Love isn’t just for weddings: 1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:1-13
Reverend Wendy Gravolin St Thomas Anglican Church Winchelsea, Victoria Australia
We live in a culture that is obsessed with erotic & romantic love. Doing a quick search on the internet for a love song I quickly found list after list of songs. There were lists of the greatest ever love songs. Lists of wedding love songs romantic love songs. Even lists which promised you they could get or keep “your girl” for you! One of those lists claimed to name the five top love songs of all time! It seemed a pretty big claim so I checked it out. I’ll just run it past you and see what you think!
Number five counting down of course was the song from the movie “Dirty dancing”, “I’ve had the time of my life”
Next came, s song by someone called Adele, “Someone like you”, which is apparently a song about breaking up!
It gets worse the woman introducing the list warned us that the next “love song” was about abusive violent relationships!
It was “We found love”by Rhiannah. The next one was also about abusive relationships and was used in the film about an abusive relationship “50 shades of grey”. It was “Crazy in love” by Beyonce. And finally number one which you may have heard of if you were born before the turn of the last century! When it seems singers used to use last names. The number one love song of all time! Drum roll…….wait for it! Its ‘I will always love you” by Dolly Parton made popular more recently by the late Whitney Houston. The top love songs of all time??? Interesting claim! What do you think? Another list of greatest ever love songs put that number one at 31st!
When couples come to me to arrange their weddings I give them another list. It’s a list of bible readings suitable for their wedding service. Perhaps surprisingly it doesn’t seem to matter how many readings are on that list because it seems like about 8 times out of ten couples choose the reading from 1 Corinthians 13 that has just been read for us today.
If you are married, do you remember what reading you had at your wedding? Just in case Steve can’t remember we had Romans 12 the whole chapter!
Now I make no apologies for leaving that popular Corinthians reading on my list because it gives me a chance to talk about putting God’s love at the centre of all relationships. But we know that St Paul didn’t write it for a young couple preparing for marriage. Paul wrote this letter for single people, he wrote it for married people, he wrote it for young people and for old people. In fact he wrote it for all of the Christian believers who gathered together to worship God in a town called Corinth. In other words he wrote it to a church. And as he wrote thinking of that church the Holy Spirit inspired his words, so that they formed the very words of God that still speak to his church today. Because Loving isn’t just for weddings, its for everyone including the church of our Lord Jesus Christ who gather in Winchelsea today.
Paul knew nothing of different denominations the people who were Christians in any town were Gods people the church in that place. So I think he would be pleased that we are making an effort to worship together as brothers and sisters in Christ today from the Uniting and Anglican churches.
Yet Paul did know about divisions in the church and he is directing this letter at a very argumentative quarrelsome bunch of Corinthian Christians. Every bible passage has a context nd if we look at the context of this passage we find that Paul is in the middle of a discussion on the proper use of Spiritual gifts amongst God’s gathered people.
So this grand treatment of love flows out of his concern that they are abusing their spiritual gifts in that church by claiming that the different gifts made them extra super spiritual. Rather than actually realizing that gifts or charisms by their very nature are undeserved gifts from God!
These supernatural gifts were evidence of God’s grace and of his Holy Spirit’s presence poured out freely by God upon them. Spiritual gifts are not meant to be used to establish status, proving who is the greatest; who’s got the most spectacular extraordinary gift or who is the most spiritual amongst them. No! They are given to serve and build up the church empowering it in its mission. And that mission was then and is still to share the news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ to a world lost in Sin.
The danger of the church in our time doesn’t seem to be so much an argument over who has the best spiritual gift or even over who is the most spiritual Christian. There is no doubt that we still argue over lots of things! But I suspect we may have forgotten that God still pours out his gifts on the church and that the mission of the church can’t be accomplished without relying on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not leaving any out, including the supernatural gifts.
But Paul is reminding us all that the true evidence of a Spirit filled life is evidence of the spiritual fruit of Love. The mark of an obedient Christian community, one that is truly following Jesus, is that its members lives are overflowing with love.
So when he starts off this chapter referring to those who speak in the tongues of men or of angels he is deliberately speaking of the spiritual gifts of supernatural languages. Of which there are two types, the first the “tongues of men” was first seen at Pentecost. It was very useful for the spread of the gospel across language barriers. It foreshadowed the undoing of the curse of Babel from Genesis 11, where God confused the languages of those who rebelled against him and challenged his authority and they were scattered. At Pentecost people from lots of different places and language groups came together, heard the gospel and believed that Jesus was the Son of God and the promised messiah their Saviour. Without the gift of tongues given to Peter, they wouldn’t have understood a word Peter said, surely that was a very useful and significant gift!
The second type of supernatural gift of tonguesthat Paul refers to here he calls the tongues of angels and from all of the other references to it in this book it seems that it is a language of prayer and of prophecy. It is a gift that build up and encourages the believer. (14:4) Paul encourages tongues to only be used publically when someone can interpret their message to the congregation. But I think we do the passage a disservice when we use it to justify not using this gift at all as many have been in the habit of suggesting. Paul himself tells us in the next chapter that he speaks in tongues more than any of the rest of them. (14:18).
What Paul is calling for here is for a church community that is moving in the power of the Spirit using all of the spiritual gifts he freely offers to us but is also a church community that is governed first and foremost by the spiritual fruit of love.Without love he tells us, all of their supernatural gifts of tongues only make a dreadful raquet.
Thinking about this I was reminded of a church I knew of sometime ago that used to boast that it was the only real Christian church around. Its members all spoke in tongues and if you disagreed with their interpretation of things they ostracized you from their fellowship. They broke up many families and active members crossed the road to shun past members who no longer agreed. There was nothing at all loving about their fellowship or witness. Paul’s message is that the ultimate proof of true spirituality is evidence of a self-sacrificial love like the love we see in Jesus Christ. This message is a wake up call for us all!
Paul doesn’t just pick out tongue speakers for a love check. He tells us that people with prophetic powers or supernatural gifts of knowledge or a faith hat can move mountains amount to nothing without love! But imagine what those gifts could accomplish in a loving Christian Church Community! Paul continues his theme telling us that even amazing acts of philanthropy from people who keep nothing back and give away everything they own amount to nothing without love. Even acts of martyrdom without love amount to nothing!
Since Paul tells us that none of those things amount to anything without love, what is this thing Paul calls love? I suspect my list of songs earlier might not fit into Paul’s top five! Paul’s love list certainly doesn’t include violence or abuse! Paul tells us that love is patient. How patient are we with other members of our church community? What about when they put the cups in the wrong cupboard! Or do things differently than they have always been done before? What about when they sit in our pew? (Not that anyone actually owns a pew in this church!) Or what about when they play the right hymn, with the wrong tune? Or preach too long! Or push us out of our comfort zone? How patient is our love then?
I think I understand why it is very easy to relegate this passage to weddings! Which is often what the church has done. Young couples come to get married enthusiastically with hormones flowing, and teary eyes full of looove. But this passage isn’t calling two people who are already pretty enthusiastic about the whole idea and find each other very attractive anyway. It was written for all of us in the church! You and I have no control over who walks into our churches but God does and he calls you to love each other and love and make room for his newcomers!
Some of them will be easy to love and we get so sad when those ones move away from us! But we are not just expected to love the attractive useful people. We are to Love the broken people! Love the grouchy people. And when we find we can’t love them we need to ask for God’s forgiveness and help. And then we need to try again. Because Love isn’t just for weddings!
And next Paul tell us we don’t only have to be patient with other church members. This is not just about tolerating them! You also need to be kind to them! Wow that can be challenging. It is for me anyway!
And Paul goes on giving us a list of things that true love is not! Its not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way! It’s not irritable. (There doesn’t appear to be a tiredness clause on that last one!). And its not resentful either!
How are you doing on this list? I must admit, I can get a bit grouchy and irritable especially when I’m tired or in pain . I might be tempted to think tiredness is a good excuse! But its not!
Paul continues: Love doesn’t rejoice in wrong doing. But this love rejoices in the truth? It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. Endures all things.
We humans even find all that hard to do to just that one person we have chosen to marry. But imagine the impact on our community if we lived like that totally and completely, depending on the gifts of the Spirit And generously loving each other amongst them.
I suspect we wouldn’t be able to stop people flocking into our church buildings and joining our church community. For the last five hundred year, ever since the reformation, the church has fought and bickered both publically and amongst ourselves. We have made an absolute art form out of keeping a record of wrongs; I think we call that list, church history! There are now so many different denominations of Christian believers that it is our divisions not our unity and love that are the most obvious thing that the world sees when they look at the church.
Yet this past week in the news I saw what must be a sign of hope in the church. Pope Francis, apologized this week on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church to all Protestant Christians and he asked for their forgiveness for all they had suffered from Catholic persecution. I pray that this will prove to be a significant Spiritual turning point in history, a time of healing and an opportunity for love. I also pray that we protestant churches will respond with love, grace and humility. And maybe even apologize to them! Because we also behaved badly!
So where to from here? Love Paul tells us never ends. It is a fruit of the Spirit of our God whose very essence is love. The passage tells us that all the spectacular other gifts will pass away one day, when the perfect comes. That is when Jesus returns. We won’t miss them. We will have outgrown their use. But that day hasn’t come yet
So for now if we want to see a church that is growing like the church in London is now growing; perhaps we should try using those gifts that God freely pours out on the church along with a whopping great outpouring of love. Which Paul tells us in Colossians 3:14 “binds all things together”. Remember Love isn't just for weddings!
I’m going to Pray now for spiritual gifts and the spiritual fruit of love. If you want them join me in this prayer.
Let us pray. Our Lord and Heavenly Father we humbly admit we need your presence with us and your empowering to fulfill your mission. Forgive us for our self-reliance, our failure to depend on you and our lack of love for you and for one another. Have mercy on us and fill us once again with your Holy Spirit and pour your gifts out on this your Church throughout Winchelsea and this entire region. We want to see your name glorified again in our communities please come and help us today We ask this through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
