1 Corinthians 13:1-13 - May 5, 2024

The scene is already in your mind, I’m sure.

There are lovely flowers all around the room. It seems the lights are just a bit brighter than normal. It might be because of the extra candles lit up and down the aisle - or it may just be the extra energy and anticipation surrounding the day. People are showing up a little bit early to get their seats.

The music starts - Pachelbel, Canon in D on violins. It’s elegant and soft. It’s time. 

Five men wearing tuxedos - impeccably pressed - enter from the side door. Then, one by one, women wearing (hopefully) elegant gowns, rhythmically file down the aisle, each ending up opposite a man of roughly the same height. Then, the music changes. 

It’s a bit stronger, louder, prouder - and there enters the bride, grasping father with one arm and, in the other, a bouquet slightly more grand than the preceding bridesmaids. The slightly-embarrassed-because-everyone-is-looking-at-me smile is on her face. Yet, she doesn’t care. The bride arrives; the father takes his seat; the pastor begins. 

And chances are, about eight minutes into the service, someone will read, “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.”

And why wouldn’t they? It’s poetic! It’s got love in it! It’s perfect. This passage was made for weddings. 

Except, it’s not about weddings. Yes, it is poetic. And yes, it does talk about love. A lot. But it’s not about holy matrimony. It’s not about a wedding. It’s about more than that. It’s about love. 

Well, what’s the difference? Love and marriage. They go together like a horse and carriage! 

As one of my seminary professors used to say, we’ve got an English problem here. It comes down to translation. It is about love, but for us English speakers, that can mean a whole bunch of things. I love my wife and I love… strawberries? 

So, from the onset of our passage, we have two things working against us. First is our “love” of strawberries and the second is that this passage is nearly synonymous with the American wedding. 

Yet, Paul means something more here when he talks about love. It’s not a love of berries - be they blue, black, rasp, or straw. Nor is it a “hubba hubba” kind of love. It’s not even a deeply romantic, monogamous, fidelity kind of love. The kind of love Paul is talking about here is bigger and greater and deeper. It’s about more than that. 

It’s about God’s love. You know, that big, unconditional love. The love we can’t describe but put adjectives to anyway. It is inclusive. Inescapable. Undeserved. Always there. The Greek word for this kind of love - for God’s love - is agape; it is agape love that God has for us. Agape love is love at its ultimate.

But this passage is about even more than that. It’s not just about what God’s agape love is. It’s about what God’s agape love does.

In a span of five verses, love is the subject of 16 verbs in a row. Sixteen!!! In every phrase, God’s love is the subject of action. That may not come through in our rather static English adjectives: “Love is patient; love is kind…” Instead, Paul says love “shows patience.” Love “acts with kindness.” Love is a busy, active thing that never ceases to work, to do, to act.

It is a love that restores. A love that can eat with sinners and heal lepers.
It is a love that impacts. A love that doesn’t just make you feel better, but changes you.
It is a love that sacrifices. A love that will give its all - like on a cross.
It is a love that endures - a love nothing will stop - like the love that bursts out from an empty tomb. 

Paul tells us so many things about what love does, and the last thing he says is that “love never ends.” It is always there. And of the three great things that define the church - faith, hope, and love - love is the greatest, and the only one that won’t end.

See faith... faith will end. One day, our faith will turn into sight.
Hope, one day will end, because our hopes will be fulfilled.
But love will remain. Active, agape love will always remain. Because God’s love will not fail, will not fall, will not falter. Because for God, love isn’t some commodity to give out, some resource to deplete, some feeling God has. God IS love. Jesus is love. And God, love, will never end.

God draws us into this - not just love, but God draws us into who God is. 

As we hear at the end of the passage, this active, unending love knows us. We are already fully known as we are, and we are loved - drawn in - anyway. Our brokenness, sinfulness, and our own lack of agape love do not drive God’s love away. God’s love shows patience in our mess-ups and screw-ups. God’s love acts with kindness when we aren’t deserving of such a response. God’s love bears all our brokenness. God’s love endures all we do. We are loved - not abstractly, but actively. You are loved. This love, this God, shapes us so that we can love as we do and act as we do. 

See this whole chapter isn’t just about God’s active, agape love. It’s about the Church living that love out. If you remember from last week, we started in the first chapter of this letter to the Corinthians. The church there in Corinth was having some issues. They were picking sides and fighting about who was right. Paul, here, reminds them of God’s active love. But more than that, Paul is also expecting the church to live out this type of love. To put these loving attributes into action. That’s the whole point of this chapter - not to tell us what love is, but to teach us what love does. 

Active love is about a new reality, a new possibility - that here, in a place and community where active love is found, people feel and know the promise of God’s active love in Jesus. Active love looks like including, serving, forgiving, praying, welcoming, being patient, showing kindness, rejoicing in the truth, and never stopping any of it. 

Are we ever going to be perfect at it? Not this side of the Kingdom… But we should lead with love. Otherwise, we are like one of those wind-up monkeys who claps their cymbals together. Or you can be a noisy gong, if you like. 

The "Wedding Text" - and love in general - is not a passive, observable event that seeks our affirmation and support, but something that calls - yearns! - for our participation. This is not a text where we are asked to look on as guests, dressed up for a party and seated dutifully in the church pews, but rather needs our involvement and our action.

We are the body of Christ. We are loved. We make that love known, first and foremost.

Because God first showed us patience. God first acted with kindness. God first loved us.

And that’s the greatest.