1 Corinthians 13

“Life and Love”

The Reverend Victoria Millar

Covenant Presbyterian Church, Racine, WI

January 31, 2010

 1 Corinthians 12:31

            But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

13:1  If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels,

but do not have love,

I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,

but do not have love,

I am nothing.

3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,*

but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient;

love is kind;

love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude.

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end;

as for tongues, they will cease;

as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;

10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;

when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

12For now we see in a mirror, dimly,*

but then we will see face to face.

 Now I know only in part;

then I will know fully,

even as I have been fully known.

13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;

and the greatest of these is love.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

About a year ago, all four of my husband, JD’s, grandchildren were together

which is rare because two live near Baltimore and two live in Pasadena.

              They were then ages 16, 11, 8 and 7.

                We were indoors on a cold day.

                  So the 11 year old went to her room and returned with her Milton Bradley game called Life.

                        We pulled up chairs around the dining room table.

I used to play the board game Life when I was their ages.

     I didn’t know it was still sold but hers was new and it looked basically the same.

                The board is a one-way journey from youth to age along a twisting ribbon of yellow road

                          divided into squares, each with instructions.

                    The board pieces are little plastic cars in which the car seats are tiny rows of peg holes.

                          Each granddaughter started the game with herself as driver, a single pink peg.

      A blue peg was the driver in the grandson’s car.

         We each spun the dial and moved the corresponding number of spaces.

                                    Each square on the road has instructions, some required, some optional.

·    Buy car insurance.

·    Go to college.

·    Draw a career card to determine your profession and salary

         received after every square marked “Pay Day.”

·    Get married.  Add a peg to your car.

·    Draw a card to purchase a house.

·    Car accident! Pay if you don’t have insurance.

·    New baby boy! Add a blue peg to your car.

·    Buy stocks.

·    New twins! Add two more pegs to your car.

·    Midlife crisis!  Draw a new career card.

·    Spin the dial to determine the price for selling your stock.

·    Spin the dial to determine the sale price for your home.

The kids played intently and tried to invent loopholes.

     When called upon to pay college tuition for each of the many child pegs in his car,

 the 9 year old grinned and asked if he could put them up for adoption.  The rest of us said no.

I was delighted to play with our kids

   and also surprised by the game itself because I’d never seen it with adult eyes before.

            Life as a road traveled, consisting of a few choices but mainly transactions.

                        For good or for ill, much depended on the luck of the spin.

                                    And at the end of the road was a retirement haven called Millionaire Estates,

                                                where each player cashed out and tallied their net worth.

At the end of the road, the one with the most money wins.

            In Milton Bradley’s game, the measure of life is money.

Now I understand that Milton Bradley took the easy road, so to speak,

to use money as the measure of success.

According to the box, their clientele is age 9 and above.

Kids really like play money in large denominations.

I mean, what alternative did Milton Bradley have?

If Milton Bradley had invented happiness units which were then assigned to each life event,

            stackable like poker chips,

receive 10 happiness units for having a child,

                                    pay 5 happiness units for a midlife crisis—

                                                the game would never make it to Toys R Us.

But we are adults who know life does hold a string of events.

     Yet we are people willing to measure life in more than money.

            In today’s text, St. Paul writes: “I will show you a still more excellent way.”

                                    And in his lyrical poetry called 1^st Corinthians 13,

                                          St. Paul says the ultimate measure of life is love.

I am certain you have heard 1^st Corinthians 13 read at weddings.

    And it’s fine to read it as including romantic love.

            But the original context is actually much larger.

Today’s text was originally written by Paul to the fledgling church at Corinth

when the church was confused and quarrelsome.

                        The church had some spiritual gifts which would seem foreign to us—

                                    the gift of speaking in tongues

                                                and the gift of prophesy. 

                                                            And there were power struggles among them

to determine which gifts (and thus which members)

were most important.^[1]                                                  

Last week in her sermon called “Body Parts,”[2]

Pastor Melanie spoke about 1 Corinthians 12

in which Paul wrote that the church is the body of Christ

            and the spiritual gifts within the church members

                        are like specialization of body parts.

                             The church needs many spiritual gifts

 in the same way the body needs the nose, the hands and the eyes

Melanie called the church a “conspiracy”

            where con: “with” and spire: “breath.”

   She said “in all our diversity, we are breathing together,

modeling a common way of life that is good for the world.”

And I can’t help but note that last Sunday when she gave her sermon on “Body Parts”

            Melanie was shuttling back and forth to All Saints Hospital,

                        before the 8 a.m. service and after the 10 a.m. service,

                             to care for the body literally,

                                    to pray with Gail Bock on the morning Gail would breathe her last.  

                                                That, too, is another way the church conspires, breathes together.

In Corinth, as here and now, not everyone is given the same spiritual gifts.

            But in 1^st Corinthians 13, Paul claims there is one gift for all believers.^[3]

                        The spiritual gift for all believers is love.

Paul writes:

            If I have the gift of speaking in tongues like an angel

but do not have love, I am incoherent

                                    like (the literal Greek says) a screaming cymbal.

            If I have prophetic powers so great as to understand all mysteries

                        if I have faith so strong as to move mountains

                                    if I (the literal Greek says) morsel away all my possessions to the poor

                                                but do not love,

                                                            I gain nothing.

Love is not abstract, not a feeling.  Love is practical.  Love is a practice, Paul claims.

            And he tries every which way to describe it.  First, two positive statements.

                        Love is patient.  Love is kind.^[4]

Then a string of negatives.

            Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

                        It does not insist on its own way.

                                    It is not irritable or resentful.

Then a negative with its positive opposite.                                                                     

            Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.

Then five affirmations:

            Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Do you perceive the picture?

            Beyond romantic love,

                to Corinth when it was an ungracious community of faith,

                        Paul is saying love functions especially in stress and conflict.

                                    Paul says:  Love with patience and kindness,

                                                without envy, boasting, arrogance or rudeness,

                                                            not irritable or resentful but rejoicing in the truth.

Paul writes that the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues and prophesy are only for this age, a stopgap.

            But as for prophesies, they will come to an end, as for tongues the will cease,

                 as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

                   For we know only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Love is the “supreme feature of the age to come.  And thus love is enduring.”^[5]

Paul writes:  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;

            when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”

And at the mention of childhood, my pink peg begins driving my plastic car

    down Milton Bradley‘s ribbon road of Life.

        Even as an adult, I think Milton Bradley has a point.

            Life is like a journey with events, choices, purchases and randomness.  Oh so much randomness.

What is the measure of our lives, the goal, the essence of our being?

Three hundred eighty years ago,

            a French mathematician and philosopher named Rene Descartes

                        was famous for his declaration “I think, therefore, I am.”^[6]

Not so long ago, I would have said “I love, therefore, I am.”

            But that gives me too much credit

                        and doesn’t allow for when I am unloving.

                                    Now I would say “When I love, I am more alive.”

                                       Now I would say “When I give the Spirit room, I am more loving.”

The God of love is our alpha and omega, our beginning and our end.

            In love is our salvation.

                        Love is the three-in-one, our home, our journey and our goal.

In the name of the God who is three-in-one,

            the God who is love,

                        the Son who said “Love one another as I have loved you”

                                    and the Holy Spirit powerful.  Amen.