January 31, 2010 Des Moines

TEXT: 1 Corinthians 13

Growing Up Into Love

Through the years we have found all sorts of things hanging on our walls at home or office or dorm room -- calendars and calendar girls; actors and actresses; sports stars and rock stars; cars and planes and paintings and animals; Elvis in velvet and the Last Supper along side. And poster philosophy. Sayings or poems or succinct little pieces of wisdom that inspire us or impress us.

Like the Desiderata, which I think is even now hanging on the bulletin board in the 2^nd floor elevator lobby: “Go placidly amid the noise and haste. Remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. . .”

Like If by Rudyard Kipling that begins “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. . .” and ends after several dozen such prerequisites with the promise that “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and -- which is more -- you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Like Children Learn What They Live. “If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy. . .” and ultimately “if children live with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.”

Like All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten that lists such pearls of wisdom as “share everything, play fair, don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them.”

Like I’d Rather See a Sermon than Hear One Any Day.

And unfortunately -- unfortunately -- like the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. I say “unfortunately” because, like those other pieces of generic wisdom, Paul’s words have taken on a life of their own that he never intended; a kind of philosophical idealism that we can laud and commend and even admire, but never address. Just write it in calligraphy, frame it, hang it on the wall and marvel at its beauty. “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. . . And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

But Paul hadn’t envisioned a poster bearing abstract truth. He didn’t intend for these words that were arguably some of his most important to be confined to weddings -- where they indeed should be heard, but not imprisoned. What Paul was seeing was a people -- a congregation -- tearing themselves apart by intemperate estimations of their individual worth; jockeying for position by their own valuations of relative importance; people parading their spirituality with the inference that “theirs was better than yours. And Paul was hoping to give them practical, concrete, and remediating perspective. “Your respective gifts,” he told them in the preceding chapter with which we spent some time last week, “are important. Each and every one -- the grand as well as the obscure. The whole requires its constituent pieces.

But, he uses this chapter to say, “the value of your gifts is not the final word. Seek the one gift that is greater still. That one -- that still more excellent way -- is essential because gifts, intended for good and for the upbuilding of the whole, can become clubs that bloody and bruise and destroy what they are given to build.”

And we know how it can happen:

· the gift of leadership used as a tool for manipulation;

· the gift of making and sharing money used as a strategy for control;

· the gift of prophecy used to incite fear rather than faith;

· the gift of artistry used to confuse rather than illumine;

· the gift of patience used to delay and enslave;

· the gift of knowledge used to intimidate rather than enlighten;

· the gift of scripture used to condemn instead of reconcile.

When it is all said and done, Paul concludes, gifts are nothing in and of themselves. Like one key of a bank box, another is needed to open and achieve the desired result, and the companion key to giftedness -- the centering force that is so essential -- is love. Without love even the grandest speech becomes nothing but an annoying interruption. Without love even the boldest self-sacrifice is like water down the drain. Without love even the most startling miracles and demonstrations of faith are nothing more than entertainment. Without love, even truth is harmful.

Gifts are given not to accentuate the self but to build up the whole, and even then are not to be shoehorned in wherever and whenever we bloody well please, but where they are needed and when they are helpful. To a conflicted and confused congregation, one that is fostering a heartless spirituality, Paul teaches that the right kind of charismatic ends do not justify the wrong kinds of spiritual means. Gifts without love are capacities out of touch with God. Love is the one gift that centers all the rest.

And what does this love look like? It is nothing so small as simply “being good” to other people. It is the character of life anchored in the very person of God who, according to John’s almost excessive definition “is love.” Love does some things and resists doing other things. It is not an abstract idea: like God, love acts. It expresses itself in down-to-earth contexts, where it refuses to stoop to petty retaliation, demonstrates patience, shuns competitiveness, resists keeping a scorecard, remains hopeful. It is long-suffering and kind; it rejoices over truth; it is the foundation of reality; it keeps faith alive; it generates hope; and it is unquenchable!

Where people relate to each other with envy, arrogance and pomposity; where people take advantage of each other, and act out of cautious self-service; where there is boiling up in anger, holding a grudge, and a viewing of the sins of others with a smug sense of superiority, there love is conspicuously absent.

Love recognizes that human feelings toward one another do not always spontaneously generate deeds of grace and mercy, and so acts as much by will as by affection. Not satisfied to wait until it is evoked, love extends itself by its own initiative to heal and to hold and to help.

We are a gifted people -- a congregation rich with people and varied resources. And we are rightfully working hard to be good stewards of such things -- polishing up some tarnished aspects of our witness and creating new expressions where old ones were defunct or never before existing. Parts of our ministry we had grown somewhat lazy about and with other parts become anxious and self-consumed.

But in all of our planning and programmatic renovation we could very well miss the point of it all. The vitality of our life together does not hinge on having the finest music or the best youth group in town; is not contingent on location, the state of the neighborhood or the attractiveness of our building. Our future will depend on the extent to which we practice the best part of our past: which is our ability by God’s grace to concretely love each other, this neighborhood and community with active patience, with visible kindness, and strong endurance. Our ability not simply to recognize our gifts, but also the gifts of those around us -- even those very different from ourselves. Our ability not simply to note those gifts but to affirm and celebrate them. Our ability not simply to warehouse our gifts, but to take them up and use them lovingly and redemptively for Christ’s sake.

We don’t know all there is to know -- let alone where we are going as individuals and as a church. We see in only the broadest of outlines and discern only the most general of needs -- like looking through a dark glass. The colorful details are still in front of us. But in faith and hope and love we move forward as people of God in this place, doing the best that is within us to do, and knowing that the greatest of them all is love.