Love Is.. (Part One) 1 John 1: 5 10; 1 Corinthians 13 Sermon Preached January 31, 2016 McCormick United Methodist Church, McCormick, SC Paul A. Wood, Jr. Think about this passage I have just read. Pretty familiar, isn t it? How many times have you and I heard it read at marriages, heard it preached, heard it recited on other occasions outside of church? A lot! 1 Corinthians 13 is not new to us. It is old in our memories, and that makes it hard for it say anything new to us. The bad part of this familiarity with First Corinthians 13 is that the meanings of its words can slip right past us. We enjoy hearing them. They are so poetic and speak such truth. But they might have quit speaking to us in the ways they were intended by the author Paul. Their rough edges are gone. The truth they might speak to us has disappeared. The truth of the words has disappeared. They don t have impact any longer. Whatever ways those words might have challenged us or called us to task vanished years ago. You could also compare 1 Corinthians 13 to an old familiar love song. We hear the melody before the first words are sung, and a cozy feeling overcomes us. Nowadays we don t need any words for that song to make us feel wonderful things. And when the words are sung, just like with 1 Corinthians 13, we might not pay attention to them at all. They don t mean anything. What the song means is the feelings which it gives to us. So I m sure you understand that I want us to take in the words of 1 Corinthians 13 truly take them in, absorb them and let them have their way with us. I realized last week that one sermon was not enough on this chapter. Plus, Kay reminded me that the next time I am to preach Valentine s Day would be a very good time to preach on love. So, today.. our first sermon is on love. Next week it s Cring and Clazzy. The Sunday after that is Valentine s Day, and we will have our second sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 and love. I think I need to clarify the meaning of the Greek word which Paul uses in this chapter, the word that is translated into English as the word love. In Greek in Paul s day there were three words for love, each with a distinctly different meaning. So we need to know which kind of love he is referring to. One word translated love in English is phileos. It means brotherly love. The name of the largest
2 city in Pennsylvania stands for brotherly love. Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love. I wish some Phillies fans, a few rows behind us, had thought of the name of their city before they started throwing things at our family. They didn t want any Braves fans in the stadium with them. Phileos is the love depicted in those drawings and statues entitled He ain t heavy. He s my brother. It is literally brotherly love we see depicted in those drawings and sculptures. They show an older brother carrying on his back or shoulders a smaller brother who needs help. The phrase is the title of what might be the Hollies most famous song. He ain t heavy. He s my brother. Phileos love is terribly important to us. Without it there really could not be any family life or devotion to one s church or nation. What if phileos did not exist? I can t imagine how bad things would be on this planet without phileos, brotherly, love. A different Greek word which has to be translated into our language as love is eros. Our English word erotic derives from the Greek word eros. It is the love of the quickened pulse, of blissful desire and of sexual urges. Notice it is not simply about sex and desire for sexual satisfaction. It is also the love of romance and of deep longing that goes far beyond physical urges and satisfactions. Another thing about eros love. Like phileos love, we have to have it. We really have to have it.. or we wouldn t be here, would we?! Like the other two kinds of love, eros is a gift of God to be enjoyed. Now neither of those two words is used by Paul the Apostle in First Corinthians chapter 13. He uses the word which in biblical Greek was the highest form of love. It is so important that it is God s love. We can have this love among human beings. We should have it. We must have it. We are commanded to have it, as we read in First John chapter one. And this love gets to the very heart of who God is. The word is agape. That is the word Paul uses time and again in First Corinthians 13. Agape is patient and kind. Agape is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Agape does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Agape love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
3 So as wonderful as brotherly love is and as wonderful as eros love is, agape is far superior. It runs deeper much deeper than family ties or romance or passion. God s love is all about forgiveness and patience and kindness. Now we know that forgiveness, patience and kindness are a big part of brotherly love and family love and good friendships. But the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is the superior form of love. For example, agape has no bounds. Phileos love has some boundaries. You can t have brotherly love (I don t think) with people you don t know. Think about eros love for a minute. It must have boundaries, or else it runs amok. 1 So agape love is the top of the line. It s the Cadillac or Lexus of loves (no offense to those of you with other excellent cars.) It is Mount Everest, superior to all other mountains. It is Yellowstone, superior to all other parks in the world. This foremost kind of love doesn t have limits. It doesn t stop where blood lines stop. It doesn t stop when disagreements bring on hot heads. It doesn t stop at boundaries of nationality or race or culture or religious beliefs. Nor does agape stop when romance has gone out the door due to increasing age or disability. Eros might develop toward someone other than one s own lover or partner. Real love, agape love, is to take over at that point. It will put eros in its place. Eros is secondary. Sometimes, in a life time of agape, we have to stamp out eros for the sake of agape. Eros has to be put in its place by agape. Agape tells us that eros can be allowed expression with only one other human being. Christianity has always kept eros in a coral, inside a fence. Our faith says that eros is to be directed toward and shared with and acted out with only one person. So agape is immense. It is enormous. It is never runs out. Phileos and eros have to have boundaries, but can and agape should stretch out further and further to encompass the whole world. Love as described by the Apostle Paul is all about relationships, the best of relationships. I was considering the importance of relationships last year when I made a pretty big decision. I have had a friend for many years whose name I won t be sharing. At times I have had trouble respecting him on account of some serious differences of opinion. But I have always decided I could not change him, so I 1 Interesting word. It means to behave or uncontrollably or disruptively.
4 would remain friends with him. Then last year I learned something about him which he had kept secret from me. It made me furious. He had cut off his relationship with a family member for reasons which I thought were terribly wrong. He refused to show complete love agape love to that family member all because of a serious disagreement with that family member. For a while after I made that discovery I was so disappointed in my friend that I considered ending the friendship. (I knew that confronting him wouldn t change him.) But eventually I made a very intentional and thoughtful decision. My relationship with my friend should remain a friendship. In fact, how could cutting off my relationship with him be any improvement over him cutting off his relationship with that family member? So I made my decision, and we remain friends who can work together and laugh together and serve the Lord together. Some years back I was out and about with a couple of minister friends one an Episcopalian and the other one a Southern Baptist. (Now I know this sounds like the start of a joke, but it isn t. It really happened!) We saw a new minister who had just arrived in town to begin a new church. We hoped he would join in with us and our ministerial alliance and our friendships. We introduced ourselves and invited him to join the ministerial alliance. Without any cordiality, that new minister posed three questions to us. Each was a doctrinal question, things like how we interpreted scripture. He said that if we did not answer them according to his wishes, he would not join us. We failed to meet his criteria, so he walked away. I thought about it. He was putting something very important, truth, ahead of relationship. I felt sad for him. And I felt discouraged about the prospect of Christ s Church ever being one church. That s a doctrinal truth for which I stand. You and I announce that every time we recite the Apostles Creed and say we believe in one holy, catholic Church. (Catholic in that sense means universal.) Decisions like his and many others which have been made through the centuries and which are being made nowadays disappoint me. Relationships are made secondary. Agape love cannot happen when there is no relationship. I close by saying again that agape love is superior to all other things, including as Paul puts it, faith and hope. Very important, aren t they? Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love, he says, and love is about.. relationships.
5 1 John 1: 5 10, NRSV This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 Corinthians 13, NRSV If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, [a] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, [b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.