1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28
Many of us have heard the 1 Corinthians chapter 13 lesson read at a wedding or a funeral. I would propose, though, that we shouldn’t have because it’s not a lesson written for individuals and the love is not romantic love. As with any time one takes a passage of scripture out of context to create its own meaning, we miss the point of the overall big picture.
Last week we heard chapter 12, where Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the gifts of the Spirit and he was aware that the Corinthians were using these gifts of the Spirit as a form of competition. So, chapter 13 is a continuation of that conversation where Paul is chiding them. Love is not an emotion, as he writes of it; it is a state of being and an action.
For Paul, love is the center of all things. Through the spiritual gifts and our actions we stay connected and in relationship with God. Now you might notice that the word “God” is not in this passage at all.. However, God is throughout this passage. Two sentences that are most commonly quoted: “Love is patient. Love is kind”; those words are how Paul describes God in his letter to Romans in chapter 2: patience and kindness.
Then there’s verse 13: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Well, what does that mean? William Barclay writes: “Faith without love is cold; hope without love is grim. Love is the fire which kindles faith and it is the light which turns hope into certainty.” The heart of our Christian faith is these three things. Paul is asking us, and the Corinthians, to strive to be Christ-like, to express love in a state of being and in our actions; actions such as simple things like taking out the trash, doing the dishes, not screaming and yelling and making obscene gestures to the person who cuts you off in traffic. Will we fail? You bet! I do. However, what are we called to do?
And I propose that Paul says it best in the first sentence of chapter 14: “Pursue love.”
Peace,
The Rev. M.E. Eccles, LPC
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