The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C
January 30, 2022
I’m going to say something that may
upset some of you. This passage from 1
Corinthians that we read today isn’t really about the love between a
couple. While it is the favored passage
for many weddings, this passage is so much more than just the blissful state of
love that almost newly-weds find themselves in.
Paul is writing to the church in Corinth which he founded, and he is
really angry and disappointed with them.
He’s received word that they are fighting about all kinds of stuff, and
so this letter is to remind them of who they are supposed to be. “Love is patient; love is kind,” he urges
people who have been impatient and unkind to one another. “Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
or rude,” he chides people who have been lording it over one another based on
social status and who they were baptized by.
“It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth,” he exhorts
people who have been spreading lies and rumors about each other. “[Love] bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things,”
Paul reminds this group of Christians who have made bitter enemies out
of one another. To get the full effect
of Paul’s challenging words on love, think about someone in your life who you
have gotten cross-wise with, someone you absolutely cannot stand to be in the
same room with because of how they act, what they think, how they have treated
you. And now imagine Paul is saying
these words about love to you about that person.
But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to talk about all the things that
will come to an end before love ends.
Some scholars think that this list of spiritual gifts is something that
the community in Corinth prides itself for having: the gifts of prophies, speaking in tongues,
and of knowledge. And Paul is telling
them that these gifts that they value so highly in themselves as a community of
faith are nothing if they are done without love. Imagine Paul naming out the things that we
most value about our community—our gift for hospitality, for creativity, the
relationships that have been cultivated over decades—and Paul is saying, if you
have all those without love, then they aren’t worth anything.
In his book Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubled Times,
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry writes about this passage from First
Corinthians. He talks about how the
opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s selfishness.
The opposite of love is a life that is completely centered on the self. He talks about how this love that Paul writes
about isn’t a noun or a sentiment. He
writes, “This love is a verb: it’s an action with force and
follow-through. When we pull love out of
the abstract, really put it to work, it starts to reveal its extraordinary
power. Love as an action is the only
thing that has ever changed the world for the better…Love is a commitment to
seek the good and to work for the good and welfare of others.”[i]
I’ve been working on a project for a new
formation offering at the diocesan level. It’s a leadership development
training that has its roots in the old Church Development Institute. For our first session, one of the topics is
how we nurture relationships inside and outside of our churches. The model we are using has an exercise that
participants are invited to do—where all but one participant create a body
sculpture that depicts a tight-loving community in which the one outsider has
difficulty breaking in. The second body
sculpture the participants are invited to make is one that focuses solely on
reaching out to outsiders. And the third
body sculpture is one that depicts a community that values both internal and
external relationships.[ii] The point of the exercise is to teach that a
focus on tending to both internal and external relationships in the church is
important in order for a church to be healthy and to live into its mission of “restoring
all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”[iii]
We at St. Thomas are really good at
practicing love as an action with each other here. The many, deep, long-standing relationships
here are a testament to that. This year,
I’d like to invite us to look for ways that we can build and tend relationships
with people, both inside and outside the church, who we don’t know as
well. We had 25 people join the church
last year! That is an amazing gift to
our community, and it is a testament to the spiritual gift of hospitality that
is one of the cornerstones of this church!
How well do you know them? What
can you do to get to know them better? How
might we be called to restructure things around here to be more inviting to
people who haven’t worshipped here for many years? How might we be called to practice love in
action beyond the existing bonds of common affection that exist in our faith
community? How might we be challenged to
put love into action out in the greater community?
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