Bible Readings Psalm 63:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13.
Have you watched any good tennis lately? Have you ever wondered why they score the game the way they do? I mean what is it about the poor person who might be battling for all they have but can’t get a point so their score is love? Being pummeled by an opposition intent on scoring all they can doesn't seem to have much to do with love and nobody wants to sit with this love they want to get rid of it as soon as they can. Google had some interesting theories one being people who played for the love of the game not for money, and maybe if they were being pummeled ending up knowing they had played for the love of the game rather than being scored a big zero was more appealing...
It seems some people in the Corinthian church were pretty intent on scoring points over others and love wasn’t a score they were interested in...
Last week we heard how the Corinthian church was pulsating with the wrong kind of pride and it was bringing division. People were claiming to be more elite, more significant because of the type of spiritual gifts they had, especially those who spoke in tongues… they felt they had arrived at a higher spiritual plain than others and were looking down on those who didn’t speak in tongues…
We saw how Paul was at pains to point out they had it all wrong… To start with their spiritual gifts had nothing to do with them being more in the know or better people... It’s the Holy Spirit who graciously decides what gift goes to who... that decision is God’s and God’s alone…
We saw how Paul wanted them to understand these gifts aren’t given to make individuals look good but for the unity and building up of the church so the church could carry God’s love to the world... and when we are all functioning in our gifts in a healthy way we should work together just as our physical body does, every part important and with a specific role to play.... he then went on to name some of the gifts...
Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophecy, miracles, discernment, tongues and interpretation of tongues.... We added in from Romans 12 gifts of helping or serving, giving, leadership, compassion, teaching and exhorting...
This morning we continue on with Paul telling the Corinthians they need to desire the greater gifts... well what does that mean when we saw last week that the gifts don’t have a hierarchal order? To answer that its helpful to remember Paul's purpose in writing is to encourage and build the church fostering unity in community... so for Paul the greater gifts in view here are the gifts that help the church grow in faith and unity...
Which gifts are those? They are the gifts everyone can clearly understand such as wisdom and prophecy.... Paul wants those who are lording it over others because they speak in tongues to understand that while tongues is a precious spiritual gift, it won’t help build the church unless there is someone present who can interpret.
Gordon Fee puts it this way “In the church community all the “intelligible gifts are greater because they edify while tongues without interpretation cannot.” Paul is laying a foundation with this verse that he will build on in Ch 14...
But then Paul interrupts this train of thought to serve a few aces of his own...
If you people want to be successful with your gifts then there’s a better way, a more excellent way, or as the NET puts it “And now I will show you a way that is beyond comparison” which picks up more accurately on the Greek intention “a way beyond measuring...”
Brian Peterson says “hearing that is important because measuring themselves, their abilities, and their status relative to one another seems to have become something of an obsession within the Corinthian church. Paul wants to move them past all of this to a way that is “beyond measuring.” Love is the shape of life that has been set free from the competition that is disrupting the Corinthian church.”
These poetic verses are by far the most used bible verses in the weddings I've been involved in and yet Paul's intention in writing them wasn’t as a wedding poem….
But as one commentator notes “Although Paul is not referring to romantic love it makes a surprisingly helpful text for a wedding! It is in the difficult realities of relationships and communities that the love described by Paul needs to be lived out in costly ways,”
Paul was trying to help the Corinthian church see that they’d been created to be something beautiful, God’s signpost to the world of His love for them made known in Jesus life, death and resurrection.... but at this moment they were far to wrapped up in their own ego to captivate the attention of others!!!!
Paul takes them to task and does it brilliantly… Possibly using the same “I” language they had been using.... “I have the greatest spiritual gift.!!” he shows how destructive the big ego talk is.... and how little any of those gifts mean if they aren’t used in love for the good of the church.
As we read these verses think about how Paul might have wanted the words to sound, think about where his emphasis would be ...Read with me “If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.”
Paul’s saying open your eyes of faith and get a hold of God’s vision for your lives, the way of love lived out in the power of God’s Spirit, modelled for us through the life and death of Jesus.
What does this love look like? Love, for Paul wasn’t some abstract quality, for Paul it was the supreme action because it had already been given concrete expression in the coming of Jesus to die for our sins. It had been given concrete expression in God loving us so much he gave his only son so for any of us who believe in him we would have eternal life…
Romans 5:8 puts it this way “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Paul gives us a lofty vision, love in all its fullness…patience, kindness. Unenvious, it doesn’t boast, it isn’t proud. It doesn’t dishonor others, it isn’t self-seeking or easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn’t delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.
For Paul love is far more than a feeling or a motivating factor, love is a behaviour, an action word it is something we do.... to love is to act for the good of another, or the good of a community…. This love is radical commitment to the other through the hard places of life... for Paul true love isn’t measured by gifts, because they can be used in a divisive way, true love is measured by its capacity for tension and disagreement without division.
The invitation Paul offers us as a family of faith and as people who live in community outside of the church is to ask ourselves for a moment “how do I give and receive love in community?”
If you’re not sure what that looks like I encourage you to sit with the verses we read earlier but this time instead of putting love is….put your own name in….ie…Phyll is patient, Phyll is kind….etc and let’s see how our love for others is working out….
Prof James Boyce writes “At the end of this beautiful poem Paul will remind us that this vision of community is ultimately not about knowing or doing things. No this community is about relationship “face to face” and that living in such a community is merely a reflection of our having first been known and caught up in the love of God.”
Can you see what Paul is offering here? He’s offering a different vision of community to the church at Corinth. A community that doesn’t come through being super religious, or through one upmanship; but a community that is birthed out of the sacrificial love of Jesus and sustained by love through the power of the Holy Spirit, a community whose heart beat pulsates with the very love of God.
But why does Paul want us to get a hold of love in this sense? Firstly, in this place we can have a glimpse of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God’s community fully functioning in and through God’s love. What could that look like for us? How could it impact our world, our lives for the better?
Secondly when we live in this place we can face whatever life might throw at us with faith and hope. I love the way the NEB captures the sense of love endures all things it says “there is nothing love cannot face.”
As one commentator puts it “love has tenacity in the present, buoyed by its absolute confidence in the future enabling it to live in every kind of circumstance and to continually pour itself out on behalf of others.”
When Paul says love always hopes and always believes he isn’t saying that love believes the best about everything and everyone. Some things in life are cruel and hard, but Paul is saying love never ceases to have faith, it never loses hope, and it will always work for the best outcome regardless of the circumstance, this is why it can endure in all circumstances….
Paul knows living in community has the potential to make or break us...
When it goes well it’s the best thing but when ego, competition and division set in people are betrayed, dreams are shattered and relationships are broken leaving behind a trail of devastating hurt and destruction...
But Paul believes in the power of God’s love. God’s love out of which our love flows, enabling us to navigate the fraught tensions of community living through choosing to act for the good of all concerned rather than serving our own interests.
Paul knows there is nothing this love cannot face…
Where might we be suffering from the hurts of love gone wrong?
God’s love is offering a way beyond measure...
God’s love gently wrapping around us and lifting us up into the life giving, nurturing, community of love that has the power to heal our relational hurts and pains.
God’s love that offers us a new reality, a new possibility, that captivates and motivates simply by the power of its conception and birth in Jesus Christ and the presence of God’s Spirit among us…
God’s love that enables us to navigate every kind of circumstance with the faith and hope to believe in a better future…..
God's love that gently calls his broken fragile church to rise up and be healed and in turn become a place of healing for others...
And no matter how many game, set and matches life appears to be winning... God’s love is the only score that has the power to transform what seems to be nothing into something beyond measure, a more excellent way.