February 2, 2025 Sermon
Sermon title: “The Importance of Love”
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
(Other lectionary suggestions include Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, and Luke 4:21-30.)
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gift of Love
1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And 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. 3If 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. 4Love 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; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love 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. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When 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. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, 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. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
There is probably no more famous New Testament Scripture than 1 Corinthians 13. Sometimes it’s called the Love Scripture, and Harlane and I had that read at our wedding. Maybe you did, too! It seems so simple.....but did you know it was written for the church at Corinth during a huge dispute in this church? Different factions had broken out, with some saying “I follow THIS leader” and others saying “No, I follow THAT leader.”
I saw a quote from a certain pastor by the name of Haddon Robinson. He had told a pastors’ conference this: “Love is that thing which, if a church has it, it doesn’t really need much else, and if it doesn’t have it, whatever else it has doesn’t really matter very much.” This may be what the Apostle Paul was getting at in today’s Scripture reading.
“Love the sojourner, therefore, because you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19) I saw that quote recently, and as our government tries to round up aliens, I thought it would be good if we remember our own faith that PRE-DATES the U. S. Constitution! Anyway, back to this sermon regarding the importance of love....
If you take a New Testament course in college or in seminary, you will almost certainly get at least one lecture on the Greek idea of love. In English, we have one word for love, but the Greeks had at least THREE! There is EROS, which is probably the easiest kind of love there is. EROS could be described as an arrow pointing straight up: we LOVE something because it is obviously WORTHY of our admiration or love. It might be a beautiful person of the opposite sex, and that’s where we get the word “EROTIC.” Or we might feel EROS for a beautiful painting. The object or person is obviously WORTHY of our respect and praise. Another word from the Greek is PHILEO, and it could be diagrammed as one arrow pointing to the left and one to the right. There is a MUTUALITY with this kind of love. You have heard the city of Philadelphia called “the city of brotherly love.” The Greek word for “brother” is ADELPHOS, and if you put the word PHILEO together with ADELPHOS, you get Philadelphia, “the city of brotherly love.”
The last word for love that I’ll mention today is AGAPE, and it could be diagrammed with an arrow pointing straight down. That’s the kind of love that God has for us. That kind of love starts with God because of who God is. It is NOT dependent upon who WE are. That kind of love loves because of the lover, not the one being loved. If you think about it, that’s quite moving. I am reminded of a New Testament quote, probably by the Apostle Paul, that says God, while we were yet sinners, chose to die for us. That kind of love - AGAPE - is the kind of love God had for Israel. God chose Israel NOT because Israel was WORTHY of the love, but because God is who GOD is. Pretty powerful concept, isn’t it? In one of the Gospels, Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose YOU.”
This is just ME and not some great scholar, but I kind of think the Apostle Paul had this AGAPE revelation while he was on the road to Damascus. As he was trying to catch Christians and kill them for blasphemy, it suddenly occurred to him like a bolt of lightning from Heaven that God loves us, each one of us. He saw the stoning of Stephen and could not believe the look of love he had on his face until the end. How could anyone love someone who was trying to kill him? Perhaps Paul wanted to be able to love like Stephen did, or like God does. It suddenly occurred to the Great Apostle that God loves you because of who GOD is, not because of who YOU are. That’s AGAPE. That’s real love. That’s the kind of love, as Jesus said, that a man would lay his life down for his friends. Were the friends worthy of being loved? NO, but the PERSON doing the loving is what’s important.
In preparing this sermon, I used a sermon by Tim Chesterton, who is a retired Anglican priest. I learned this from Father Tim..... Do you know who Francesco Bernadone was? He became St. Francis of Assisi. I didn’t know that. But I did know that his father was a wealthy merchant, a cloth merchant, and he was NOT happy about his son joining the priesthood. “As a young man, {the future St. Francis} had a powerful conversion experience, and in obedience to the gospel call he proceeded to start giving away his possessions. Except that they weren’t HIS possessions, they were his FATHER’s!....When the father saw what his son was doing, he dragged him before the Bishop of Assisi in the town square and demanded that the Bishop tell his son to stop giving away things that didn’t belong to him. In response, Francis stripped himself naked in front of everyone, handed his clothes to his father, and said, ‘There - now you have everything that belongs to you.’ He then went off to live as a hermit in literal obedience to the gospel call of Jesus.”
Father Tim Chesterton, the retired Anglican priest, says the church at Corinth would have LOVED this story. The Corinthians “loved the grand gesture.” But the Apostle Paul is telling them - in verse 3 – “if I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast” - all of this “is worth absolutely zero if it’s not all about AGAPE love for others.”
Father Tim, from whom I am “borrowing” today, says that what the Apostle Paul has to say about love (love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude) could be applied to God, and all the negative things could be applied to him! “Paul tells us that those who love are patient with one another.....(and) it can also mean we bear with one another’s weaknesses and make allowances for one another.” But it is certainly a tall order. Quoting Father Tim, “It’s so much easier to have a brilliant website or a service for every taste than it is to put yourself out to truly love people as Paul describes it here, not holding anything back, never giving up hope, remaining faithful to the end.” At the end of today’s passage, Paul tells us that love never ends. He seems to be saying to the church at Corinth, “What’s going to last? On that day when we see God face to face, what will really be important?”
What will last? Three things, says the Apostle Paul. Faith, hope, and love. Eugene Peterson in The Message says this: “But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of these is love.”
And the way Father Tim Chesterton ends his sermon is this way: “So, my brothers and sisters, let’s never let ourselves settle for less than this. Let’s never forget that this is the most important thing we can work on, because without it, everything else is just noise and busywork.” And he ends with Dr. Haddon Robinson’s wise words that we heard earlier: “Love is that thing which, if a church has it, it doesn’t really need much else, and if it doesn’t have it, whatever else it has doesn’t really matter very much.” Amen.
Pastor Skip
