1 Corinthians 13

Homily for Sunday, January 31, 2016     Buck Mountain Church

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Love is difficult. Love is not for the faint of heart. The kind of Christian love Paul so beautifully describes in this famous passage from his first letter to the Corinthians is anything but easy to fulfill. Although we may think first of romantic love, Paul is not addressing only the kind of love that happens between intimate partners. Paul asks us to demonstrate this kind of love for everyone we encounter. In either case, succeeding at loving others in this way requires a great deal of maturity—and self-control.

Maybe, sometimes, we can manage to be patient or kind. I guess it should be fairly easy to avoid being envious, boastful, arrogant, and rude. But our culture tells us it’s okay to insist on having our own way; some would say it’s our right as Americans. Frank Sinatra and Burger King have told us so. And that part about not being irritable or resentful—avoiding those two reactions can be a daily challenge. Even though this passage is often read at weddings, the love Paul describes is a love that causes pain. Love this true calls for self-sacrifice. At the very least, we put the needs of the other first and relinquish our own. If we recognize that our exemplar of this kind of love is Jesus Christ and contemplate that he demonstrated this love by dying on a cross, how can we not accept that true love requires the willingness to suffer?

In the ancient world, in the time of Jesus and Paul, all people who lived within the boundaries of the Roman Empire would have been aware of the Greek and Roman deities, even of the lesser goddesses known as the Three Graces-- the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, of the qualities Greeks and Romans believed made life worth living. In naming faith, hope, and love as God’s abiding gifts to us, was Paul redefining the Three Graces in Christian terms?

Christians believe grace is God’s unfailing love and mercy for us—and for everyone. God’s grace is freely given, but it is up to us to receive it. In the Judeo-Christian heritage, this definition of grace is a long-standing one. Even in the Old Testament book of Lamentations, a book mostly preoccupied, as its title suggests, with the woes of the people of Israel, we read these beautifully reassuring words that sum up grace: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” Somehow, for Paul, the intertwining qualities of faith, hope, and love are bound together in our ability to welcome and receive the grace of God, so freely given. But why does Paul acknowledge love as the greatest of these?

We have all known people who lack faith in God, although they may place their faith in other things—wealth, reason, nature, family. Even though they lack faith, as we understand it, God’s unfailing love and mercy, God’s grace is still available to them. People without faith can be blessed to experience this kind of love through their beloved family members.  Hopelessness, on the other hand, can appear to be a more shattering state of existence. Someone who has no hope may feel dead within, having no sense of purpose or reason to keep on going. And yet, a hand outstretched in love may give such a person hope and restore him or her to life. Through the BMEC food pantry, members of this parish—YOU—offer hope to some who may feel hopeless. You extend God’s grace to them, in love.  “And the greatest of these is Love” makes sense, doesn’t it?

Why does Paul speak of putting “an end to childish ways,” of now seeing “in a mirror, dimly”? Is it because, when we are children, faith, hope and love all seem to be pretty easy to obtain? As we grow older, the three graces may become more elusive. In adulthood we endure hardships and difficulties, and when we try to comprehend, to understand why bad things happen, we can see only our own wounded selves—as “in a mirror, dimly.” We cannot see the larger picture, of ourselves in relation to God or to our neighbors, who may also be suffering.  We must endure—get comfortable with the darkness--before we can truly experience the light of God’s grace.

The words of T.S. Eliot that make reference to 1^st Corinthians 13 are found in the “East Coker” section of The Four Quartets:

“But the faith and love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness, the dancing.”

Eliot’s words about waiting, about waiting “without thought” illustrate letting go, surrendering, and trusting in God. Each life inevitably holds times of hardship and pain, difficulties we surely believe we cannot endure and do not deserve. Yet, in that very endurance, in suffering through the darkness, in waiting for the light, we learn how to recognize God’s grace. It comes to us as surely and gently as the touch of a loved one’s hand. How we respond to that gracious touch, however, is completely up to us.

            Henri Nouwen, beloved theologian and author, professed that Christ was a Wounded Healer and suggested that we Christians are called to be wounded healers ourselves. Nouwen believed that how we respond to the wounds we inevitably receive over the course of a lifetime determines our ability to move forward with our lives in joy and thanksgiving. Any particular and personal response of ours, to pain and suffering, is a choice. Here are Nouwen’s own words:

            Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many, joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we may choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it. What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

We face many opportunities to choose grace over pain. None may be more difficult than when a loved one faces serious illness.

            I asked for 1^st Corinthians 13 to be read at my mother’s funeral. In her life and in her dying, my mother Lillian exemplified the love expressed in this passage better than anyone I’ve ever known. She possessed in steadfast abundance all three of the graces—faith, hope and love.

            I was with her when she died, and it was a joy to release her tormented body to God. You see, she suffered from a rare and dreadful neurological disease—Steele Richardson Syndrome. Mama was about the age I am now when she began to exhibit symptoms of her illness, and she was dead within a few years of her diagnosis. Since Steele Richardson Syndrome shuts down, over time, every organ of the body except the brain, Mama was fully aware of what was happening to her, but she was unable to speak. Since even her best friends could not bear to see her in the state she was in, she had very few visitors, so her dying years were lonely. Still, whenever I was with her, I sensed the warm, burning ember of her faith and hope, and I knew that she knew—that God had assured her—that all would be well.

            In her life and in her dying, Mama possessed, also in abundance, the one quality that makes deep faith, hope, and love possible. Humility. I have heard humility defined as “perpetual quietness of heart” and my mother embodied that definition. What does that mean? I think a heart can only be perpetually quiet when its possessor is free of all striving.

            No striving to overcome the unfairness of things. No striving to fix or control others. No striving for possessions or status or success or power. No striving to be right about everything. Perpetual quietness of heart requires a simple acceptance that all is in God’s hands—all is well, and all shall be well.

            On the day of Mama’s funeral, the true marvel for me was that the rather large church was full to overflowing. People that I did not even realize knew my mother came to her funeral. It was amazing to see how much my mother’s simple kindness and unconditional love had touched so many people. My mother could have witnessed, with the psalmist, “For you are my hope, O Lord God, my confidence since I was young. I have been sustained by you ever since I was born.”

Or, as Paul said, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

            Grace upon Grace….

AMEN.