1 Corinthians 13
A husband and wife had been married for 60 years and had no secrets except for one: The woman kept in her closet a shoe box that she forbade her husband from ever opening. But when she was on her deathbed—and with her blessing—he opened the box and found a crocheted doll and $95,000 in cash.
“My mother told me that the secret to a happy marriage was to never argue,” she explained. “Instead, I should keep quiet and crochet a doll.”
Her husband was touched. Only one doll was in the box—that meant she’d been angry with him only once in 60 years. “But what about all this money?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the dolls.”
Here we are. Lent is just a few days away and our Epistle lesson is all about love. You will remember that it starts with Ash Wednesday on this Wednesday.
In 1 Corinthians 13, St Paul gives us his amazing analysis of love or as our King James Version calls it charity. St Paul describes perfect love. It is the love of God that he actually describes.
There is no place that we cannot go and escape the love of God. No matter how deep our shortcomings, frustrating our defeats, or difficult our failures, love is capable of carrying us through. We are loved by God who is love. Indeed, most of our problems in this life come to us because we do not believe that we are loved. Imagine, worry attacks us because we do not believe that we are loved. Inherent in the concept of a God who is love is also the idea that I am cared for and everything will be OK in the end. The here and now may be uncomfortable, but it will all turn out OK if there is a God who is watching over me and caring for me.
But now let’s turn to another concept of love. Let me read it to you again in an easier to understand translation. If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
These are truly high qualities. But we must ask ourselves what keeps us, what keeps me, from loving in this perfect way? In some respects, these high qualities are like the Law of God. The 10 commandments and the Beatitudes. They show me clearly that I cannot keep them. They show me that I need a Savior. They show me that I need the author of Love to help me. After all, it was St John who gave us the keen insight: we love because we have first been loved and the seed of that love has been implanted within our hearts by our personal faith in Jesus Christ who is love. So, it is only by depending upon Him that we can love. It is only by depending upon Him every day, indeed, every minute of the day that we can even hope to love in the way that St Paul describes.
But what keeps me from loving in this way? The main impediment to my own loving is my selfish and narcistic nature. Very clearly, starting with Adam and Eve, all of humanity has a problem. We have become selfish and narcistic. Eve wanted the fruit. She thought of herself first. Of course, the womanly nature offered the same fruit to her husband. After the fall, self-usurped the throne of the human heart. We will spend our lives as followers of Christ trying to keep Christ on the throne of our hearts and as St Paul says, dying to self so that He can lead us into green pastures and still waters as David writes in the 23d Psalm. How do we pull the self-off the inner throne of the heart? Or as St Paul writes, how do we crucify the flesh? Do you remember our epistle lesson a couple Sundays ago? St Paul tells us that he buffets his body and makes it his slave so that he can run the race and follow Jesus and not lose his salvation and prize. So, it is with us. Lent offers us a time for self-discipline.
It must be remembered that this crucifixion of the flesh is not to placate an angry God. Jesus died on the Cross to save us. God is not angry with His children. We are the ones who need to be changed. Not God. If you want a technical term for this, it is expiation versus propitiation. If you want something to make you fall asleep one night research these terms.
God is always love and He has no difficulty walking in love. We are the ones who have difficulty because our own selfishness keeps getting in the way.
This Lent, I am encouraging you to think of some ways that you can employ some form of self-discipline and at the same time cultivate acts of love. As I mentioned in the sermon a couple Sundays ago. The classic way is to fast and give the money you save to the poor. Perhaps you forgo some of your favorite foods and place them in the food pantry for Lent. Perhaps you could forgo one of your favorite TV shows and take that time that you would spend watching the TV show and volunteer to help the less fortunate. The list is endless. The key elements are that you must exercise your will in a self-disciplined way and you must take that energy and offer it to God by helping someone less fortunate. It is always best to talk with your spiritual father before you embark on these types of activities. He knows you, and he knows human nature. He has also helped many others on their spiritual journey. He is not there as a police man but as a guide to help along the way. You and your spiritual father can craft a plan fitted to your personality and station in life with all of its demands.
St Paul’s admonitions are definitely the ideal. Another application for Lent is to pick one of those characteristics and ask the Lord to help you in that particular area. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Perhaps you could work on patience, kindness or pride. One word of caution: you should expect resistance. In Texas I knew a pastor friend of mine. He decided that he would fast just one meal a day for Lent. He confided in me that he often did this a matter of course during his days. He would often become so busy that he would forget to eat. He told me that it would be a “piece of cake.” Yes, the pun was intentional. After a few days, we were together and he told me that this fasting was too difficult. He was going to give in and give it up. He told me that all he thought about was food. Instead of being busy, as he had been, he constantly thought about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It became a real challenge to him, so much that he was going to throw in the towel.
Are you surprised by that? What a piece of news. When he fasted without any spiritual intent, it was easy. The minute he fasted for spiritual growth; he ran into severe resistance. I was his spiritual father and we discussed what had been going on in the realm of the unseen, in the realm of the spirit. We composed a plan to continue the spiritual growth so that he would not give up and lose the race that he had started for Lent. We worked out a plan with accountability. I was not a Police man looking for infractions. I was his encourager hopefully cheering him onto the finish line.
I should add that his experience is very common. Any time we plan to do something spiritual including just a daily devotional we should plan for all things to go haywire. The phone will ring. The dishwasher will behave strangely. We will think of a million other activities, including the most mundane and menial, that must be done at the very time of our devotional. It’s normal. It’s the devil’s plan. Just ignore him and press on.
The traditional church of Christ that reaches back to the ancient wisdom of the Church and still uses the traditional calendar offers us extremely valuable tools. The rest of the Church world has forsaken the wisdom of their forefathers and skipped the Pre-Lenteon season. We still have time to think and pray about how to prepare for Lent. And you have a pastor that takes Lent seriously. At St Timothy’s we take spiritual growth and our love for Jesus seriously. I’m encouraging you to pray about what form of discipline you can employ to help you run the race and sharpen your love skills thru sacrificing your own self will. The Lord will lead and guide you. We still have two days until ashes will be imposed upon our brows and Lent will officially start with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” These words remind us that one day we will all turn to dust when our breath leaves us and we stand face to face with pure unadulterated love. Now is the time to run the race to walk in love so that we may truly glorify our God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
