Rector's Reflection
4th Sunday after the Epiphany, C
January 31, 2010

I would guess that over half of the couples whom I've married—ok, I know that I didn't marry them; they married each other and I merely officiated... but that's another discussion—over half the couples I've married have chosen this reading from Corinthians as a part of the ceremony. I'm betting that as it was being read this morning, lots of you had visions of white dresses, pretty flowers, rented tuxedos, and all the other props that make a wedding (not necessarily a marriage, mind you!) dancing in your minds. So much of what we do when two folks come together to be wed to one another gets so romanticized that the whole rite takes on a life of its own... and this brilliant passage from Paul often gets romanticized right along with everything else.

"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 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. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 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; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends... And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

You can almost say the words by heart. But I think it's important to remember that Paul was not preaching a sermon at a wedding in Corinth when he wrote these words. He was writing to a church that he founded and that was now in crisis. The Corinthian Christians had gotten entangled in all sorts of misuses of their new life in Christ. They abused their freedom ("Hey, if I'm going to be forgiven, then I might as well sin boldly"); they had refused to share with one another; they scorned their neighbors gifts while boasting of their own ("My glossolalia is better than your glossolalia—nyah, nyah, nyah"); they were jockeying for positions despite each of them being a vital part of the Body of Christ. They were acting like... well, they were acting like people.

It seems to me that one important thing to realize about this magnificent piece of writing by Paul is that it comes at the end of his extended discussion of spiritual gifts. The last two Sundays have presented us with a whole slew of examples of spiritual gifts in Chapter 12, along with Paul's acknowledgment that no one has all the gifts but that each one has a gift as the Holy Spirit has wished to assign it... and all the gifts are necessary to build up the Body of Christ—ergo, all the people are necessary, too. Paul says to strive for the greater gifts, but Chapter 12 concludes with this line—"And I will show you a still more excellent way."

"And I will show you a still more excellent way..." That way is love. Love is not just one more spiritual gift in a long line of charisms. Love is the way God intends for all the gifts to be practiced. When gifts collide or when priorities are in conflict, it is love that should win the day... love—agape, the kind of love that God has always practiced for His creation, the kind of love that was willing to be nailed to a cross... love—agape, that is not a feeling but an action... love—agape, that does not seek its own good, but the good of the other (something that mission plans should take into account).

Love. The love that never ends. But according to Paul (and, of course to God!) that sort of love doesn't even get started until it's given away. That is, after all, how this whole world got started.

Susan+