Love Prevaileth                               I Cor.13 and Luke 4

Paul was not just making this up. His famous so-called "love chapter" was a direct response to the particular situation in the church at Corinth. Apparently the congregation in Corinth was a quarrelsome and misguided collision of competing interests and personal power struggles and petty differences with everyone striving for religious superiority. In the words of the Biblical scholar Charles Cousar this letter is sent to a people who need to know that their fervent religiosity isn't worth a tinker's damn apart from a new relationship to one another, apart from love. He goes on to say, the conflicts at Corinth, the power struggles and confusion, are caused by a loveless spirituality.

I find this observation especially revealing juxtaposed with the adventures of Jesus in Nazareth part II. In part I last week you may recall Jesus announced his intentions for ministry to his hometown synagogue. It was a message of liberation not just for them but for everybody. This sounded good at first. Who does not want to be liberated? But Jesus didn't stop there. He had to cause a ruckus by bringing up a couple of old stories from the long memories of a people that they would just as soon have forgotten. The stories were about two of the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha who were both the next thing to God himself. In both stories someone received special attention from the prophet himself, was blessed and honored and healed and the someone in both cases was an outsider, someone outside the imaginary boundaries of their expectation and status quo, outside their religious rules and status, someone who by their way of thinking had no right to be blessed by their prophet. There was, in other words, resentment. And why was there resentment that somebody was blessed and healed, that somehow their God's grace was offered to somebody who was not them, someone who hadn't been approved by them? Why would they resent such gracious love? Could it be that theirs was also a loveless spirituality and that Jesus' truth-telling had revealed to them this very thing? Even the truth was to be liberated it seems and that this was not met with open arms should not surprise us too much.

When Jesus announced his ministry everything was fine until he unmasked the resentment and smallness just below the service of this congregation of devoted souls. One wonders what they thought their role was to be in freeing the oppressed. Maybe they thought this was just so many grandiloquent words. They had heard such sermons before but nothing much had ever changed and their comfort and status had not been questioned much either probably. It is not something we like to be reminded of, this smallness, this meanness really, because it implies that a very proud religious people may not have anything to be proud of after all. 

If one bases the justification of one's life on religion and that religion is suddenly seen for what it is, an empty pretense with little meaning beyond self-justification and appearances, it can be hard to accept but necessary because only when the mask is removed can we deal with the reality hidden beneath and move on from false religion to true religion. True religion based on and lived out in love has, as a possible benefit, the blessing of joy as well, which is a lot more fun than resentment any day once you get on to it.

 Religion without love can get pretty ugly but what is the nature of this love that is so essential to our life together. This is the beauty of Paul's solution for Corinth's problem. The love he describes has an unmistakably practical side to it. Love does not just do all things. It also resists doing some things. Sometimes we need to know what love is and sometimes we need to know what love is not.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not rude or resentful nor does it insist on its own way. We read this at weddings a lot and it works for marriages if practiced, but this was written for a congregation and, if there is a better word for a congregation to write on their hearts and never forget, this is it. If we could remember this much: Love is patient and kind. Love is not rude or resentful nor does it insist on its own way. If we could remember this much what a giant step we would take as a community of the beloved. If we could love each other better we could love the world better. I'm not kidding. Resentment tears us apart as people and as a community and, worse, it steals what little time we have to do good. What.we accomplish as a community is more important than having our own way as individuals.  Our business is love. Love for everybody. And love prevaileth. 

We can throw all the stones we want at the openness of unconditional unmerited love and undiluted truth represented by Jesus but the love will carry on anyway. What is true will always be true whether we know what it is or not. Oh somebody may get hurt by the stones of course. We probably won't avoid that but we can learn from it. We can grow up. We can change. We can get better. We can become what God has called us to be. We discover what love is and what love can do by loving. The message is clear about what love is and isn't. We can either do it or not do it but we will only know love when we love.

Now we know only in part what then we will know fully.

That love prevaileth. 

When everything else is gone,

love prevaileth.

If you are worried this morning about what the future holds, the unmistakable good news today is that love is the future.

Love prevaileth.

If you are worried that unselfish love is too much for us to do then the good news today is that love is not dependent upon us for it comes from God and even when we fail to love God's love does not end.

Love prevaileth.

When we fail to love, what are we to do? We seek God's grace and we hope to love again. Love bears all things even our unloving, believes all things, even our unbelief, hopes all things even our hopelessness, endures all things, even our meanness. Love is forever.

Love prevaileth.

Let us be true and humble, patient and kind. Let us not be arrogant or rude, resentful or mean. If we have not love, we have nothing.

Love prevaileth.