Week 3: The discipline of love

“The Greatest of These”

Vicar Jessica Christy
Texts: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; John 15:12-17

The church in Corinth was barely formed when things started to fall apart. Economic divisions had appeared in the community. People were anxiously squabbling over which spiritual gifts were the best. There were fights about how worship should be conducted. All around, people were jostling for power and prominence. And so Paul writes to them to remind them what it means to be in community. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he addresses some of their concerns about proper worship, and tries to show them the way forward in their disputes – but here, he gets to the heart of the matter. The problem isn’t that the Corinthians haven’t figured out the proper doctrine; it’s that they don’t know how to live together. They don’t seem to want to live together. They’re so concerned about who’s in the right, who’s in control, that they’ve completely lost sight of why they came together in the first place. And so Paul tells them about love.

This text is famous as a favorite for weddings, and of course it’s beautiful for that purpose, but when Paul writes, he doesn’t have a relationship between two people in mind. He’s talking about love in a community, the love that knits together the body of Christ. This love is a commitment to one another as we try to show the world what the kingdom of God looks like. Even if we disagree with each other, even if we’re in community with people who we don’t naturally like, we’re called to care for one another, and to lift up each other’s needs above our own. We often use the phrase “sacrificial love” to describe how we try to practice love in the church. Our ethics and our theology lift it up as the kind of love that Christ shows us, love that gives of itself for the good of others. It’s good and beautiful teaching – but Paul here tells us that those words, “sacrificial love,” are redundant. He writes that love is sacrifice. It’s that which acts for the sake of others. It does not insist on getting its own way, but rather lowers itself for the sake of treating others with patience and kindness. We say “sacrificial love” because we need the reminder that that’s what real love looks like, but you can’t have love without self-giving. That’s what the Corinthians had forgotten. The Corinthian church was in turmoil because its members were worried about asserting their status relative to each other. They wanted to know who was coming out on top in all their debates – so Paul tells them that, if you love someone, you have to be willing to let that person take the win. You have to let go of your desire to be proven right or get your way. The very notions of winning and losing are foreign to love, because it doesn’t keep score. There is no competition or calculation, only care.

This is so hard to do. It takes discipline, practice. We are social creatures, trained to be attentive to where we stand in relation to others. We hunger for victories and are deeply cut by defeat or insult. We are satisfied when we can assert our will, and we begrudge those who have wronged us. We all experience this in different ways and about different things, but all of us know what it’s like to insist on our own way over others, and to become resentful when we can’t have it. But love means learning to let that go. It means learning to lose, at least by the standards of our world. But in that loss, we discover something far greater and far more joyful than anything our earthly striving could give us. We find each other. We learn what it is to know each other, and to be known. When we’re fixated on who wins and who loses, we cut ourselves off from each other. We can’t be in community when we treat each other as obstacles to be overcome. But when we let that go, when we stop keeping score, we break free of our self-imposed isolation and discover what it means to be one in Christ.

For this is how Christ led his disciples. He taught them that the greatest among them was not the one who could win the most converts or collect the most offerings or perform the greatest miracles. It wasn’t the one who knew the most about scripture or who could pray the most fervently. He taught them that the greatest thing is love, and that the greatest love is in laying down your life for others. He shows us this on the Cross, but martyrdom isn’t the only way that we can die for the sake of others. We follow Christ when we die to our arrogance, to our need to control, to our need to be right. We follow the commandment to love when we let go of our grudges, or our cliquishness, or our hierarchies and dare to simply call each other “friend.” We die to ourselves when we learn to live for each other. When we do this, not only do we follow Christ, but we become the body of Christ, living together in love.

This is the entire reason that we are here on this earth. As Paul reminds us, everything that we value is meaningless unless it is done in love. Deeds that are done without love, even if they look good on the outside, are as empty. The wisest and most beautiful words are, without love, as meaningless as a clanging cymbal. Whatever accomplishments we achieve, whatever virtues we foster, they are nothing on their own, because without love, our actions are about ourselves and our status. Even things like prophecy and faith can be hollowed out until they are nothing more than a way to score points over each other. Paul says that a person could give away all their possessions, even their life, and it would mean nothing if it were done for acclaim instead of done for love. Love is the only thing that is good in itself. It’s what gives all other things meaning.

Love is also the only thing that endures. As Paul tells us, all other things will pass away when they become complete in God. Prophecy, knowledge, hope – they are tools for seeking God in the here and now, but there will be no need for such spiritual gifts when we see God face to face. We will not need to place our hope in God when we know God fully. But love, love is forever. It will not be completed when we are made one with God – it will only be made more perfect. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” Knowledge and prophecies and tongues are how we peer through that dark mirror, but love is the image shining through on the other side. It is the very essence of God, which God longs for us to know. God who knows us fully wants us to fully know love, here and now. That means learning to lose. It means learning to let go of the things that keep us apart. It means learning to die. But in that death is where we find the abundant and everlasting life that God has planned for us. It’s where we find ourselves, it’s where we find each other, and it’s where we find Christ.

Amen.

Week 3: The discipline of emptying

“Have the Same Mind and Love”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Philippians 2:1-8; Mark 8:31-37

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

Emptying, self-giving love is God’s blueprint for how the universe works.

Here’s how we know this: in the beginning, God made room within God’s own self for the creation. God risked losing everything by putting human beings in the creation who could disobey, destroy, reject. God’s emptying love is the basis for creation.

But there’s more. John says that Jesus is God’s eternal Logos, that is, Word of God, present at creation, one with God, and now in human flesh. But Logos is more than Word. It’s Pattern, Blueprint, Logic. God’s pattern, God’s logic, God’s blueprint is now knowable, seeable, in Jesus.

So Jesus, in teaching, healing, welcoming, loving, suffering, and dying, reveals the shape of God’s pattern. In Jesus, love is always giving up oneself for the other, emptying, and finding filling on the other side. That is, death and resurrection.

So if Jesus is God’s Blueprint in the flesh, and that’s what Jesus revealed, then self-giving love is the blueprint for how the universe is supposed to work. It’s the pattern of God and the pattern of creation. Dying to live. Losing to win. Letting go to receive all things.

We’ve already seen this in the creation. The whole universe thrives and grows on dying and rising.

Stars collapse and die, and new planets and galaxies are born. Plants die and decay, feeding the earth. Seeds effectively die, only to be born into new life. Animals die, giving life to other animals and plants.

Even our bodies follow this pattern. Except for our brain cells, which last our lifetime and aren’t replaced when they die, every other cell in our bodies has a life span. Skin cells live for about two weeks, die, and are replaced by new ones. Colon cells last about four days. We’re constantly dying and living. If cells don’t do this, don’t die to provide new life, we call that cancer. They persist and grow and take over the rest of the body. They don’t follow God’s blueprint for life.

If this is God’s blueprint for the creation, we need to re-think death and loss.

We’re used to seeing dying as the enemy, to resist losing. We live competitively, see winning and success and strength and power as the goals of life.

But if that’s just cancer in human-sized form – and to judge by the shape the world is in right now, that’s a good analogy – then to find life we need to embrace God’s way, the other way.

God’s design is: life is found in dying, gain is found in letting go, winning is found in losing. This provides life to the whole universe. Since this is radically different from the world’s view, if we’re going to see differently, live differently, we’ll need help. And that’s what God gives us. God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint, Jesus, took on flesh, to call us back to God’s design that gives us life.

Be of the same mind, having the same love, as Christ Jesus has, Paul says.

Take up your cross and follow me, Jesus says.

This is the whole point of Jesus’ coming, to re-teach us the meaning of life. To call us back to the way of divine Love, the pattern of all things. The way humans are living and doing things leads to destruction and pollution and brokenness, without life or love or hope. But God’s way, the universe’s pattern, is a path that gives life and hope and healing. Jesus’ emptying his divine glory and facing the cross is our model for our lives. Jesus’ resurrection proves that this path leads to life.

So follow my cross path, Jesus says. It’s what you were designed to be. That’s the discipline of following me, he says, the discipline of emptying. Be ready to lose everything. If you cling to all you think you need, you’ll really die. You’ll miss the joy and hope of abundant life. When you let go, lose, yes, it will feel like dying. But you’ll find life and wholeness and healing.

Read all the teachings of Jesus. This is where they lead.

So Paul says, be of the same mind, have the same love as Christ Jesus. That’s the path to life.

This letting go, this emptying, looks different for each of us.

Often the Church describes this in terms of pride and humility: let go of your pride and find the humility of Christ. But that’s only a problem if pride is what you’re clinging to, what fills your life and your heart. Since powerful men with pride issues have controlled much of the theology of the Church in the West for centuries, it’s little surprise that’s the common take on emptying. But everyone has different things to let go of, different things to die to.

If you’re filled with self-doubt and anxiety about your value, that’s what you need to let go of to walk this path. If you’re filled with fear and dread about the future, about your life, that’s what you need to let go of. If you’re obsessed with security and making yourself or your loved ones safe, or if you’re centered on doing things your way, trying to control your life and others, those things are what need emptying.

There’s no room for God’s life to fill us if we’re filled with something else.

God wants this for us because God wants us to find the fullness of life.

When we share Christ’s mind and love, learn what crosses we each are taking up, what emptying of ourselves we each are doing, when we start living as we were designed to live, we find what Jesus calls abundant life. Jesus says today that those who lose their life for his sake, and for the sake of the Good News, will heal their life. Will find what it is to be truly alive.

When we let go of all that fills us but doesn’t satisfy us, we find we’re able to be filled with God. God’s life now has room to come into every corner of our hearts, every room of our soul. Luther called this letting the old self die every day and asking God to raise the new self. It sounds contradictory, but as we’ve seen, it’s the pattern of the universe. The more we empty ourselves the more we are filled with God’s love and peace.

It’s true of our relationships with each other, too. Love isn’t love if we control it, if we fill our hearts with fears and anxieties and greed and control and gain. There’s no room in there for anyone or anything else. Love happens when we let go of what we cling to and make room for the other. When we lose. Become vulnerable, able to be wounded. Empty ourselves. This is how “love your neighbor as you love yourself” is really lived out.

It’s hard to really hear Jesus’ words today.

To dwell on what he means by us losing our lives to find them. To contemplate what it would be like to have the same mind and the same love as Christ.

But it isn’t required that we understand this all at once. In the living, the letting go, the losing, the vulnerability, that’s how we learn more and more what Jesus is about. How we find our true divine design. As we journey together, we help each other discover our own particular baggage, and help each other find the courage to let it go.

Eventually, we begin to know in our bones, in our hearts, that this is life for us. Life like God really meant us to live, life we see so clearly in Christ’s resurrection, life that really can heal this world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen