Epiphany 4 (1/31/10)
1 Corinthians 13
“The Greatest of These”
Our choir’s anthem this morning is based on an old camp song has been around for many years: Love, love, love, love, Christians this is our call, love your neighbor as yourself, for God loves all. Of course like many old camp songs, this one has an interesting history. I don’t know who came up with these words, but the melody is that of a much older English folk song: “Hey, ho, nobody home.” Some musicologists say this was originally a Christmas carol—but one of a rather peculiar kind. Carolers in the 16th century would go from house to house, not just for the purpose of spreading Christmas cheer, but hoping to be offered some treats in return for their labors—sort of Halloween dressed up like Santa Claus, I suppose. If no one answered the door, they’d sing this song: Hey, ho, nobody home, meat nor drink nor money have I none; yet will I be merry, hey, ho, nobody home. It was their determination to be merry in spite of being stiffed by the homeowner! Better, I suppose, than t-p-ing the house!
It seems to me that often when we read the Bible’s admonitions about our call to love one another, it’s sort of like hey, ho, nobody home! Often we just don’t get it. Paul’s chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13 washes over us with familiar ease, and yet I sometimes sense that many of us don’t really understand what he’s getting at. Many of us have bought an idea of love that is not what the Bible has in mind. So this morning I’d like to talk about what real Christian love is, and about what we often mistake for Christian love, and about how we can get on the right track.
First, what Christian love is. Here we need a quick Greek lesson—a review for many of you, I hope. The English language is a bit limited when it comes to expressing emotions or feelings. We use the same word “love” for a whole range of different emotions. I love my wife, I love my dog, I love music, and I love chocolate chip cookies—but what I mean by “love” in each of those cases is different (at least one would hope so!).
The Greek of the New Testament is not so limited. Where English has only one word, Greek has several—each of them must be translated into English as “love,” because that’s the only word we have. One of their words is eros. That’s the name of the Greek goddess of love. Eros is romantic love, the source of our word “erotic. It is the love between a man and a woman.
Then
there is philia, which is affection between
friends. The city of
A third word in Greek is storge. This is love of one’s family or nation. It has a large dose of loyalty involved in it.
But there is a fourth word in Greek, and that is the one Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 13. It is agape, and it is the word used throughout the New Testament to describe the love that God has for us, and the love that we are to have for one another. Now before Christianity came along, agape was rarely used. For the Greeks, it was a rather tame word, not very well-suited to describe love. The reason was that agape sees no differences between people. It is a general attitude of good will. One cannot have agape for one person but not another, because agape does not make distinctions. It does not love someone because she is good, or because he is beautiful, or because she is rich—but just because that person is!
This kind of love, of course, is quite different from the other kinds we’ve mentioned. They are all exclusive, particular, directed at specific people and not at others. But agape makes no distinctions. And understanding that, I think you can see that agape is the kind of love that God has for us. God loves us, not because we’re beautiful, or good, but simply because God chooses to love us. And God doesn’t love me more than you because I’m a pastor, or Lutherans more than Baptists, or Americans more than Arabs. God loves us all.
Now the Bible says that this same kind of love, this agape, is the love that Christians are to have for others. Christian love goes out to everyone, it cares for everyone. It is just like God’s love for us—unearned, undeserved.
But our problem is that we often think Christian love is something else, and so we become confused. There are three misunderstandings that seem to me particularly common.
The first is the mistaken idea that Christians must love everyone the same. “Now wait a minute, pastor, you just said that Christian love means loving everyone the same, and now you say it doesn’t?” But you see, there’s a subtle distinction here. I said that Christian love means loving everyone the same, but that doesn’t mean that Christians have to love everyone in the same way. And the reason for that is that Christians experience love other than Christian love.
Let me give you an illustration. Once years ago I asked my grandmother to tell me about her brothers and sisters. There were ten children in that family, most of whom died before my Grandmother did. As Grandma went down the list, she told me a little about each one. When she got to her brother Dave, she became visibly more warm and excited. “I loved him so much!” she said. “Of course I loved them all, but Dave was special, he was my friend!” Well, you know that kind of feeling. Grandma loved all her brothers and sisters because she was their sister—but Dave was more than just her brother, he was her friend!
Christians
sometimes feel guilty because they know that they love some people more than
others. But what they forget is that there are different kinds of love.
Christians are supposed to love everyone the same, and that love is agape.
But Christians can also have friends, family, spouse—and they can experience
those other loves: philia, storge,
eros. Those loves
single people out and make distinctions, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Christians aren’t expected to love everyone as best friends; they are expected
to love everyone as children of God. But those aren’t the same thing! So
Christian love, agape, means loving everyone the same; but Christians
experience other kinds of love, too. And that’s good, and nothing to worry
about.
The
second mistaken idea is closely related. It is the idea that in order to love
somebody, you must like him. This just isn’t so. There are a few people,
perhaps, who are able to genuinely like everyone they meet, but most of us are
not that way. When I was a college student, I remember my bishop at the time
saying, “God says I have to love everybody, but he never said I have to like
everybody. There’s some folks I don’t like just
because I don’t care for the way their nose fits on their face.” Well, he had a
point! The real test of Christian love comes when we are required to love
someone we don’t especially like!
There was a man whose neighbor was a nasty old lady whom everyone disliked. This man didn’t care much for her either, and yet he often went out of his way to be pleasant to her. One day she happened to remark that he was the only friend she had. This took him by surprise. He wasn’t her friend in the usual sense of the word; he didn’t even like being around her. Yet he understood that we can love someone, and treat someone lovingly, and with respect, patience, and kindness—even if it is someone who is difficult to like.
The third misconception may be the worst of all. It is the idea that to love someone, you must always be sweet. This is a terrible idea, one that causes great harm. Christian love isn’t like that—Christian love has teeth. Most of us who have been parents realize that sometimes you are forced to play the heavy with your children. Sometimes parents seem unsympathetic or even rather harsh—not because they don’t love their kids, but because they do love them. Sometimes appearing unsympathetic is the only way to prevent a child from harming himself. Today we have a term for it; we call it “tough love.”
And the same principle applies in our relationships with one another. Those who have studied alcoholism, for example, say that many people will go right on drinking destructively as long as their sympathetic and loving family and friends feel sorry for them. The experts generally advise that they stop being so sympathetic, so that the person is forced to come to grips with the problem. Love requires us to treat such a person in ways that, on the surface, may seem unfeeling; but in the long run, it is the only way effectively to express our love.
In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus has words of rebuke for the Galilean crowds. He rebukes them because he loves them. His love requires him to be stern, even demanding. The ultimate goal is their salvation, but Jesus understands that harsh words may be necessary to reach that goal.
I’ve said what Christian love is, and something of what it is not. What remains is to say something about how we can develop this agape, this Christian love. The most important thing to say is that it is a process of growth. We don’t just suddenly love everyone when we are baptized! That’s why Paul uses this image of being a child and then becoming an adult. Learning to love people in this way is a matter of growth.
But what that means is that we should periodically take stock of just how we’re doing! I think one of the best ways to do that is to make use of the things Paul says about love, as a kind of guideline. Try this with me: Take your bulletin cover, and look at the second lesson. Run down to the second paragraph, verses 4-7. Now we’re going to read those verses in unison, but every place it says “love”, or where it says “It” meaning “love,” I want you to say your own name. Ready? Let’s start: Dick is patient; Dick is kind; Dick is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Dick does not insist on his own way; Dick is not irritable or resentful; Dick does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Dick bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Now, if you are like me, there were some of those things that didn’t sound too bad with your name in there; but there were others that made you squirm just a bit because they aren’t exactly true for you all the time. The ones that made you squirm, you see, are the ones where you have a little growing to do!
In the end, the most important thing is to know that love is a gift. We miss that in Paul’s chapter, if we read it alone, apart from what comes before in 1 Corinthians. This letter is about gifts that God gives us. There are many wonderful gifts, he says, but the greatest of them all is agape, love. Wherever in our lives we find ourselves a little short on love, it is appropriate and good to ask God to give us what we lack. If we ask for the gift of love, God will give it. It is a gift he wants to give to us—and like all his gifts, he gives it in order that we may share it with others.