If I don't have...

 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

This is a harder reading then we make it. We take it out of context is why. The last two weeks have been leading up to this so I want to go back to the last two weeks when we read 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 and then 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 because they give us more of a backdrop for this reading today. Paul is talking about gifts here. We started out reading about all spiritual gifts and how not any one of them is more important than another. Next we read about the body of Christ and it's many parts and how we need each part or each gift in order to operate as a full body. Are you starting to get why you can't disconnect the text? See we lose the importance of what Paul is saying because even though we read it weeks in a row, our whole lives we have seen the text cut up into smaller pieces and used in different ways. 

So the second reading is about how when we take a spiritual gift and say this is more important than another we are actually cutting off a hand or a foot. Then Paul end the section in this way, "And I will show you still a more excellent way." So this section introduces what is to come, the more excellent gift is love. 

Now in Greek we have several kinds of love. Philios is the love we have for a friend. Eros is the love we have for a spouse. Agape which is the love word Paul uses here, is the love which means much love, abundant deep love, a love we have to work for. We kind of lose the meaning because we use this for weddings so much, but eros love is not what Paul was talking about. It is a love which he describes very aptly for us. 

If I have beautiful, flowery language and have no agape love then I am lacking. If I have all these spiritual gifts and have no agape love in it they are nothing. If I am just noise to draw attention to myself then I don't have agape love in what I do. And what does this kind of love expect us to be, well Paul is nice enough to give us a laundry list: agape love is patient, kind, not envious, or boastful, or arrogant, or rude. It doesn't insist on its on way. Hear this, we could use a lot of this love right now when people are insisting on their way or nothing. My own way, not the way of a love feast. Literally this is the translation here. A love which sacrifices everything in order to show God's love to the world.

See I grew up in many different traditions in the Christian faith. I grew up going to Baptist camp though and there I learned agape love was only a love God had. We can't attain to do it. They left out that this isn't what Paul is saying. Paul says strive for it. This is the kind of love we are to have or we are empty, thoughtless, and not even fully known. So try it

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It is so easy to list the rules. It is so easy to quote passages as if they are the only ones which matter. Here, here we have something which demands so much of us we have cast it off as unattainable because it's easier to list rules. Yet there are no rules here. What is outlined is a way for us to become naked in front of others. Because agape love strips us of all our high and mighty self interest. All the rules we make are to protect us, because we can't be that vulnerable.

I just finished reading the latest Inspector Gamache novel. In it was this question of love and would love kill someone. Would someone you loved truly, would you kill them if it came to the time when they were a burden? The Chief Inspector doesn't shy away from this question. He looks deeply into his own life. Listens deeply when others point out a bias he might have for a solution when the facts aren't leading them there. He doesn't dismiss the questions out of hand, instead he examines each one until he solves the crime. There is a lot of soul searching which goes on in between. In this place you have to know who you are and whose you are. 

We go through different cycles when we know exactly who and whose we are. This gives us the ground in order to explore agape love. See this kind of love asks us harder questions. This kind of love strips us bare and makes us think. This kind of love works hard not to be empty and demands of us to use patience, kindness, and to not envy someone else. 

This is the hardest love to give as a gift to others. This is why it is called a love feast. We do this because we have been loved to our very core, just as we are. So we give this gift of love all our lives. It is something to strive for, we may not get it perfectly. Yet this is our greater gift agape, to a hurting world who needs this feast.