Love
“Love” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! This is the second week of our sermon series on Fruit of the Spirit. I’m going to guess that the concept of this first fruit “love” and the text which Ted read for us to describe it are both familiar to you. In fact, one of the challenges about preaching on this text is that all or most of us have hear it before. It is a staple of wedding services — and for good reason. I didn’t have Ted read the entirety of the chapter, but it is lyric and comforting and profound, but also perhaps hard to find anything here you haven’t heard before.
I’m going to begin by talking around this text for a bit, to set the context of what is going on around this text. This letter was written by the Apostle Paul, part of several letters which he sent to the church at Corinth. Although we have letters labeled 1st and 2nd Corinthians in our Bibles, scholars believe that there were at least 4 letters: 1 Corinthians 5:9 mentions a previous letter, and 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and chapter 7 mention a letter in between the two existing ones. Why so many letters to the same group of people? These are clearly not letters of commendation. The letter referenced in 1 Corinthians is about avoiding people who are sexually immoral, and the letter referenced in 2 Corinthians is called the Severe, or the Sorrowful letter. Paul acknowledges that his reproof may have been the cause grief and sorrow, but rejoices because it led the people of the Corinthian Church to repentance.
Corinth was a cosmopolitan seaport and the church had Jews but mostly Gentiles — non-Jews — and a mix of ethnicity, and a mix of rich a poor, folks of different social standing, and people from different areas of the city. There’s inherent tension and conflict in variety and disparity like this, and then added to it the bad behavior like a guy sleeping with his mother-in-law, and this means there is a lot going on for all these baby Christians. What does all this have to do with love, you may be wondering. I’m glad you asked. Especially in 1 Corinthians, an arguing point in the church was who was most blessed with the gifts of the spirit. These are not exactly the same as the fruit of the spirit which Paul lists in Galatians 5:22-23, but in 1 Corinthians 12 there’s a list which includes prophecy, ministry, faith, wisdom, teaching, healing, speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues. These gifts had become a battleground for asserting spiritual authority over other folks in the congregation, and for arguing about who was the most mature. Me, No Me!
Paul begins the text which we know as 1 Corinthians 13 by listing some of these spiritual gifts: speaking in tongues, prophecy, and faith — and sets each of them alongside the gift of love. Paul doesn’t denigrate spiritual gifts like prophesy, he just says that if we have those gifts without love, those spiritual gifts which we are so eager to brag about and hold over other people are worthless. And then he goes on to list characteristics of love. Many of these are also fruit of the spirit which will address on their own in the coming weeks.
[Word Cloud Slide] Many of these are characteristics which you mention at the end of last week’s Bible study when I asked you words which you associate with love. Here’s a version with all those words smushed together: the words which are larger are ones which were mentioned more than once. Take a minute to study these, and I’ll read a few of them. Tolerance, trust, acceptance, silence, painful, money. I’ll leave this up and let you chew over it a bit. At the end of our Bible study today, I will invite those who are present to generate a similar list of words which you associate with our next fruit of the Spirit, which is . . . ? Joy.
Joy is not part of Paul’s list of characteristics of love patient, kind, not jealous, boastful, or rude, but Paul certainly talks about joy and rejoicing elsewhere. Rather than go through Paul’s list in 1 Corinthians 13, I’m going to invite you to listen to some things about love. [Slide Down] The first is a story I head from my father-in-law, Tim’s father, Wilbur, about one of the most important things he learned in medical residency. Wilbur was trained as a general practitioner — back in the day when family doctors also delivered babies and did general surgery. He did his residency in Flint, Michigan in the mid-1950s. He told me this story about what happened in his intern year — that is, the 1st year of residency when young doctors fresh out of medical school are at the bottom of the medical hierarchy and are thrown into real-world situations and often work long and grueling hours. Wilbur was covering an emergency room in Flint with his attending doctor, and a woman came in with her five year old son who was profoundly disabled. The mother had spent the last five years of her life providing almost 24 hour care for tis child and he was in a medical crisis. The child did not survive the crisis, and Wilbur was the medical representative who was sent to tell the mother and tell her that her son had died. He assumed that the mother might receive this news with some measure of relief, since so much of her life had been consumed with the child’s care.
This was not the case. The mother was devastated and inconsolable at the loss of her child — a child that some people might have imagined or even characterized as a burden. The lesson that Wilbur learned and shared with me from his medical internship was not about disease or treatment or even hospital administration; it was about love. It was about love and the mistaken assumptions we can make about how and why other people love whom they do. That’s a pretty important lesson, not only for physicians, but for anyone.
I thought of that story in connection to this text for a couple of reasons. First as a cautionary tale about making assumptions about other people, especially when we don’t know or don’t understand what their circumstances have been. The more important reason is that that mother’s love for her disabled son is a window into God’s love for us. Here is the heart of what I hope you hear today: God does not love us for our utility, or how much we get done. God loves us because we are God’s children. Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners and many of us are still generally a damned mess. We are still God’s children, and I believe God grieves when we are lost, even if we’ve been lost for a while. It’s good to get things done, of course. Families and churches need functional people, and service is a tangible way of showing our love for our family or our church; but if we start talking about the things we deserve or are entitled to or have earned from God, we are on shaky theological ground. If God loves us unconditionally, that means we can’t do anything which will make God love us more. And of course, we can do things which are against God’s will, but those will not make God love us any less. It also means that God loves other people, and we should be careful about making assumptions about their circumstances, or about how much they love their children, or how much God loves them.
I’m going to take a few minutes to share another expression of love with you. We have shared that Roger Neal had a stroke while he was visiting his son Joe in Denver at the end of May. I knew Joe managed a ranch in Colorado, but I didn’t know he was a musician. Joe wrote a song for Roger about the experience of his stroke. I’m going to play that song for you, and while you listen, I’m going to invite you to think about how love might be what we do NOT do; specifically setting aside our agenda and our pride and not doing something in order give ourselves time to heal and for our health or our spouse and our family’s peace of mind. There is so much about the performance and that message which is remarkable, I am not going to say more. Please plan to join us for fellowship and Bible study in the Gathering Area following worship, and you’ll have an opportunity to share with each other during that time. Thanks to Mike Kauffman, who is our leader this week.