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Worship on January 31st

   Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner
 

1 Corinthians 13 

I spent most of this past week at a conference in Atlanta about what is now called the Great Emergence and the Emergent Church.  It was a great event and I would love to talk with any of you more about the kinds of things I learned, but not now.  At dinner one evening, some of us were talking about the atmosphere of our denominational church life these days—an atmosphere that pulsates with ambiguity over how we are going to navigate into the future; an atmosphere that heats up with continued conflict and debates over ordination, structure and power; an atmosphere that is, frankly, full of the particles of theological and ecclesiastical chaos. 

 Some people at the conference, and perhaps, some of you here, are deeply unsettled by this change in the air.  But, as I told my two dinner companions, it does not affect me that much.  Frankly, women and men of my generation, Generation X, and the generations that come after me do not know the atmosphere of church life to be anything other than ambiguous, conflicted and chaotic.  It is the church air we have grown up breathing.  It is the cultural air we have grown up breathing.  We don’t expect it to be different. 

 And our time it is not the first time the church air has been charged with so much electricity.  As a matter of fact, many claim that the atmosphere of church life these days has a lot in common with the atmosphere of church life in Paul’s day.  Now, granted, they had the additional particles of persecution, which we, in this country do not have.  But Paul’s church community certainly breathed in an air full of ambiguity over how to be church in their culture; conflict over who got to do what and make the decisions; and the theological and ecclesiastical chaos that comes with being a new church.  For an example of this, we do not have to go any further than the church in Corinth. 

 Strife and division were popping up all over this small church. But their biggest conflicts did not revolve around who got to be ordained or if their structures were outdated.  One of their biggest issues was the wide gap between the rich and the poor.  But it was not simply that the gap existed.  The problem was that the wealthy were taking advantage of the poor in church life, just as they did in “the real world.”  And they were doing it at the Table.

 In those days, the Lord’s supper was part of a real meal.  As a congregation, they shared a complete feast in which the bread and the cup were one piece.  However, in this small congregation, the wealthy members were arriving for the communion meal on time while the poorer members were running late, probably due to work.  So, since they were already there, the wealthy ones were eating their fill of the food and getting drunk on the wine.  When the rest of the congregation would show up, nothing was left!  When he heard about it, Paul grew incensed at the humiliation of the poor and the division that was growing in the body.

 But that was not all that was contributing to the divisive chaos of Corinthian church life.  Some of the members of the church were bragging about who had been baptized by whom, building up jealous rivalries.  A handful of them were even boasting about their sinful behavior, taking their freedom in Christ a bit too far, getting too used to living in cheap grace, instead of in responsible gratitude. 

 And then, immediately before chapter 13, we read that many people in the church were playing the “I am a better believer than you” game.  They were speaking in tongues, not to build up the body, but to build up their reputation.  They were flaunting any and all spiritual gifts, claiming that they must simply be better Christians than the rest of the group.  They were offering their testimonies, not to share the power of the Gospel, but to wow the crowd.  Like I said, we are not the only ones in the history of the church to feel like we live in a time of conflict and change and ambiguity.  I dare say that Corinth might even have us beat.  It was crazy and Paul was fed up. 

 So he wrote to them about Love.  It is strange response, isn’t it.  As he comes face to face with a congregation who is embroiled in ugly, difficult, messy conflict, Paul writes a theological treatise on love.  Perhaps one reason his reaction seems so strange is because we are used to hearing this chapter 13 in the context of a wedding.  At a wedding, Paul’s words are poetic and romantic.  But poetry and romanticism were not Paul’s original intent.  Rather, Paul’s original intent seems to be to speak about Love to this crazy, messed up, conflicted people who were trying desperately to figure out  how to be church in their culture and in their time. 

 He writes words about Love.  But as we pay attention to what he says, we realize that Paul is not talking to them about the kind of love that they normally did in their lives, nor we in ours.  It was certainly not the kind of love that they were practicing in their church, nor we in ours.  The kind of love that we usually do, that they usually did, is what I would call circle love.  It is a love that goes out from us to the other person in order to bring something we need or value back into ourselves. 

 I heard the best description of this love playing on the radio on my way back from Atlanta.  Rod Stewart’s “Have I Told You Lately that I Love You.”  The chorus:  “You fill my heart with gladness.  Take away all my sadness.  Ease my trouble, that’s what you do.”  The singer tells his beloved that he loves her primarily because of the way she loves him back.  And I believe that song mirrors our experience.  Our love is usually an acquiring kind of love.   

 And that is exactly why Paul’s words are so challenging, not just to the conflicted church in Corinth, but to you and to me and to our own ecclesial life.  For Paul is not talking about circle love here.  Instead, Paul is holding up before us God’s kind of love.  And as the late preacher John Claypool once put it, God’s kind of love is not diagrammed by a circle, but by an arc[i]. 

 Think about that for a moment.  God’s arc kind of love goes out to the other and stops.  It is a gift simply to enhance the other, without any thought of return.  It goes out to the other not to bring something back to itself, but simply to give.  It is a love that is not about acquiring anything.  It is not about what we get back.  It is not about anything owed or required as a response. 

 This kind of God love, this kind of arc love, is simply love as a free, unconditional gift.  This kind of God love, this kind of arc love, is simply interested in empowering and strengthening the other for his/her own good, joy and freedom.  Do you see the difference between the arc love that God does and the circle love that we often practice?

So now, let’s put Paul’s words back in context.  He was writing to a group of people who were getting fed up with each other, who were not happy with each other, and who were being hurt by each other.  And his response to their pain and struggle is to hold out for them this kind of arc love, this kind of free, unconditional love, as a model they need to start practicing as the body of Christ.  He was calling them to stop looking for something in return.  And to start loving like the Christians they were called to be. 

 For indeed, Jesus Christ is the pure definition of arc love.  If you want to know what love looks like, sounds like, and acts like, look at Jesus Christ.  The difficult arc love, God’s love, is not about a warm, fuzzy feeling or a fondness for a special few.  Rather, arc love is defined by the concrete, self-giving event of Jesus the Christ[ii]. 

 Arc love looks like the one who sat at table with sinners, affirming that they were created in God’s image no matter what anyone else thought or said about them.  Arc love acts like the one who crossed serious social boundaries to heal people and set them free, regardless of how angry it made the establishment.  Arc love sounds like the one who, from our text last week in Luke 4, preaches that he cannot be contained and told what to do, not even by his hometown friends. 

 Frankly, arc love is a love that can flourish in times of chaos and in an atmosphere of ambiguity.  Because arc love is not transactional.  It does not have an end game in mind.  It does not need structure or order.  Arc love is simply given and released as a free, utterly astounding gift. 

 One more insight that Paul offers us:  I talked about it briefly with our children today.  Through chapter 13, Paul describes love as action, something one does.  In his words, we find verb after verb after verb.  We cannot see it in the English, but in the Greek, verses 4-7 contain 15 different verbs about love.  Our English translation states “Love is patient, love is kind, etc.”  But a closer translation to Paul’s meaning is “Love bears patiently.  Love shows kindness, etc.” 

 Paul’s words about love were not meant to tell the church at Corinth what love is like, but rather, we assume from all of his verbs that he wanted to tell them what love does.  For with an arc kind of love, there is no such thing as loving in the abstract.  Love only exists when it is acted and embodied.  One cannot simply feel this kind of love.  One practices this kind of love.  And for Paul, that practice was particularly called for in the church.

 It is a tall order.  It was a tall order for that messed up church in Corinth.  It remains a tall order for us.  Frankly, it is much easier just to keep this 1 Corinthians 13 passage captured by the wedding ceremony, isn’t it?  Because when Paul’s words are privatized and restricted, they are merely poetic and romantic.  But now, now that we know the chaotic, ambiguous, troubled atmosphere for which Paul crafted these words about doing Love, we cannot contain them anymore.  Now, even when we hear them at a wedding, even when I preach them at a wedding to two people with stars and tears in their eyes, we will know what kind of tough vulnerable love is truly being proclaimed.  We will know that it is not a circle, conditional, give and take kind of love. 

 But instead, it is God’s arc love—a free unconditional gift that we have received and into which we are called to live.  A love that we are called to practice as a church in times of health and in times of dis-ease.  A love that drives us forward until the day until the day when the air is cleared of chaos and frustration and ambiguity.  Until the day when we see and know fully, just as we are already fully seen and known.  Until the day when all is well and we will finally get it right.  Amen.