After Easter, our church has been looking at a fairly familiar passage. In fact, my guess is that you have heard the passage many times, but always out of context.
I may regret writing this article because I might ruin what pastors say at weddings. The passage is First Corinthians chapter 13, which is the famous love chapter. You have likely heard, and I have preached, at weddings on this passage.
It is perfect for a wedding. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Wow. Great stuff to preach at a wedding – except Paul isn’t talking about a wedding.
The church in Corinth was an amazing place, a lot like where we live. Corinth was a city built on trade; it sat and sits between northern and southern Greece and between the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. Often boats would come into one port, have their wares put onto carts and then put onto another ship at the other port, and by doing this they would avoid a long and dangerous trip around the south of Greece.
It was a city with all sorts of ethnicities, languages, talents, levels of income. People were in Corinth to make money; talent and knowledge was important. People in the church took that attitude into church, where it shouldn’t have been.
Let me also say the people in the church in Corinth were talented people, with lots of spiritual gifts. What they were doing though, was arguing about who should be in charge of the church based on which gifts were better.
Paul tells them they have missed the point. If they have the gift on speaking in tongues, but have not love, they are a useless clanging gong. If they have the gift of prophesy, which some did, and can understand mysteries, but have not love, they are nothing.
Love is the most important thing. Gifts are important. In the prior chapter, Paul talks about how the church fits together like a body fits together, and one body part can’t say to another, “I don’t need you, you’re only a foot while I am an eye” – that would make as much sense as a person with the gift of teaching telling someone with the gift of hospitality that their gift doesn’t matter that much.
God gifts all of His followers, and the church is not to rank gifts, but to use them all together.
This is a little bit of a six-sermon series we’re working through. If you are interested, you can find the earlier sermons on our website. I will say that for Christians, Love is actually a Person, Jesus, who is kind and patient, when I fall short of that.
Jesus doesn’t envy, doesn’t boast, isn’t proud but went to the cross to take on the penalty of the sins of anyone who wants to claim Him as Savior.
Jesus’ love never fails. Mine does. I’m being changed by the presence of God in my life, but I’m not there yet. Hopefully I’m better at loving people than I was last year.
My last hope is that I haven’t ruined all those wedding talks you’ve ever heard. If I have, I apologize.
Moore is pastor at Union Presbyterian Church in Los Altos.
