Signs of God's Glory: Never-ending Love

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, January 30, 2022
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

    I came across a brief news article the other day about increased antagonism between customers and employees that is occurring across the country.  Inflation and economic uncertainty, “the great resignation,” political disagreements, and pandemic fatigue are taking a big toll on people’s attitudes toward one another, even towards complete strangers, the article noted.  The example was a man in a grocery store yelling at the top of his lungs to see the manager because he wasn’t able to purchase one of his favorite imported cheeses.  “I think this isn’t just about the cheese,” was how the employee explained it to the reporter.
    I’m willing to be that each one of us have found ourselves in a similar frustrated position recently – expressing our anger inappropriately at some unsuspecting grocery store attendant, or the nurse who needs another COVID test before our kids can go back to school or before we can visit our loved one in the hospital or before we have procedure.  We take out our stress on our spouse, or our kids – we’re tired, we’re impatient, we’re generally in a bad mood and maybe can’t even put a finger on exactly why.  Our anger isn’t just about the cheese, is it?!  Now, more than ever, we need to hear Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians to love and to remember our faith is grounded on the love of God for us in Jesus Christ that never ends and will never fail, even when we fail to love as he first loved us. Saying we should love one another and actually living up to Paul’s description of love is difficult, isn’t it?!
    We know this passage about love well.  You’re as likely to hear 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding as likely as you’ll hear Psalm 23 at a funeral.  We may even think because we most often hear it read at weddings that Paul wrote it for a wedding, but he didn’t.  It’s great advice for a newly married couple or any couple for that matter to live by in a romantic relationship, don’t get me wrong!  But Paul is writing to a group of people in a church -- the Christian church in Corinth – who all have different spiritual gifts and parts to play in the body of Christ, as we heard the last few weeks in chapter 12.  This passage is not primarily a description of human love but of God’s love and our relationship to that love.  Paul is describing what true love is, the never-ending, unfailing love of God in Christ, and how we might reflect that love back in our own lives and relationships.  
It is timely to recognize that the Corinthian church Paul was writing to was similar in some ways to our church today.  The church was incredibly diverse in all kinds of ways – some were Jewish Christians, some were Gentiles.  Some were incredibly wealthy, others were slaves.  Some observed certain dietary restrictions including vegetarianism and kosher laws, others did not.  They had diverse political views.  They disagreed at times theologically, especially where speaking in tongues was concerned.  They were so divided that some Christians were even taking each other to court, Paul tells us in chapter 6.  The Corinthian church, in other words, had some serious issues.  It’s an important letter to read just to remember that the church is a human institution that has always been imperfect, even in New Testament times!  Paul’s main point that he writes about over and over, that really culminates in this chapter thirteen, is that the church is founded on Christ, and Christ is all about love.  We may disagree about other issues.  We may want to take sides at times.  But what brings us together and what drives us forward together is the love of God in Christ.  As a church, we make decisions and work together on the foundation of the love of Christ.  This is as much true today as it was in the early church.  The love of Christ is STILL our number one guiding principle.
Sadly, we don’t hear enough about this kind of love that Paul is talking about in society today.  Even as Christians, perhaps, we think about love only in terms of romantic love.  Showing or expressing love can be considered too weak or “girly.”  Sometimes it seems most of us would rather be right than show love to one another.  But the kind of love that Paul is talking about is the same kind of love that Jesus shows us in the gospel for today.  And that love causes the people of Nazareth to be so angry they want to hurl Jesus, the neighborhood kid they all knew as Joseph’s son, off a cliff.  This is not the same kind of sentimental or sappy love of rom coms and the Hallmark channel.  The people are amazed at the gracious words that come out of Jesus’ mouth, but then Jesus talks about loving other people not just themselves. People who are difficult to love.  You may not have caught the reference because it’s subtle, but the widow of Zaraphath and Naaman the Syrian are outsiders. Gentile widows and lepers.  So Jesus is talking about God’s love for people who are unclean. People who are outsiders. People who think differently from us.  People who would like us to wear a mask when we don’t, or who voted for the guy we despise or who has to tell us I’m so sorry sir but we are all out of your favorite imported cheese because of supply chain issues and we have just had it up to here with supply chain issues!
And so, this is when the love of God becomes tough love, because the true love of Christ is not weak but tough.  The current divorce rate in this country even among Christian couples tell us how tough it is to love even the people we are in love with.  God’s love in Christ is tough because Jesus reminds us God’s love is not just about us.  Now we’re supposed to love people we don’t like, too?  “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” Paul confronts us with how hard it is to truly love as Christ loves us.  At the time, mirrors were made of dull metal – you could see your reflection, but it was more like looking at yourself with a silver spoon than the glass mirrors of today.  Perhaps when we hold up a spoon-mirror to ourselves we see how distorted our efforts to love others as Christ loved us really are. We get angry, we label and blame others for our problems, we say and do things that later we regret. We sometimes do not witness very well to Christ with our words and behavior.  OR we’re deeply hurt by others’ anger, harsh words and behavior towards us.  But thanks be to God, Christ’s love is so tough he endures the cross and its shame for us, confronting death itself for us with the one thing that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things: love.  Love never ends.  Love never fails.  That’s what Christ’s death and resurrection assures us of.  And while we see dimly in a mirror that love of Christ reflected in us today, one day, we will know that love fully, as we have already been fully known.  What a hopeful message!
Today, Paul challenges us to strive to love as Christ loved us, more like a modern-day mirror than a spoon.  With God’s help, we reflect the love we’ve received from Christ back into the world.  We recognize that for a lot of people, when they get angry at us, it’s not about the cheese.  Love can go a long way toward the healing of this world and its divisions, for this is why Christ came.  We look for God’s grace and strength to love especially when loving is difficult.  Our love for one another may fail, but God’s love never fails, thanks be to Jesus!  Amen.