"To Love as God Loves"

First Presbyterian Church
January 28, 2007
Peter S. Buehler
1 Corinthians 13:1-13

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love.

It seems strange to read 1 Corinthians 13 in a Sunday morning church service. Do you find yourself wondering Where's the bride? Where's the groom? Where am I?

I'm used to 1 Corinthians 13 being read by a member of a wedding party, by a friend or a sibling of the bride or groom. As the person officiating I find myself focusing on whether or not they've practiced, whether they're taking their role seriously, whether they're making some eye contact, whether they're speaking into the microphone.
The wedding guests are focusing on the bride and groom and not much else. And the bride and groom are focusing on each other and aren't hearing a thing; they're busy managing their nerves. I know that because I don't remember a thing about my wedding; for all I know 1 Corinthians 13 may have been read. I'm glad we have photographs, because I don't even remember Kati being there.

So it's good to read this scripture on an ordinary Sunday, and it's good to read it in church, because 1 Corinthians 13 is really about life in church, life in the community of faith. Because our life together is all about love -- God's love in Jesus Christ. We know also that if it stops there -- if God's love is preached and taught and talked about but not put into practice -- something is wrong. If love is just words, the message is hollow.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. The Greek city of Corinth in Paul's time was famous for its production of bronze vessels, some of which were used as acoustic vases – primitive microphones for amplifying actors' voices in the theater.
Without love, says Paul, Christians are no different -- just actors, people playing a part. Corinth was known as well for the ecstatic worship practices of pagan cults, groups where leaders used gongs and cymbals of bronze to create a frenzied worship atmosphere which drew in big crowds but changed few lives. All emotion and no substance; religion that's a mile wide and an inch deep. Yet without love, Paul tells the church, Christians are no different from pagans.
In fact, he says, it doesn't matter how gifted you are, how eloquent you are, how wise, how devoted, how selfless you are -- it doesn't matter if your faith can do what Jesus said, so strong you can move mountains -- without love it's nothing. No one gains anything.

A harsh message. I hear this and my first reaction is, I need to have more love! I need to be more loving. It's hard to do! Have you ever tried to be more loving? On our own, it's very hard. Writer Roberta Bondi says it well: Loving can be a difficult business. It is impossible to grit the teeth and love, no matter how much we want to.

We can try, but often what results from our trying is something other than love. A group of 4 to 8 year-olds were asked "What does love mean?" One said, I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones. Another said, I let my big sister pick on me because my Mom says she only picks on me because she loves me. So I pick on my baby sister because I love her.

Another child was asked "What does love mean?" She said, When you tell someone something bad about yourself and you're scared they won't love you anymore. But then you get surprised because not only do they still love you, they love you even more.

Have you had that experience? We think we have to be lovable to be loved, that if we fail we'll forfeit what we've gained, we'll lose those whose love we've worked so hard to earn. Seen in this way, love is a commodity and there is only so much of it; if we lose it it's gone. If we change it's gone. Love is a fragile and precarious thing, we fear, so much so that we may our distance. It's no wonder people keep their distance from God: Will God love me if I get close? If God sees me as we truly am? How close am I willing to get?

Writer and surgeon Richard Selzer tells a story: The surgeon had to operate on a young woman for a cancerous growth in the cheek; in doing so he had to cut the nerve which controlled the muscles of her mouth. When she looked at her misshapen mouth in the mirror, she asked the doctor if it would always be so; he said yes. She began to weep, until her young husband knelt down beside her, looked at her, and said, 'I like it'; he shaped his mouth to hers. Writes the surgeon, 'I felt as though I was in the presence of God.'

We don't imagine we can be loved as we truly are. Love always takes us by surprise; it's not ever what we expect. It's why the gospel is so transforming -- when we open ourselves to God's love in Jesus Christ we realize that we are not only accepted as we are, we are cherished and embraced as we are. Theologian Krister Stendahl reminds us that God's love is not condescension, as we suspect it is. God's love is not his saying to us, "I have such great love for you, you awful wretches, that I can love even someone like you." That's condescension.

But the New Testament word for God's love, agape, used throughout 1 Corinthians 13, suggests esteem. It's not that God overlooks our faults; God sees in us our quality. God loves all of us; God loves every part of us. We see it in Jesus' and the stories in the Gospels, that he actually likes the people he's with, especially the sinners.
Everyone else -- the religious officials, even the disciples -- are impatient with Jesus, if not shocked and embarrassed that he doesn't prefer "good" people to "bad" people. How could he possibly be the Messiah when he can't tell the difference?

But this is agape; this is the unreasonable never-expected transforming love of God in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. Jesus became human so that we might become like Jesus.
He loves us as we are, so that we might love others as they are. Because true love, Christian love, does not condescend. It doesn't say, I love you because I'm supposed to love you. It doesn't say I love you because I'm hoping if I love you enough you will change and become a better person. Christian love does not say, The quality of my faith is proved by the fact that I can love even you!

When God's love is in us, when we love and accept others because we are loved and accepted, we see in them what is lovable, even their humanness. It changes us. I remember an episode in my ministry that was trying -- trying because I was trying so hard and having so many problems, two in particular. Two elders who tried my patience, wisdom, and faith! Two members of the session who were always fighting. And bitterly; they had the spiritual gift of rubbing each other the wrong way, and leaving the rest of us wishing we were somewhere else, anywhere else. Both were smart, stubborn, articulate, strong, and clueless. I couldn't believe they couldn't see themselves as others saw them. I had decided long before that their respective spouses were saints.

And neither one ever missed church. I couldn't figure it out. But I remember things changing when, the evening following a particularly bad meeting, we had a mid-week communion service for the congregation at which everyone was invited to form a circle around the table. Each person served his or her neighbor: This is the body of Christ, broken for you. This is the blood of Christ shed for you. I could hardly believe it, but my two warring elders were standing right beside each other; they served each other the bread and the cup. There was no incident; nothing was spilled, nothing was thrown. But something occurred to me that I'll never forget: it was the realization that Christ loved them as they were. That there was much to love in them, despite the pathology I saw. Christ himself wanted them in that circle, just as he wanted me and every other problem person in the congregation. The surprise for me was that in that moment, both this man and this woman were completely lovable. It was God's love that made it so.

Jesus' words are amazing, shocking, troubling, saving, redeeming: If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same… But love your enemies, do good… Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. (Luke 6:32-35)

Our goal as followers of Jesus is clear, we are called to love as God loves. If God is gracious, if God doesn't count our trespasses against us, if God washes away all our sins, if God accepts us at his table, then we are to do the same.

Nor are we ever to say we can't. I can't love him for what he did; I can't love her the way she is. Of course we can't! That's not the point.
The issue is not whether we are humanly capable of loving those who are unlovable. The issue is whether we are willing to change. Because there are always two directions for faith, toward God and away from God. We always have a choice to make: What will our direction be? It is never a once and for all choice. It's one we make daily, even hourly. We know the difference in direction because if we move toward God we are acknowledging our willingness to change -- no matter how hard it is for us, no matter how small the steps we take.

For us, showing God's love may involve not doing something, not saying something. Sometimes the word "No" is God's grace to our hearts. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, says Paul. 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. We may think our feelings are our feelings and there's nothing we can do about it, so how can we not be irritable when we feel that way, or resentful when we have cause to be? We're only human, we say. I'm not a patient person, I say; I'd like to be kind but sometimes I'm not, I say. It's the way I am.

But to love is to change, to be different than we are. To love is to believe in love. To love is to let go of fear. To love is to trust completely the One who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
To love is to believe that love never ends, that it is eternal, that every step we take in its direction is a step closer to God.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.
Which is why we choose to follow Jesus, the Lord of love. We are face to face with brothers and sisters and strangers today. We do not have to wait to see what love looks like.