“THE GREATEST IS LOVE”

“THE GREATEST IS LOVE”                    I Corinthians 13:1-13                           Dana Douglass

I’m sure you’ve all been there as the church fills with family and friends, and the minister steps to the front of the church, and the organist plays the familiar march, and the bride processes down the aisle on the arm of her father, and meets the groom at the altar.  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God to witness the marriage of . . .”

The bride and groom gaze each other. — big cow eyes.  Tears dampen the cheeks of the groom’s mother.  The bride’s father pretends he isn’t crying.  The minister opens a Bible and starts to read — “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love . . .”  These days, that’s when the cell phones come out and the texting begins, “I’m at Joe’s wedding; he looks really nervous.”  Pictures taken with the same smart phone moments before, of the bride processing down the aisle, are emailed all over the country.  No one listens!  They’ve heard it a thousand times, “So, faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”  Blah, blah, blah. . .

Everyone assumes that the passage from Corinthians is a sentimental musing about romantic love — after all, it’s read at nearly every wedding.  It’s read at weddings because much of what the Bible says about marriage is hurtful to women, and at least this passage includes the word “love” — 10 times the word “love” is used!  But, it’s not sentimental!  It’s as radical a statement about the way we are supposed to relate to one other as you will find.

“Though I speak with the tongues of angels” — choir members, this is for you  You may sing beautifully; but if love isn’t in your heart, it’s not music.  “And if I have all knowledge” — teachers, intellectuals listen up.  You may be smart; but you’re not wise if you don’t know enough to love.  “If I have all faith” — preachers, true believers, your turn.  “If I give away all that I have to help the poor” — liberals, philanthropists, generosity without love is self-serving.  And though I deliver my body to be burned” — heros who don’t love are empty uniforms.  “But have not love, you gain nothing!”  It doesn’t matter what you are good at, if you fail in love, you fail in everything!

The second paragraph lists fifteen characteristics of love.  Let’s look at just a few.  The first, “Love is patient,” sounds pretty passive.  Why should we try to make love work if the other person doesn’t respond.  Let me tell you a little story written by a minister about his barber, who was retiring after years of cutting his hair.

We started out as categories to each other: barber and customer.  Then we became “redneck ignorant barber” and “liberal egghead minister.”  Once a month we reviewed our positions.  We sparred over civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and every election.  Gradually we became confidants, confessors, therapists, and companions in an odd sort of way.  We went through being thirty and then forty, finally fifty.  We discussed and argued and joked, but always with a certain thoughtful deference.  After all, I was his customer, and he was standing there with a razor in his hand.  I found out that his dad was a country policeman, that he grew up poor in a tiny town and had prejudices against Indians.  He found out that I had the same small town roots and grew up with prejudices against Blacks.  Our kids were the same ages, and we suffered through the same stages of parenthood together.  We shared wife stories, and children stories, and car troubles, and lawn troubles.  I found out that on his day off he gave free haircuts to old men in nursing homes. He found out a few good things about me too, I hope.  I never saw him outside the barber shop, never met his wife or children, never sat in his home or ate a meal with him.  But, I came to care about him.  I have a real sense of loss at his leaving.”

You and I tend to write people off pretty quickly if we think we don’t have much in common – different backgrounds, different political points of view, different dreams.  But, if we are patient, almost any gap can be bridged.  The very essence of peacemaking is patient loving.

“Love is kind.”  Obvious, right?  But, sometimes to be kind you have to step forward and stand with someone on the side of love.  Another little story told by a woman who witnessed a painful exchange between a young boy and his uncle.

They were on a beach together with the boy’s older brother.  They had come to swim, and the older child, who was a little braver, was ready to jump right in.  But the little guy took one look at the expanse of water, and the waves reaching for him from its seemingly eternal stretch, and was paralyzed by fear.  He was not going in there, no matter how much they tried to convince him.

His uncle must have been frustrated that his vision for the day was not working out, and he must have been completely unable to see the little boy’s vision of what could happen in that ocean, because he began to yell at the boy.  He pressured
him, and then mocked him, and called him a baby, then left him on the shore while he and the brother waded in.  The boy stood there, looking crestfallen.  Our witness  — the woman who overheard all of this — was troubled by the man’s behavior.  She had to do something.  Once the man was off in the water, she walked over to the boy and leaned down and said the best thing she could think of—the only thing she could think of that might actually help him, rather than making things worse.  In a soft voice, she said, “I want you to know that grown-ups aren’t always right.”

It wasn’t much.  She didn’t do much.  But, she did something — something more than turn away and feel bad.  She gave the boy something to carry with him — a truth to trust if things went badly in the future.  “Love is kind.”

“Love is not jealous.”  Jealousy is tied to a loss of power.  If you have ever been jealous because your wife looked at another man, it’s not only because you fear losing her, what you also fear is losing your power over her.  But love doesn’t need that kind of power.  Love is secure.  That’s the same reason “Love is not boastful or arrogant.”  Boastfulness and arrogance always reflect insecurity.

We could go through every one of love’s characteristics that Paul lists and find something profound about them all.  But let’s skip to the last paragraph of the chapter.  “Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  If there is one thing we can learn from the life of Christ, and one thing we must learn as we grow frustrated by the continued violence in our world the the growing gap between the haves and the have nots, and all that isn’t going as we had hoped it would go, it is the importance of endurance.  Love is a long distance runner.  Love has a longer wind than any of the other contestants in the race.  In fact, Paul says, “Love never ends.”   When all the other things we pride ourselves on have passed away, love will still stand.

Almost all of us have memorized the 23rd Psalm.  It gives us courage in tight spots.  We would be wise to memorize the 13th chapter of Corinthians, as well.  Not just so we can recite it at a grandchild’s wedding, but as a constant reminder of what matters most in life.  “So, faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

*Thanks to William Sloane Coffin for some of the thoughts in this sermon.