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.