The young church at Corinth was a
mess. It was full of conflict. There were lots of quarrels and arguments and
they were divided into camps for a bunch of different reasons.
There
were the rich and the poor in the congregation. And when they came together for
a fellowship meal, they didn't bring their food to the kitchen and then have
the food committee line up all the salads and main course dishes on a table. Uh
uh...When they came together they'd all hold on to their food and when the time
came to eat each went ahead with their own supper. You can imagine picking a
table, putting down your macaroni casserole, jellied salad and trifle for
dessert and then carefully guarding the table until everyone in your family sat
down. Then you'd start right away even if the rest weren't ready yet. If you
were a slave and could bring little or nothing...well that's what you got. You
left hungry.
But
those fellowship meals weren't just pot lucks. The Lords' Supper was part of
those meals. And so Paul thundered in his first letter to them, “Is communion
about humiliating those who have nothing?” (11:22)
The
young congregation also fought about which of their leaders, their pastors they
liked the best. Some people liked Paul a lot and said, “We belong to Paul”.
Others with just as much conviction, argued, “No no not Paul, we belong to
Apollos.” A third group yelled “No way, we belong to Cephas.” (1:11)
“What?”
Paul writes ...”Has Christ been divided? Was I, Paul crucified for you?” Were
you baptised in my name?” (1:13)
And
there was more. They were spiritually divided, jealous of one another's gifts.
(12:27-31)
They tolerated immorality...incest even. (5:1,2) Their worship was chaotic,
their grasp of the gospel was shaky.
Oh
my...There must have been some people in that congregation shaking their heads
and wondering...will this mess ever get any better? Is this how its always
gonna be?
Earl
Weaver, long time manager of baseball's Baltimore Orioles used to ask a similar
question of umpires. When Earl would get upset about a call, he'd run out of
the dugout get right into the face of the ump and scream, “"Are you gonna
get any better, or is this it?"
In
I Corinthians, Paul lays out all the problems almost like a shopping list. He
asks pointed questions and does some solid Christian thinking on each issue.
It's loud and in your face. Then, in the middle of it all, is the love song of chapter 13. Like a beautiful piece of
music making its way through a noisy factory until the machinery falls silent.
Paul's beautiful love poem sings:
Oh
my dear people:
If
I speak like the angels
but
don't love, don't you know
I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
And
if I can preach well and keep everyone spell bound
but
don't love, don't you know
I'm nothing.
If
I give everything I own to the poor
but
I don't love
I've gotten no where.
No
matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do,
I'm
bankrupt without love.
It
seems Paul would agree with the Beatles: all we need is love. But let's just
stop here a moment and put a confession on the table: the word “love” can be a
pretty confusing.
We talk about love in such funny
ways. We say "I'm falling in love" ...I don't know. Is love like a hole
to we stumble into?
We use the same word “love” when we
talk about a favourite dessert or a much loved person. I've said, “I love
pecan caramel cheese cake.” and "I love my husband.” I've said, “I love my
Honda Fit, (my car). I love God." What do we mean? How do we get our heads
around the word love?
Well, at the end of chapter twelve,
Paul writes: "I will show you. I will show you a still more excellent
way." Then he shows us how to recognize genuine love, by what it is and by
what it is not.
Paul says true love is patient; it
never gives up. And love is kind. Love takes pleasure in what's right and true.
Love bears all things; puts up with stuff and trusts God always. Love hopes all
things; always looks for the best. And love endures; keeps going till the end.
I'm suspecting we aren't meaning
every last bit of that list when we say, “I love to go to the beach!”
And Paul goes on. There's other ways
to recognize love;not by what it is, but by what it is not! Paul's a bit like a
woodcarver here. I've heard at least one carver say that the secret to
whittling an owl for example is to look carefully at your piece of wood and
then cut away everything that doesn't look like an owl. That's what Paul does.
If it doesn't look like love he removes it.
Paul starts whittling: love is not
envious. Love is not "the consuming desire we sometimes have for everyone
else to be as unsuccessful as we are." (Fred Buechner) Not wanting anyone
to be better than we are, that's envy and love's not about envy.
Paul continues, “Love is not
boastful or arrogant” Love is not about spending the day needing everyone to be
impressed by us, or needing everyone else to like us. That's not love. And
neither is love rude. Love isn't intent on saying or doing things that
diminishes someone else. Like whispering, “Have you heard about...and then
telling stories that makes someone else look bad.” That's not love. And love
doesn't insist on its own way either. It isn't always "me first."
Love doesn't elbow its way to the head of the line. Nor is love easily
provoked; real love doesn't fly off the handle. And love isn't resentful;
doesn't keep score. You know what it's like. To have a memory of how someone
has hurt us and to nourish that memory, to just keep it warm and alive.
Score-keeping kills love every time. Finally, Paul says love doesn't rejoice in
wrongdoing; it finds no reason to be happy at the expense of others.
I wonder how the church at Corinth
did with Paul's list on love? I wonder if they took it seriously? I wonder what
we do with this list? It's a pretty tall order. I'm sure there's a little
something on this list for each one of us, there certainly is for me. Our love
is not perfect...we regularly fail at love. And everyone around us fails at
love. How do we even hope to love that way when no one we know loves like this
all the time?
No one??? no one has loved like
this? There is someone who did love like this, who does love like this, in
fact, whose very nature, whose very being is pure love.
As we learn to recognize love for
all it is and all it is not we learn to understand just a little more about
Jesus' love for us. Unconditional, undiluted, unending in its desire for truth
and justice. But we can know that kind of love now only in part. Now we see in
a mirror dimly. In God's future we will know completely.
Tom
Wright in his book about heaven (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the
Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 2008,288-9) writes:
“Love is the food they eat in God's new world, and we must acquire the taste
for it here and now. It is the music God has written for all his creatures to
sing, and we are called to choose to learn it and practice it now so we'll be
ready when the conductor brings down the baton. It is the resurrection life,
and the resurrected Jesus calls us to begin living it with him and for him
right now.
There's
a saleswoman at an up scale department store who's recognizing Jesus' love. She
works on the fifth floor and sells some of the finest dresses in the world. One
day, when the elevator doors opened, a very disheveled looking woman stepped
out. Her clothes were dirty and torn, her hair was matted, her stockings were
rolled down to her ankles. She just stood there holding a very full and very
dirty gym bag in her hand and it was obvious that she wasn't going to buy a
thing.
Many
a sales clerk would have called security and had the woman removed, but this
saleswoman came over and asked, "May I help you?" The woman said,
"Yeah! I wanna buy a dress!" "Any particular kind of
dress?" the saleswoman asked. "A party dress!" the woman
answered. "Well you've come to the right place," said the saleswoman.
"Follow me. I think we have some of the finest party dresses in the
world." The saleswoman spent more than fifteen minutes matching the dresses
with the woman's skin colour and eye colour, trying to help her find just the
right match. They selected three dresses, and the saleswoman said, "Shall
we go and try them on?" The woman with the gym bag tried on the dresses
with the saleswoman's help. But then, after about ten minutes, the woman said
very abruptly, "I've changed my mind. I'm not going to buy a dress
today!" The saleswoman said "That's all right." And then, in a
gentle voice she added, "But here's my card. Should you come back, I do
hope that you'll ask for me. I would consider it such a privilege to wait on
you again." (adapted from a story by Julie Pennington-Russel)
Don't you just get the feeling
that's what Jesus would do if Jesus were a saleswoman at an upper end
department store? Don't you just recognize Jesus' love in her story?
That's the kind of love Paul wanted
the church at Corinth to be known by, so they would be able to recognize Jesus'
love and begin to know now already what God's future holds.
Love never ends. Love is the still
more excellent way. Love points to God and God's future. In the end, love's the
one thing that will make us recognizable to the world as those who've put on
Christ and who are walking in God's way.
