Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "A More Excellent Way"
Date: January 28, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  1 Corinthians 13

I can’t tell you how many weddings I’ve done where I’ve heard someone stand at this pulpit and read First Corinthians 13.  Actually, I tried to figure out how many one day last week.  Of the 534 weddings I’ve done here over the past twenty years, probably 45% of them have used that reading.  So while you may hear it once every three years when it comes around in the lectionary cycle, I’ve heard it here approximately 240 times!  And I chuckle inwardly when a girl or woman reading it uses the version that begins in verse 11 with “When I was a child…” and concludes with “When I became a man…”

While the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians is frequently conscripted to duty as a wedding reading, Paul had nothing about romantic love or marriage in mind when he wrote it in the middle of the first century.  If you were here last week, we painted a picture of the contentious and fractious times the Corinth Community Church was suffering as new Christians from a variety of other religious backgrounds, or none at all, came into membership.  Paul tried to tell them that each one of them was as important as any part of the human body, and the entire body together is better than various parts of the body apart.

And then again Paul is struck by inspiration.  “…I will show you a more excellent way,” and he introduces the whole concept of love. 

The great reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) noted even back in the 16th century that talk of love in the context of the bitterly divided church at Corinth seems a bit strange.  However, it makes the affirmation of love all the more significant when applied to a divided church.  He wrote:

“Among the Corinthians no slight number had gone astray; in fact almost the whole body was infected.  There was not one kind of sin only, but very many; and they were no light errors but frightful mis-deeds; there was corruption not only of morals but of doctrine.  What does the holy apostle...do about this?  Does he seek to separate himself from such?  Does he cast them out of Christ's Kingdom?  Does he fell them with the ultimate thunderbolt of anathema?  He not only does nothing of the sort; he even recognizes and proclaims them to be the church of Christ and the communion of the saints.” (Calvin, Institutes 4.1.14, p. 1028.)

Love is a word with many connotations, in our culture as well as in the Greek culture in which Paul wrote.  To make it a little more ‘in-you-hands’ understandable, I reprinted on the bulletin insert the three words used in the Greek language for love.  Philia, denoting love of family or friend or even an idea.  Eros, dealing with sensual or sexual love, where physical attraction and emotional bonding go hand in hand.  And agape, dealing with a love where the concern is not for self but for other.  It is of much significance to note that 90% of all New Testament writings use the word agape to denote which form of love is being used.

It is this type of love that motivates us as Christians in our day and age to reach out in compassion to help others.  We are not doing it for ourselves, although we might feel some sense of altruism when we may reflect later about what we have done.  But the compassion, love, understanding and acceptance with which Jesus reached out to those marginalized in his own society by poverty, illness or ethnicity is the same agape love which Paul writes about a generation later.  And I should like to think it has been the hallmark of the Christian church ever since, although I know that not to be entirely true.  To be sure, some hurtful things have been done in the name of the church and on behalf of a certain narrow or warped view of Christianity.  But in the larger sense, medical facilities and medical clinics among destitute populations; educational institutions on every level from elementary schools in areas of illiteracy to graduate schools in major cities; agricultural and engineering missionaries that have helped native people produce better crops in their country; not to mention all that the faithful derive from their own parish church—all these come from the church reaching out in agape love, wanting to give more than expecting an equal amount in return.

Oddly enough, although Paul expected Christ’s return soon and thought there was no need to encumber your life with marriage, there is one portion of today’s chapter that deserves to be read at weddings as a couple sets out to live together in the give-and-take of marriage: 

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  (vss. 4-7)

This is the very essence of how a couple in a committed relationship ought to treat one another.  Love for another enables us to build them up, to take a genuine interest in their well-being and future, not to put them down over some standard they don’t measure up to, in your eyes.  On one level, Paul’s assertions represent the “running forgiveness” that is essential to any sustained relationship.  On another level, they establish love as the context in which the difficulties and trials of life are met.  Because love is never held alone in one’s self; love always involves another; love always links one’s self to another.  Love is a two-way street that provides a context of mutuality, understanding, and relatedness between each person and others, between God and believers, and between believers and believers.  And that is the context in which love enables us, with the support of the others who are linked in love, to bear, to endure whatever comes along.

Love is such a powerful force in our world that for three months in 1917 Mahatma Gandhi set himself to read and read over again First Corinthians 13.  When he saw his supporters drifting toward violence he would often advise them to read Paul on love.

For a new year’s gift, he sent his nephew Maganlal Gandhi a handwritten copy of the chapter.  In an accompanying letter, he spoke of his own ongoing struggle to become truly loving.  He describes love as a dagger and says “If we could get hold of this dagger [of love] and get also the strength to stab ourselves with it, we could shake the world.”  Significantly, that story is told in an article entitled “Gandhi and the Greatest Thing in the World.”  (William W. Emilsen, “Gandhi and the greatest thing in the world,” Expository Times, 113:4; Jan. 2002, 118-9.)

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly,” writes Paul, “but then we will see face to face.” (v. 12)  For now, we are caught up in the pursuit of the desires of our hearts, looking everywhere for security, adoration, achievement and satisfaction.  Ultimately, though, these are not found in a mirror, in magic formulas, in spiritual gifts, in boardrooms, pulpits or anywhere else.

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (v. 13)  It is love that vanquishes all selfish desire.  In the end, it’s love that enables us to see ourselves as we truly are, and, perhaps more importantly, see others as God sees them.

That’s a power we need and can all use!