Michael Denton
January 28th, 2007
1st Corinthians 13:1-13
1If 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.
4Love 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.
8Love 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.
- 1st Corinthians 13:1-13 (NRSV)
- Greeting
- Prayer
Herman Rhode is a member of our Chicago Metropolitan Association Church and Ministry committee and last week, after I gave the sermon at his church, he told me a story about an old fire and brimstone preacher. As he told the story, this pastor stood up to preach in the pulpit of his church, looked out at his congregation and declared, “The members of this church are all in danger of going to hell.” The congregants exchanged a few anxious looks with each other. A deep silence fell on that Sunday morning. Then the preacher, a little louder this time, tapped on the pulpit along with the words as he said, again, “All the members of this church are in danger of going to hell.” Most of those sitting in the pew began to have a little bit of concerned look on their faces. A few began to cry. But, before the preacher began to speak, again, he thought he saw one old man in the back row of the church with a little bit of a smile on his face. This infuriated the pastor and so he pounded on the pulpit this time and raised his voice a little more as he said, “All the members of this church are in danger of going to hell!” By now, the majority of the people in the church were crying or holding their head in their hands. Except, now, that old man in the back row was smiling bigger than ever. The preacher couldn’t take it any more he jumped out of the pulpit and pointed at the old man in the back row and yelled, “Didn’t you hear a word of what I just said? Weren’t you listening? Every, I said, every member of this church is in danger of going to hell!” The old man seemed to smile even wider as he replied, “I was just thinking it was a good thing I’m not a member!”
Paul’s words to the churches he worked with were an interesting mix of the stern, challenging and encouraging and, regardless of the fact that none of us are a part of the particular churches Paul was speaking to, there are reasons many of these words endure, today. Most people who’ve studied or read the epistles of Paul at all have somewhat of a mixed opinion of him. Sure, there are some things he wrote that are really quite beautiful and simple but there are also other things he wrote that are practically indecipherable; some things he wrote that have been used to oppress women as well as religious and sexual minorities; and some of his theology is a much better reflection of the Greek or Roman thought Christianity was reaching out to than some of the Jewish traditions he emerged out of.
The lectionary verses read this morning from this letter to the church in Corinth are words we're already familiar with. Chances are, you last heard them used as a part of wedding you attended in reference to the love the couple was being reminded to hold for each other. I've used this verse myself in several of the services I've officiated. It's always good to hear them, really, there's some comfort there. It really does name some of the romantic ideals of that love many of us aspire, to.
This morning, I want to suggest a couple other ways of considering this text, too. First of all, it's really important to remember that these words really weren't written to be read at weddings. Although, in it's essense, marriage should be relationship of mutuality that, in some ways, is like a very small community of equals, that wasn't the kind of community that Paul had in mind. He was writing to a community of believers that, like most communities, had found themselves involved in some cycle of conflict. Paul was a very utilitarian writer. He was trying to keep this early Christian movement flowing and had to constantly address those ways in which early communities were faltering. He did very little writing simply for the sake of writing. He wrote to address the problems of these emerging communities. The letter of Corinthians was written because there were problems in Corinth. The writer clearly believed that one of the central problems was a lack of love.
I'd also like us to consider something else about this text. When we hear these words spoken at a wedding, they tend to be read in tones that are either pretty emotionally flat or gentle or kind. But, well, for any of us who've read Paul before, many of his letters don't really seem to exude gentleness and kindness. I imagine that he may have often sounded a little more like the fire and brimstone preacher telling his church members that he thinks they're in danger of going to hell. Imagine that these words from Corinthians weren’t the words of comfort we’ve become so used to. Imagine for a moment that these were words of challenge and maybe even a little bit of scolding. Hear these words read one more time and imagine them being a message to a community that Paul was a little upset with:
“1If 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.
4Love 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.
8Love 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.”
Maybe these words were an indictment of a community that had gotten all mixed up in all the wrong stuff. Maybe, Paul isn’t gently warning them but sternly warning them. Maybe this community was all caught up in insisting on spectacular preaching - this speaking in tongues - while being lackluster in their loving. Maybe this community was all caught up in the words of those who knew a lot and who had lots of degrees, but seemed ignorant in the ways of loving. Maybe this community had people who were willing to sacrifice everything but Paul suggests that even that is not enough. These verses mention “giving away all their possessions” but they also mention the phrase, “and if I hand over my body so that I may boast.” Another translation suggests that what Paul is talking about when he speaks of boasting isn’t just someone singing their own praises but the practice of martyrs who were burned as a punishment for not towing the line of the empire of that time and place. But Paul goes so far to suggest that even this - this offering of one’s life - is a hollow act if love isn’t involved.
The next part of these verses seem like a pretty clear scold suggesting that the church in Corinth doesn’t even really know how to love each other; that these people don’t even know what love is. He writes about some of the positive attributes of love and then names a whole bunch of things that love isn’t. I’m guessing Paul was pretty upset and naming those behaviors that he saw this particular community of faith displaying.
He repeats some of those things that this community thinks they do particularly well (such as prophesy, speaking in tongues and having deep knowledge) and reiterates the idea that, yup, these things don’t matter that much. Then he even calls them immature. He brings up that whole “when I was a child” thing and says, in his own way “Grow up. Stop acting so immature.” Paul continues to challenge this community to move beyond the idea that they’re enough, in and of themselves. He speaks, again and again, of the idea of incompleteness; the idea that they will only be “completed” with the coming of Christ in to their lives. Still, he doesn’t stop there. He rounds it all up by taking all of those things that are important in a person’s faith life – faith, hope and love – and even says that love is the most important of them all. Think about that for a moment. He’s saying that love is greater than faith; that loving is more important than what we believe. He’s saying the same about hope; that loving is more important than any promises we pray that God will give us. He’s saying, over and over again in this little scolding letter, that love is the most important thing of all.
When we read this text apart from its context, we read this beautiful poem about love but within its context, it’s something more. There is a challenge in this. There is a clear scold in this.
If we’re honest about it, we in the modern day church still need this challenge. If anything, it’s amazing how much we haven’t learned. We still forget those things that are most important in the glare of the less important. We sometimes get all hung up in the structures of church, whether they are on the regional level where I work or in the local church where many of you participate. We get all caught up in creating systems that are somehow devoid or separate from any emotional or spiritual value. Some, and I have been one of them at times, even go so far as to suggest that it’s the preservation of the institutional elements of the church that define who we are. There are others who insist that worship needs to be in one particular style or another regardless of whether or not it’s best serving the church or the community. There are others who define a church’s health solely by the standard of its financial health. Church giving is vitally important but only as an expression of love for God and neighbor. The church is a vehicle for love through mission work and advocacy work and a local church or regional church budget that doesn’t have this idea as the primary focus of their budget making and stewardship pledging is in danger of having a loveless budget. There are some who bring their prejudices to church to such an extreme degree that, rather than act out of love and open the doors of the church to all who may enter, there are subtle and not so subtle ways that “outsiders” are told that they’re not welcome. The reality is that the rigid conformity to any of these interests can be so inwardly focused and self-serving that those of us who are a part of the church push love to the side and lift up “consistency” or “tradition” in its place.
That’s not the only place that we get stuck. Simply because we’re human, we mess up and sometimes and just don’t get along with each other. Conflict within churches is natural and normal and, to some degree, can be really healthy. However, these conflicts move from being normal and healthy to toxic at the point when the conflict draws so much energy from the church body that it begins to destroy the healthy functions of the church. We’ve all been sick with a fever at some point in our lives and, as uncomfortable as that may be, it can be part of a healing process for awhile. However, if the time we have this fever and infection is an extended one and of this fever is too high, it can begin to damage the body itself. The same is true of conflict within a local church. If our church’s ongoing focus is on its conflicts with no focus on healing, reconciliation and forgiveness, we move in to a state of spiritual toxicity that begins to break down the body of the church. The church becomes less prepared to deal with any smaller or larger conflicts that may come up. The financial, structural and systemic health of the church is compromised and threatened. The church becomes a place of more and more secrets with groups that begin to look out more for their own self-interests than for the interests of the whole church. The church body begins to break down. It becomes immobile. It begins to die.
Paul was talking to a church that, at the very least, was in danger of falling in to these same unhealthy patterns and his suggestion of the antibody that was needed to cure this kind of dis-ease? Love. Love isn’t simply something that’s not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. The decision to love counters enviousness. It doesn’t boast but celebrates the gifts God has given all of us. Love counters arrogance with humility and counters rudeness with hospitality. Love isn’t something that just does not insist on its own way or is not irritable or resentful. The decision to love is a decision to be open to the ways that God may be challenging our communities to do something very different than what we’re used to. The decision to love is a choice to move beyond getting our feathers ruffled at something that we may not see as directly serving us and instead rejoicing, rejoicing, in how others are served. The decision to love means that we don’t hold on to resentments but actively seek to let them go, to forgive others and to feel God’s forgiveness for ourselves for those ways we may have acted badly. Loving doesn’t simply refuse to rejoice in wrongdoing. It is a decision to mourn the wrongdoing of ourselves and others and seek out relationships of accountability that help us in our “right-doing.”
I know that your church, this church, has been going through a difficult time. You’ve had a pastor recently leave when all of you, including that pastor himself, expected that person to stay longer. This leaving comes on the other end of at least a couple other pastoral leavings that were, at the very least, difficult moments for this congregation and the pastors involved. To feel some sense of pain, even betrayal and anger, is a natural part of these transitions. Sometimes, church life is hard because those of us involved in church life are all so human. We don’t know or expect what curves life is going to bring us - what mix of peoples and passions are going to complement or conflict – and we get surprised, sometimes. In those moments of surprise we may say or do things we regret. The church body itself may react in ways that can damage itself. We tend to see the symptoms of the problem as the thing that needs to be dealt with while unintentionally avoiding some of the problems at the core.
If we listen to these words from Paul, today, these scolding, challenging words, I think we find that what we have to work on more than anything else is loving each other. All of the other things we do matter very little if we don’t make the decision to love.
Sisters and brothers, you have already entered in to that interim time between the calling of your last senior pastor and minister for youth and the calling of your next ones. Although you’ll soon be having an excellent interim minister join you for a period of time, that minister, in and of themselves is not the solution to any difficulties you may find here but only someone who can help you, with God’s help, find the solutions among and within yourselves. His expertise is going to be vital, but so is your participation in the process and the work he lays before you. To make this interim time a fruitful one, you must participate in it.
Sisters and brothers of 1st Congregational Church of LaGrange, it’s also going to be up to you to love each other as deeply, fully and completely as you can. It is through that presence of love that God is present and where God is present so is healing, so is reconciliation, so is peace, so is faith, so it hope and, ultimately, so is even more love and more love and more love and more love. . .
And the secret about yourselves that you might not already know? You already have a lot of love to build on. Over the last few years, I’ve worked with many of those who are involved in the life of this church and it’s clear you’re not working from a place where you need to learn how to love. You know how to love. The challenge before you is simply to make the decision to love even more and, on the foundation of love you already have, I’m sure we’ll all be surprised by the gifts God gives to the world through you all. . .
Our God is a good God who loves us very much. So much in fact that, when we open ourselves to that love, it can’t help but to over flow. Where love is present, God is present. May you discover the presence of God among you in abundance as you make the decision to love. Amen.
January 28th, 2007
1st Corinthians 13:1-13
1If 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.
4Love 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.
8Love 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.
- 1st Corinthians 13:1-13 (NRSV)
- Greeting
- Prayer
Herman Rhode is a member of our Chicago Metropolitan Association Church and Ministry committee and last week, after I gave the sermon at his church, he told me a story about an old fire and brimstone preacher. As he told the story, this pastor stood up to preach in the pulpit of his church, looked out at his congregation and declared, “The members of this church are all in danger of going to hell.” The congregants exchanged a few anxious looks with each other. A deep silence fell on that Sunday morning. Then the preacher, a little louder this time, tapped on the pulpit along with the words as he said, again, “All the members of this church are in danger of going to hell.” Most of those sitting in the pew began to have a little bit of concerned look on their faces. A few began to cry. But, before the preacher began to speak, again, he thought he saw one old man in the back row of the church with a little bit of a smile on his face. This infuriated the pastor and so he pounded on the pulpit this time and raised his voice a little more as he said, “All the members of this church are in danger of going to hell!” By now, the majority of the people in the church were crying or holding their head in their hands. Except, now, that old man in the back row was smiling bigger than ever. The preacher couldn’t take it any more he jumped out of the pulpit and pointed at the old man in the back row and yelled, “Didn’t you hear a word of what I just said? Weren’t you listening? Every, I said, every member of this church is in danger of going to hell!” The old man seemed to smile even wider as he replied, “I was just thinking it was a good thing I’m not a member!”
Paul’s words to the churches he worked with were an interesting mix of the stern, challenging and encouraging and, regardless of the fact that none of us are a part of the particular churches Paul was speaking to, there are reasons many of these words endure, today. Most people who’ve studied or read the epistles of Paul at all have somewhat of a mixed opinion of him. Sure, there are some things he wrote that are really quite beautiful and simple but there are also other things he wrote that are practically indecipherable; some things he wrote that have been used to oppress women as well as religious and sexual minorities; and some of his theology is a much better reflection of the Greek or Roman thought Christianity was reaching out to than some of the Jewish traditions he emerged out of.
The lectionary verses read this morning from this letter to the church in Corinth are words we're already familiar with. Chances are, you last heard them used as a part of wedding you attended in reference to the love the couple was being reminded to hold for each other. I've used this verse myself in several of the services I've officiated. It's always good to hear them, really, there's some comfort there. It really does name some of the romantic ideals of that love many of us aspire, to.
This morning, I want to suggest a couple other ways of considering this text, too. First of all, it's really important to remember that these words really weren't written to be read at weddings. Although, in it's essense, marriage should be relationship of mutuality that, in some ways, is like a very small community of equals, that wasn't the kind of community that Paul had in mind. He was writing to a community of believers that, like most communities, had found themselves involved in some cycle of conflict. Paul was a very utilitarian writer. He was trying to keep this early Christian movement flowing and had to constantly address those ways in which early communities were faltering. He did very little writing simply for the sake of writing. He wrote to address the problems of these emerging communities. The letter of Corinthians was written because there were problems in Corinth. The writer clearly believed that one of the central problems was a lack of love.
I'd also like us to consider something else about this text. When we hear these words spoken at a wedding, they tend to be read in tones that are either pretty emotionally flat or gentle or kind. But, well, for any of us who've read Paul before, many of his letters don't really seem to exude gentleness and kindness. I imagine that he may have often sounded a little more like the fire and brimstone preacher telling his church members that he thinks they're in danger of going to hell. Imagine that these words from Corinthians weren’t the words of comfort we’ve become so used to. Imagine for a moment that these were words of challenge and maybe even a little bit of scolding. Hear these words read one more time and imagine them being a message to a community that Paul was a little upset with:
“1If 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.
4Love 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.
8Love 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.”
Maybe these words were an indictment of a community that had gotten all mixed up in all the wrong stuff. Maybe, Paul isn’t gently warning them but sternly warning them. Maybe this community was all caught up in insisting on spectacular preaching - this speaking in tongues - while being lackluster in their loving. Maybe this community was all caught up in the words of those who knew a lot and who had lots of degrees, but seemed ignorant in the ways of loving. Maybe this community had people who were willing to sacrifice everything but Paul suggests that even that is not enough. These verses mention “giving away all their possessions” but they also mention the phrase, “and if I hand over my body so that I may boast.” Another translation suggests that what Paul is talking about when he speaks of boasting isn’t just someone singing their own praises but the practice of martyrs who were burned as a punishment for not towing the line of the empire of that time and place. But Paul goes so far to suggest that even this - this offering of one’s life - is a hollow act if love isn’t involved.
The next part of these verses seem like a pretty clear scold suggesting that the church in Corinth doesn’t even really know how to love each other; that these people don’t even know what love is. He writes about some of the positive attributes of love and then names a whole bunch of things that love isn’t. I’m guessing Paul was pretty upset and naming those behaviors that he saw this particular community of faith displaying.
He repeats some of those things that this community thinks they do particularly well (such as prophesy, speaking in tongues and having deep knowledge) and reiterates the idea that, yup, these things don’t matter that much. Then he even calls them immature. He brings up that whole “when I was a child” thing and says, in his own way “Grow up. Stop acting so immature.” Paul continues to challenge this community to move beyond the idea that they’re enough, in and of themselves. He speaks, again and again, of the idea of incompleteness; the idea that they will only be “completed” with the coming of Christ in to their lives. Still, he doesn’t stop there. He rounds it all up by taking all of those things that are important in a person’s faith life – faith, hope and love – and even says that love is the most important of them all. Think about that for a moment. He’s saying that love is greater than faith; that loving is more important than what we believe. He’s saying the same about hope; that loving is more important than any promises we pray that God will give us. He’s saying, over and over again in this little scolding letter, that love is the most important thing of all.
When we read this text apart from its context, we read this beautiful poem about love but within its context, it’s something more. There is a challenge in this. There is a clear scold in this.
If we’re honest about it, we in the modern day church still need this challenge. If anything, it’s amazing how much we haven’t learned. We still forget those things that are most important in the glare of the less important. We sometimes get all hung up in the structures of church, whether they are on the regional level where I work or in the local church where many of you participate. We get all caught up in creating systems that are somehow devoid or separate from any emotional or spiritual value. Some, and I have been one of them at times, even go so far as to suggest that it’s the preservation of the institutional elements of the church that define who we are. There are others who insist that worship needs to be in one particular style or another regardless of whether or not it’s best serving the church or the community. There are others who define a church’s health solely by the standard of its financial health. Church giving is vitally important but only as an expression of love for God and neighbor. The church is a vehicle for love through mission work and advocacy work and a local church or regional church budget that doesn’t have this idea as the primary focus of their budget making and stewardship pledging is in danger of having a loveless budget. There are some who bring their prejudices to church to such an extreme degree that, rather than act out of love and open the doors of the church to all who may enter, there are subtle and not so subtle ways that “outsiders” are told that they’re not welcome. The reality is that the rigid conformity to any of these interests can be so inwardly focused and self-serving that those of us who are a part of the church push love to the side and lift up “consistency” or “tradition” in its place.
That’s not the only place that we get stuck. Simply because we’re human, we mess up and sometimes and just don’t get along with each other. Conflict within churches is natural and normal and, to some degree, can be really healthy. However, these conflicts move from being normal and healthy to toxic at the point when the conflict draws so much energy from the church body that it begins to destroy the healthy functions of the church. We’ve all been sick with a fever at some point in our lives and, as uncomfortable as that may be, it can be part of a healing process for awhile. However, if the time we have this fever and infection is an extended one and of this fever is too high, it can begin to damage the body itself. The same is true of conflict within a local church. If our church’s ongoing focus is on its conflicts with no focus on healing, reconciliation and forgiveness, we move in to a state of spiritual toxicity that begins to break down the body of the church. The church becomes less prepared to deal with any smaller or larger conflicts that may come up. The financial, structural and systemic health of the church is compromised and threatened. The church becomes a place of more and more secrets with groups that begin to look out more for their own self-interests than for the interests of the whole church. The church body begins to break down. It becomes immobile. It begins to die.
Paul was talking to a church that, at the very least, was in danger of falling in to these same unhealthy patterns and his suggestion of the antibody that was needed to cure this kind of dis-ease? Love. Love isn’t simply something that’s not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. The decision to love counters enviousness. It doesn’t boast but celebrates the gifts God has given all of us. Love counters arrogance with humility and counters rudeness with hospitality. Love isn’t something that just does not insist on its own way or is not irritable or resentful. The decision to love is a decision to be open to the ways that God may be challenging our communities to do something very different than what we’re used to. The decision to love is a choice to move beyond getting our feathers ruffled at something that we may not see as directly serving us and instead rejoicing, rejoicing, in how others are served. The decision to love means that we don’t hold on to resentments but actively seek to let them go, to forgive others and to feel God’s forgiveness for ourselves for those ways we may have acted badly. Loving doesn’t simply refuse to rejoice in wrongdoing. It is a decision to mourn the wrongdoing of ourselves and others and seek out relationships of accountability that help us in our “right-doing.”
I know that your church, this church, has been going through a difficult time. You’ve had a pastor recently leave when all of you, including that pastor himself, expected that person to stay longer. This leaving comes on the other end of at least a couple other pastoral leavings that were, at the very least, difficult moments for this congregation and the pastors involved. To feel some sense of pain, even betrayal and anger, is a natural part of these transitions. Sometimes, church life is hard because those of us involved in church life are all so human. We don’t know or expect what curves life is going to bring us - what mix of peoples and passions are going to complement or conflict – and we get surprised, sometimes. In those moments of surprise we may say or do things we regret. The church body itself may react in ways that can damage itself. We tend to see the symptoms of the problem as the thing that needs to be dealt with while unintentionally avoiding some of the problems at the core.
If we listen to these words from Paul, today, these scolding, challenging words, I think we find that what we have to work on more than anything else is loving each other. All of the other things we do matter very little if we don’t make the decision to love.
Sisters and brothers, you have already entered in to that interim time between the calling of your last senior pastor and minister for youth and the calling of your next ones. Although you’ll soon be having an excellent interim minister join you for a period of time, that minister, in and of themselves is not the solution to any difficulties you may find here but only someone who can help you, with God’s help, find the solutions among and within yourselves. His expertise is going to be vital, but so is your participation in the process and the work he lays before you. To make this interim time a fruitful one, you must participate in it.
Sisters and brothers of 1st Congregational Church of LaGrange, it’s also going to be up to you to love each other as deeply, fully and completely as you can. It is through that presence of love that God is present and where God is present so is healing, so is reconciliation, so is peace, so is faith, so it hope and, ultimately, so is even more love and more love and more love and more love. . .
And the secret about yourselves that you might not already know? You already have a lot of love to build on. Over the last few years, I’ve worked with many of those who are involved in the life of this church and it’s clear you’re not working from a place where you need to learn how to love. You know how to love. The challenge before you is simply to make the decision to love even more and, on the foundation of love you already have, I’m sure we’ll all be surprised by the gifts God gives to the world through you all. . .
Our God is a good God who loves us very much. So much in fact that, when we open ourselves to that love, it can’t help but to over flow. Where love is present, God is present. May you discover the presence of God among you in abundance as you make the decision to love. Amen.
posted by Rev. Michael Denton at 9:45 AM
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