Remember Why We’re Here [Faith+Hope+Love Week 1]
Psalm 71:1-6
I Cor. 13:1-13
Love is everything.
In the end, love will be the only thing that matters. And so even now, learning to love is the
point of life. Church people like us
should get this more clearly than anyone else.
After all, our lives have been shaped by stories of the way God’s love
comes to us in Jesus Christ. And when we
live together as God’s people in ways that fail the test of love, what should
have been the beautiful music of our lives sounds more like crashing cymbals
when you’re trying to sleep. What should
have been sweet music that draws others into this new life actually becomes
harsh, blaring, grating, screeching sounds that drive them away.
I spent this past week teaching at Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary. I flew in last Sunday and met students
for dinner that night. Then I taught all
day every day all week, with several meetings on the side. By the time we got to Friday morning – they
were exhausted and so was I. Our class
ended Friday morning at 11:30am and I jumped into a waiting car to head to the
airport. If everything went according to
plan, my flight through Detroit would get me back into Kansas City by 5pm and
home before 7pm.
I threw my bags in the trunk and sank into the back seat,
ready to close my eyes for a quiet ride to the airport. “Hello Doctor!” said my driver Louis. “You are a pastor right?” “Umm . . . yes,” I said sheepishly. “Oooooh, I love the Lord!” said Louis. “He brings me so much joy! And I have soooooo much to be thankful
for!” It turns out that Louis is a
wonderful African American man, an active deacon in his church. I feel terrible saying this, but I had been
talking about the good Lord all week, and I wasn’t sure I had the energy to
listen to Louis’ testimony. It turns out
I didn’t have a choice. Other cars were
zipping past us on the highway, because Louis was busy telling me about his
love for the Lord. And we were cutting
it a little close on time.
I made it through security and got to my gate just in
time. The weather was bad and we were a
little late taking off. We landed in
Detroit just twenty minutes before my connecting flight to Kansas City. By the time we got to the gate I had only
fifteen minutes. By the time I got off
the plane I had ten minutes. I was at
gate A71 and my flight to Kansas City was leaving from gate A15. And so I ran.
And I got to gate A15 precisely two minutes past time, but the plane had
already pulled away from the gate. It
turns out that there were four of us from my flight who barely missed our
flight to Kansas City. And the poor gate
agent, who of course is not responsible for Delta’s flight schedule, had to
listen to the four of us squawk and complain about this terrible injustice. Did he know that it was Delta’s fault we were
late? Did he know we all ran as fast as
we could to make our flight? Did he know
that we ourselves had been on many flights that waited for other people to make
their connection?
It was not my best moment.
In my fatigue and frustration, my behavior was less than loving. I was so focused on myself that the needs of
everyone else had faded completely from view.
I spent a good chunk of the week talking about God’s love and then
failed to behave in a loving way when it mattered.
Let’s remember why we’re here. We’re here because we have heard the good
news that God’s love has come to us in Jesus Christ. And we gather as people responding to that
news. Then we go out from here to share
God’s love with others in all kinds of ways.
According to the Apostle Paul, the real reason God’s Spirit
has gathered us around the good news of Jesus Christ is so that we can model
for ourselves and others a new life of love.
We are part of a great experiment, practicing together what is possible
when a group of people take up the joyful task of learning to love one another
well.
We are not to measure ourselves as a congregation by how big
or small we are, by our budget or our endowment, by the quality of our music,
or by the correctness of our beliefs.
There is only one measure that matters: the measure of love. Today’s reading offers us the opportunity to
confess that, just like the Corinthians, our lives are not as loving as they
could be.
Surprisingly, our own gifts and strengths can be what gets
in the way of our learning to love one another well. Our natural interests and skills and areas of
expertise will often influence how we contribute to the life of the
church. And yet those same things might
actually mark a failure to love.
Paul names a variety of groups within the Corinthian
congregation who over-value their own contributions, their own importance to
the life of the community. And they under-value
that of others. For that community, the
primary groups involved some who were able to speak in tongues (a sign to them
of spiritual maturity); those who were powerful speakers; those who were wise
and knowledgeable; those who were full of faith; and those who could boast of
how much they’d given away and how much they’d suffered.
There are all kinds of ways you could carve up our
congregation into who matters most. We
have our workhorse volunteers and those who tend to hang back. We have long-time members and those who are
brand new; we have those who are able to give substantially to support our
budget and those who are able to give very little; some are musically gifted
and some aren’t; some of us have families and some of us are single; some of us
are older and retired and some of us are young and just getting started in our
work lives; some have agreed to take on official roles of leadership as elders
and deacons, others avoid those roles; some almost never miss worship, others
are here once in awhile; some of us feel most at home in a bible study and
others prefer to be out on the front lines of social justice. And we could use any of these differences to
divide ourselves up into who matters most.
But that would be a mistake.
The only way to measure our shared lives is to ask whether our
contribution to the community is an expression of love. And love isn’t some generic, abstract,
sentimental idea. Love can be described
very simply. It’s the way God deals with
us in Jesus Christ. By drawing near to
us in Jesus, God loves us in ways that are patient and kind. God does not insist on keeping distance from
the messes we’ve made. God does not
manipulate or coerce us. God’s love
leads us into the truth about ourselves and others. God’s love bears all our foolishness, our
slowness, our stubbornness, our immaturity, our selfishness, and the harms we
inflict on others and ourselves. God’s
love endures through our entire lifetimes, proving flexible, creative, and
resilient, carrying us all the way to the end.
That’s what love is like.
We all have our own gifts and strengths, our own areas where
we’re confident and capable. These are
ways that we can contribute to the well-being of the congregation and the
community. Love is not one more gift
alongside others. Instead, love
describes the way all of us bring our best into a life shared with others. And it is love that will stand the test of
time. As we draw toward the end of our
lives, our particular gifts will fade, but our love for others will remain. And as God draws us along with the whole
world towards the fullness of God’s new kingdom, only love will remain.
In our culture, it isn’t easy to invite others into the life
of the church. A generation ago, people
defaulted into belonging to a congregation.
It’s just what you did. No
longer. Most of us wonder from time to
time – “Why is church important anyway?”
“Why can’t we live out our gratitude to God in our own personal lives,
our family lives, our friendships, in our work and in the ways we care for
others and meet the needs of our wider community?” Well, we can do all those things. But God wants there to be living, breathing
communities that model for others the possibilities of love. Just like God once drew close to the world in
the embodied life of Jesus of Nazareth. So too now, God wants to draw close to the
world in embodied congregations of people who are doing the work of love.
Does the church always get it right? No.
Does our congregation always live in love? No. Do
other groups and organizations and friendships and even other religions
sometimes shine brighter with the light of God’s love than we do? Yes they can and they do. But that doesn’t matter, to be honest. We are here because God has called us to live
together in ways that shine with God’s love. We’re called to do this so that other people
can see it and experience it.
Faith, hope, and love name the way we respond to God’s
goodness. Faith is trust that Jesus’ way
of mercy and forgiveness is the path to real greatness. Hope is a way of imagining that God’s love
will one day cover the whole earth, that in the end, there will be nothing but
love. And so these three remain, faith,
hope, and love. And the greatest of these
is love. Let’s be a great
congregation. Let’s love one another
with excellence. Let’s love our
community like God has loved us. Amen.
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