No cracks where you or I can sneak out of this, no places to hide. Paul is painfully clear. If you aren’t being kind, you don’t have love, and anything you’re doing means nothing. If you insist on being arrogant or rude, you don’t have love, and there’s no point to anything you’re saying. If you’re happy when someone messes up, if you’re envious or resentful, you don’t have love, and anything else you’re up to has no worth.

These are some of the hardest words in Scripture. Behaviors we claim are “just part of who I am” are signs that we are not Christ, because we are not love. Excuses we make for such behaviors carry no weight, because Paul doesn’t give the option of being impatient in certain circumstances, or insisting on your own way on some special occasions. There is only love, Paul says, love we have seen and known already in Christ. Anything else, you’re just wasting your breath, taking up space, making noise.

But hear Paul’s third part before you despair.

Paul says we only see dimly now, have imperfect knowledge. But that will change.

All those things that mean nothing without love don’t last into the next life. But love such as Christ has, love like this, never ends.

So you don’t stay in dimness of sight, lack of knowledge. You are being changed by the Spirit into a new creation in Christ. Day by day you will see love more clearly, live love more deeply. It will become a part of you and transform those parts that are not of Christ. At some point it will become like second nature to you.

It’s like growing up, Paul says. You mature from childish ways, you become an adult. The Spirit is likewise growing you into maturity of love, until you look like chapter 13, like Christ.

And when you move through death into the life to come – something Paul will proclaim in great detail in chapter 15, which we’ll hear these next few weeks – when that happens, your dim sight will turn to clarity of vision. Your imperfect knowledge will be complete.

But you know what will still be there? The Christ-love that has matured in you. That love – for God and neighbor, for the creation, for all things – all the growing into Christ you’ve done here, when you are raised into eternal life through Christ’s resurrection, that love comes with you.

Love’s not only the greatest gift the Spirit gives. It’s the gift that never goes away.

Love isn’t easy at all. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But it’s the way god will heal all things.

Consider a world filled with creatures who are kind, humble, patient, generous, sharers of joy, where anger and rudeness and arrogance and irritation aren’t known. Can you imagine living in such a world? God can.

So strive for this greatest of all spiritual gifts, Paul says. “Strive” carries with it the word “zeal,” so Paul’s saying two things. Zealously pray for the Holy Spirit to give you this gift, transform your heart and your life. Put all your prayer into asking for this gift. But also be zealous in your actions, your thoughts, your decisions, your life, zealous to live this kind of love.

Then all the many gifts of the Spirit that we see here, your gifts, my gifts, that work for the common good together, then they also mean something. Covered by such love, shaped by such love, your gifts now become part of God’s blessing of this creation. As God always intended.

This is the more excellent way, Paul says. Will it be yours?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Paul and Jesus declare to be reality what we do not yet see: they invite you to be what you are, and you will see astonishing things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lectionary 3 C
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

There’s something troubling about what we hear from Paul and Jesus today.

Paul boldly tells his Corinthian church that they are the body of Christ, they are one in the Holy Spirit. Everyone matters, no matter how small or great. Everyone’s gifts are needed. This is reality, Paul says.

Jesus declares that the wonderful things he’s anointed by the Holy Spirit to do are already done: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he says.

But it’s hard to see a lot of evidence of the unified body of Christ or the healing of all things no matter what Paul and Jesus say.

This is a good, healthy community here. But none of us would say it’s perfect.

People are here, part of Mount Olive, because this place has blessed them, this community of faith has been a gift. Each of us have different reasons that draw us here; some become members, some don’t, but we all journey together, each with different experiences of this community. Most days, on our good days, we find this is a wonderful, supportive body of Christ. On those days it’s easy to tell others how much we love these people with whom we worship and serve.

But not all our days are good days. Some days we’re disappointed by others in this community. Some days we feel alone, even unsupported. Some days we don’t like decisions that are made. Some days someone says something that offends us. And each of us likely has things we don’t share with others here, things we could use support with, because we don’t fully trust that someone, or this community, will have our back.

Paul’s vision is beautiful. But we know that it doesn’t always happen, not even here. People can fall through gaps. And beyond just this community, the Church in the world’s got even more problems.

So: is Paul declaring what our aspiration should be? He seems to be doing something else. He seems to be saying “This body, where each member is valued and loved, where all are supported and cared for, this is what you are.” Not what you should be, or could be.

It’s even clearer with Jesus today.

We believe he was anointed and filled by the Holy Spirit to do these things: proclaim release to captives, good news to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, sight to those who cannot see. We claim that from Pentecost to today, the Holy Spirit anoints us, fills us, to do the very same things.

But even though Jesus says “today this has been fulfilled in your hearing,” there are still lots of people captive literally and figuratively, in prison, trapped in systems, caught up in their own sinful, destructive patterns. There are still millions who are poor who hear no good news. Oppression still crushes millions in our own country and around the world.

So: How can Jesus say this has been fulfilled? It can feel dishonest to proclaim in this space all these wonderful things Scripture says God is doing and has done in the world in Christ and through us, and not admit that many days it’s almost impossible to see evidence of this.

Here’s what you need to remember: Jesus and Paul aren’t fools. They see what we see.

If the Corinthian church was actually living as the body of Christ, where each felt welcomed and part of the mission, where all were loved and supported, Paul wouldn’t have to write these words. In fact, the church at Corinth had all sorts of divisions and fractures. The letters to Corinth, more than any Paul wrote, reveal the often ugly realities a Christian community can experience. This was a community divided between wealthy and not wealthy, between people of different ideologies, between people who saw their relationship to other religions and practices of their neighbors very differently, between people who had radically different expectations of Christian behavior.

Today we see that exclusion from the body went two directions. Some – like Paul’s image of the foot and the ear –self-excluded, feeling they themselves and their gifts weren’t worthy of being in this body of Christ. And some – like Paul’s image of the eye and the head – excluded others, saying some folks just weren’t good or valuable enough to count. As beautiful as Paul’s image of the body of Christ is, created in baptism by the Holy Spirit, clearly the Corinthian church didn’t look like that.

And Jesus obviously understood that ending oppression and poverty and captivity and bringing healing to the world didn’t just happen by his sermon that day. His ministry that followed embodied what the Spirit filled and anointed him to do. It also showed how much needed to be done.

But Jesus and Paul see something deeper than what seems the obvious reality.

Paul knew the Corinthians were divided and full of infighting. But he says, “That’s not who you are. You are one body, baptized into Christ, made one in the Holy Spirit. This is your truth: everyone belongs, whether they appear to be weak or strong, gifted or not. Everyone is supported and loved, whether they suffer or rejoice. And everyone has different gifts to serve God, and each are important.” Jesus says the same, in the face of a world that’s still in pain: “today this is fulfilled.”

They believe this reality they describe is, in fact, already upon us. Maybe we don’t see it in the Church here and across the world all the time, or in the brokenness and pain of the world. But the body of Christ exists, is real, is made by the Holy Spirit, no matter what we see or do. God’s healing of all things has come in Christ and continues in you and me, because the Holy Spirit is making this happen.

Instead of commanding us to do something, Jesus and Paul speak in the indicative mood: “This is what you are. This is what God is doing.” So, they say, “Be who you are. Be a part of what God is doing.”

Because that’s how these realities become visible.

If you live in this community expecting the Spirit to make us one body, where all are valued, welcomed, loved, and supported, where many gifts of differing kinds are evident, you will see that is, in fact, our truth. Flaws and cracks will still be there, but they are part of the growing and knitting the Spirit is doing. They are mended through grace and forgiveness as you live in this body of Christ expecting to see what Paul says already exists. And astonishingly, this is also true of the whole Church in the world, not just here.

And if you live believing that God in Christ has already fulfilled the promise to come and end oppression, captivity, poverty, and all the suffering of this world, you will see over and over that this, in fact, is happening. Your eyes – blessed by the Spirit – will see the healing strands of grace and hope. The tiny growths of green life and joy that cannot be stopped. As you participate in these acts of healing as Christ yourself, you will see the Spirit making an impact through your hands and your voice and your heart.

Because the Spirit of God is upon you. And the Holy Spirit has filled you, anointed you, to be these amazing things we heard today.

To be the body of Christ – and not just in this congregation but across the Church – one in the Spirit, not divided. And to be the healing grace of the Triune God working in you as Christ in the world.

Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. It’s your truth. It’s what you are.

So, be that. Trust the Spirit is moving in you and in the Church, and your eyes will be opened to the deep reality behind what you normally see. You will see God’s reality, and live in it. Until the whole creation sees for itself and rejoices.

In the name of Jesus. Amen