January 31, 2016 – I Corinthians 13:1-13
Epiphany 4C – I Corinthians 13:1-13
Love Does not Fall
4th Sunday after Epiphany – January 31, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We have had our share of characters among the members of First Lutheran Church.
And surely one of my favourite characters was Willy Max Krieger.
I loved Willy Max.
First: there was his name. I mean, “Willy Max”? Come on! You gotta love that name.
And then, Willy Max was an outsized character,
who could come across as bluff and opinionated.
One of my favourite things was when I would get into a conversation with him and
I would try and respond to some of the things he said, and he would say,
“Just a minute, just a minute, I’m talking and then you can have your turn.”
It was a little disconcerting.
But sure enough, once he was done, he would look at me and say, “Okay, now YOU talk!”
I loved that.
But what I also loved about Willy Max was this:
If the central theme of my sermon on any given Sunday was not love,
Willy Max would not be happy.
There is only one subject for a sermon, said Willy Max: the subject of love.
Well, I’m not sure what Willy Max would think about the apostle Paul.
I have said before, I think, that Paul does not talk about love very often.
Which is surprising – the greatest New Testament writer and thinker,
and yet, he rarely speaks of love!
But, I have also said, when he does so it is always in a most impressive way.
And that is surely nowhere more on display than here in the 13th chapter of Corinthians.
This is perhaps the most famous passage in the New Testament,
frequently read at weddings.
But Paul, of course, is not talking about marriage here.
He is talking about, as we have seen the last few weeks,
a church community that is deeply divided.
A church community that has gotten caught up in showing off the gifts of individual members,
a church community that has forgotten that all have gifts to share and that
they are all equally important to the loving mission of the congregation.
A church community that has forgotten what it is all about.
Is it about the individual?
Or is it about the community and how the community can serve the world around it?
Paul comes out clearly in the latter camp: the church is the physical body of Christ on earth,
here to serve the whole world and participate with God in God’s loving mission to
love, bless, heal and feed this world and every person in it.
It is a community of love.
Now this translation of I Corinthians is famous and
has its roots in the King James version of the Bible.
And it comes across as if Paul is trying to describe what love is in the abstract,
as if love were this static thing, or this feeling, and he is trying to describe it.
But in the Biblical world love is not an abstract thing or a feeling.
Above all, in the Biblical world, love is action.
In our translation we have “love is patient, love is kind.”
But that is not really what Paul says,
What he writes literally is “Love shows patience, love acts with kindness.”
Love is a busy, active, never resting thing, always seeking the welfare of its neighbour.
That’s why Paul says at the beginning that if you say you have love but are not actually
doing love you don’t have it: you’re full of noise signifying nothing.
The point is not what love is – the point is what love does.
And then, says Paul, as he reaches his climax, love never ends.
Which is okay, and I have riffed on that before, saying that love doesn’t end,
but that is the end, it is the point, it is the final destiny of all that is, it’s why you exist.
But really a more accurate translation of what Paul says here is that love never falls.
It never falters.
It never fails.
And that is where the good news can be found in the passage,
and you realize that really Paul is not talking first of all about the love we show,
but that Paul really is talking the love that God has for us and for all creation,
a love that God loves with that never falls, and that never fails.
A love that is busy and active and working working working to restore this whole world.
Love never falls.
Everything else, says Paul, will fall. Everything.
Nothing shares in the quality of the eternal except love.
Jewish and Christian – and I would add, Muslim – scripture agree that the fundamental
quality of God is love.
In Hebrew it is called hesed: steadfast, neverfailing lovingkindness, mercy.
In Greek it is called agape: self-giving love that looks to the welfare of the other.
In Arabic, it is called rahman and rahim: compassion and mercy.
And in all three traditions these are qualities that are at the absolute heart of God.
They are what is eternal about God.
Vincent van Gogh said that God is that thing in the universe that with irresistible force
urges us toward more loving.
We may fall.
We may falter.
We may fail.
But God’s love never falls.
Those around us may fall.
Those around us may falter.
Those around us may fail.
But God’s love never falters.
The stars may fall.
The moon may turn to black.
And the sea might swallow up the mountains.
But God’s love never fails.
And so we find hope.
And so we find faith.
But we find faith and hope only because God’s love is busy and active,
and that is why love is the greatest of three, God’s busy active love.
Busy in this word this morning, that cares enough to speak to you again that
you are full of gifts and full of worth and full of dignity and full of light and
you can make a difference.
Busy in this meal this morning feeding and sustaining and forgiving and
giving delight and giving life.
Busy in this assembly as we care for one another and greet one another and
hold up one another and wish one another well and pray for one another and
pray the whole entire world.
Busy in this community as we take Jesus at his word this morning that God’s love is
not for one people only but for all peoples, even our enemies.
Busy in First Lutheran Church this morning as we each individually commit to
to our community mission to participate in God’s loving purpose.
Last week we voted overwhelmingly as a community to enter into two new refugee
Co-sponsorships, one with the Mazambi family who are members of our church, and
one with a mixed Ethiopian community of Muslims and Christians who are not.
Now that has God’s busy, active, never-failing love, compassion, and mercy written all over it.
That has Jesus written all over it.
Friends, that was a decision you did not take lightly,
to promise to support 17 newcomers to Canada as an expression of the love of God you
claim to abide in.
You did it because of what you know to be true: God’s love never falls.
The love at work in you will not fail.
Love may take detours you never imagined.
Love’s light may appear at times to go out.
But love will not falter.
It is eternal.
And therefore you can rest assured that no loving action is never wasted.
Everything else in the universe will crumble and fade away.
When the sun finally implodes and the universe collapses in on itself, love will remain.
And love will not fall.
And love will not falter.
And so a beautiful new universe, begun in this love, will be born.
And all the love you have ever received, and all the love you have ever given, will remain to
work its wonder in literally a whole new world.
Willy Max, I hope, wherever you are, you are smiling.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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