“Hold on, There’s Hope!”
1 Cor. 13:1-7
Our Scripture today is Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth which was experiencing a lot of turmoil and infighting as a new body of Christ. Paul’s answer was simply one word: love. This was a prescription of how the body of Christ should be living out their faith together. What’s interesting is that these same words are the ones most chosen for wedding ceremonies. Paul gives us a picture of love, one that not only gives us a new understanding of love but also new ways to practice love. This may be one of the most beautiful Scripture in all of the Bible but even so, I’m not sure we fully understand what it means or how we can love as Paul encourages. Part of the problem is that we have a broken image of love. We get these images from either our parents or past relationships or friendships we’ve been in where we’ve been hurt. Others of us get these images from our culture or even from Hollywood. But when we compare our marriages or relationships to that, we’re in trouble. We begin think, “Where’s my Prince Charming?” or “Where’s the person who completes me?” Most couples when they walk down the isle think that it’s going to be Happily ever after because that’s what’s portrayed for us on the screen. But it can be a few days, a few months or even a few years when you begin to realize that marriage isn’t all happily ever after. Some of us are married and may be beginning to wonder, “Where’s my happily ever after?”
The problem is that most of us go back to the beginning of a relationship when it’s filled with excitement, tingling feelings and romance. For some of us, that lasted a few months and for others a few years but we want to try to recreate that passionate romantic love which filled our days and nights and made us feel like we were walking on air. We want to feel that love all over again but love is not a feeling. A lot of time we hear people say, “I just fell in love” like they’re walking down a sidewalk and there’s a sinkhole of love they just fall into. Love is not something that happens to you. It’s something you choose to do. Love is not a noun. It’s a verb. Love is a choice. It’s something we do over time, day after day. We have to commit ourselves to love daily. We have to be intentional about loving. Love is more than just about our relationships. It’s about us, how we relate to God and even ourselves. Love is not easy. It’s not easy to love God. It’s not easy to love our spouse. And it’s not easy to love others.
But what is love? When Paul speaks of love, he’s intentionally uses the word agape which is self-giving, sacrificial love. Perhaps the best image of agape is Jesus’ sacrificial suffering and death on the cross for our benefit. It is that love from Jesus Christ that we are called to share with others. Agape is placing the needs of others ahead of your own. It is loving others as Christ loved us.” With this understanding of love, Paul says, “Love is patient.” When Paul speaks of being patient, he’s not talking about waiting for your spouse to pick up their socks when they promised to or put their laundry away that’s been sitting there for days. It’s not that kind of patience. It’s actually much worse than that. The kind of patience Paul is talking about is long suffering. Whenever Paul is talking about suffering, he referencing the suffering the early church was experiencing as a direct result of their faithfulness to Jesus. What Paul needed them to know is that their suffering was an expression of their love for Christ. Paul writes in Romans 5:3-4, “we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” How can suffering produce hope? We never know what life’s going to throw at us but what we do know is that we get to choose how we respond, that is, whether we love or not. Love is patient and it’s in the suffering and the difficulties where you’re not driven away from each other but instead are driven to each other, that hope springs forth. Because together centered on Christ you can overcome all things.
There’s another element to this patience and it’s endurance. When you go through the years and the years turn to decades, you need endurance. I was reminded of this in November when my wife and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. In her card, she put, “I can’t wait to see what the next 20 years holds.” And I thought, “Boy, she’s a glutton for punishment.” But it was a message of endurance. Marriage isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. You have to make a commitment that the person you’re with is the one you’re meant to be with. Not because you were “meant” to be but because you chose to love them. And you have to make that choice again and again and again. Love is enduring.
Paul goes on to say that “Love is kind.” There are two types of kindness: kindness with our actions and kindness with our words. First is kindness in our actions. The word Paul uses for kindness means to be benevolent to one another, in other words, to show one another acts of loving kindness. There’s a great story of this in the Old Testament. The Book of Ruth begins with the death of Naomi’s husband and then her two sons. In just a short time, her entire world is turned upside down. She tells her daughter-in-laws to go back to their maternal homes so they could start life over again. One does, Orpah, but Ruth says, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die….” Wouldn’t these be great words to pray over your marriage? Ruth gives her life and her future to her mother in law.
When we limit our understanding and expression of love to a feeling, we limit our loving. A lot of times, we don’t want to act in loving ways because we don’t feel loving toward our spouse. But we should act nonetheless because love is not a feeling. It’s a choice and thus an action. A few months before John Wesley had his famous Aldersgate conversion, he was feeling burned out and began to ask, “How can I preach to others if I don’t have faith myself?” He asked his friend Peter Böhler if he should stop preaching. Böhler replied, “By no means…Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” John took Peter’s advice, and although Wesley wasn’t even sure of his own salvation, he shared the Gospel with a guy on death row named Clifford. Thus began a long ministry of stepping beyond the bounds of his perceived faith to do extraordinary works for God. The same is true for us in love and marriage. You may not feel loving but you must act loving toward your spouse and do so until you feel loving. And when you do, you will act loving all the more and do even more extraordinary acts.
Second is kindness with our words. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29 Our words have the power to build up or the power to tear down. Joseph Cavanaugh in his book, “The Language of Blessing” writes, “Your words bring forth life or death…What you say has the power to give life to dreams and callings- or to snuff them out before they have a chance to develop…the tongue has the power of life and death….You and I speak the language of blessing not by downplaying God’s good gifts to us but by looking for and then acknowledging the ways other are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
You have the opportunity to speak words of encouragement over your spouse, prophetic words. Words like, “You’re amazing!” “I love you. I love how you are. I love you’re dreams and your aspirations. I love what you do for me.” Look for the God-given gifts and graces, look for their passions, what motivates and drives them and praise them. If you’re having trouble looking at your spouse with love, begin to ask God to help you see what God sees in them. God loves your spouse in ways you don’t, but you can begin to love them as God loves them. Speak prophetic words over each other so they can become who God wants them to become. Pray over them so that they might have the power and protection of prayer. Your words have power. They have the power to change someone’s life and their future.
Karla Schexnayder came up to my mom’s house in Kansas City last summer and we attended church of the Resurrection. That Sunday, Adam Hamilton shared a story of Audrey Hunt who teaches voice lessons in a community college in CA. She tells the story of Edward who was one of her students. He was a little unkempt and looked sad most of the time. He sat at the back of the room and didn’t talk to anyone. When she saw him at lunch, he sat all alone just staring off into space. She knew something was going on with him so she tried to engage him in conversation. The more she did, the better his test grades became but he never really tried to apply himself. When she would read his papers, she knew he could have put more into them. So she would write, “I think you can do better than this. I know you have more ability than this.” Despite all of this, at the end of the semester, she knew he would probably get a ‘D.’ When it came time to give the final, the student she was most worried about was Edward. She was worried what a ‘D’ would do to him but as a teacher you don’t give out grades people don’t deserve. When she got his final exam back, she graded it and sure enough it was a ‘D.’ She asked each of the students to come in the following Tuesday individually and she would return their final exam and give them their final grade. The students lined up outside her door and as she peered out, she couldn’t see Edward. She got to the last student in line and still no Edward. But as she started to pack her things up, Edward walked in, disheveled as always with his head hanging down. Before she could say a word, he said, “Mrs. Hunt, I know I’ve been a bad student. I know I’m stupid. I know I’m probably a disappointment and an embarrassment to you. I’m really sorry about that and I know I got a bad grade.” Audrey’s heart broke listening to him saying this. She wanted to reach out to him, this boy who had such a low opinion of himself. At that moment, she did something she had never done before. She looked at Edward and said, “Edward, your grade in this class is an ‘A’. He was stunned and said, “I didn’t get an ‘A’ in this class.” She said, “Edward, you may have been a D student in my class but you’re an A human being. I see potential in you. I believe in you.” And then she said, “Edward, I love you.”
That night she received a call from the priest in the local Catholic Parish. He apologized for calling so late and explained he had to call her. “I want you to know that whatever you said to Edward today changed the course of his life. He explained that Edward had an older brother who always picked on him. Edward wanted nothing more than to impress his older brother but his brother continuously called him stupid and told him he was dumb. The priest got called to the family home because his parents found the note on Edward’s pillow which read, “I am sorry I could not be the son and brother you wanted me to be. All I ever wanted was to be loved. Sorry for being unlovable. I will go now. You will find me in the closet. I’m sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you. Please have my body cremated.” In the closet, they found a noose which he was planning to use later. The priest said, It wasn’t long after finding the note that Edward returned home and told his family he had changed his mind and wanted to live because of something you said in your office today.” Today, Edward is a successful dentist in Southern, CA. He is married with 4 kids but that happened because one person used her words to build someone up and those words gave grace and hope.
Christian marriages are supposed to reflect Christ’s love for the church. It’s not always that way but it’s what we’re supposed to work toward. The only way we can do that is if we’re not loving our spouse with our love but rather with the love of Christ, agape, sacrificial, self giving love. God’s love is full, God’s love is complete, God’s love is overwhelming. And when we’re able to love another with that kind of love, there’s always hope. It changes us, it changes our spouse, it changes our marriage and it changes the world. This is why Paul ends 1 Cor. 13 with the words, “Now faith, hope and love remain but the greatest of these is love.” Because wherever there is love, there is hope. So hold on. There is always hope because we find it in Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter if you are single, married or divorced, there is always hope. God loves you. No matter how rejected you feel, no matter how unloveable you think you are, no matter how miserably you might have failed, God loves you. Our God is a God of resurrection. If he can overcome death itself, he can overcome a dead marriage or a dead relationship, God can bring healing and new life in the midst of that. So hold on, there’s hope. Amen
