Transfiguration
February 14, 2021
William G. Carter
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And 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. If 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.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong-doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When 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. For 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. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
It will come as no surprise that this is our text for today. This is a favorite passage from the Bible, long cherished and well kept. Some of these words are printed on valentines that loved ones are trading today. And when the last day of a winter sermon series on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians lands on February 14, we can expect the preacher to read this text.
Most of us know it well. It is recited at many of the weddings we attend. In recent years, I have heard it read at a couple of funerals. At first, that seemed to be an odd choice. But no, there is something about 1 Corinthians 13 that was deeply appropriate. People had gathered to say farewell to someone they loved. This is the Love Chapter of the whole Bible. It’s not the only one, but it is the one that everybody remembers.
We know this text. At least we know the central part. Paul is defining love, right? Actually he is describing love. He never defines it. He tells us what love is: it’s patient and kind. Mostly he tells us what love is not: it’s not envious, it’s not boastful, it’s not arrogant or rude. Love doesn’t insist on its own way. Love is not irritable or resentful; your lover might act that way, but that’s not love.
And then, in a phrase that resonates deeply this week, love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Love doesn’t enjoy hurting other people, or destroying them, or committing criminal action. Oh no, love rejoices in the truth. If we could ever know the truth, if the truth could ever be known about every one of us without fear or shame, it would open us to the reality of love.
You have to wonder why the apostle Paul is writing these words. But you don’t have to wonder very long. That little congregation in Corinth was struggling. They were trying to follow Jesus in a town that didn’t care about Jesus. They were trying to make their way through the world as faithfully as possible. It wasn’t working. The Christian faith was only twenty or twenty-five years old. There weren’t a lot of road maps to guide them. Paul himself had floated across the sea to the big city of Ephesus (16:8).
And it’s easy to tell what some of the problems were.
From chapter 14, some of the church people were caught up in ecstatic speech. They would babble out whatever they thought the Lord was laying on their hearts. Others were breaking into song, any song they were inspired to sing. If the leader called for order, the first group started shouting over everybody else. The second group sang even louder.
Paul says, “If you don’t have love, you are merely making a lot of noise.” You sound like a smashing cymbal. Take note: He is in Ephesus, Ephesus is in modern day Turkey, and over there, cymbal-making is an ancient art.
But that wasn’t all. We know from this letter that little church was full of “experts.” Archaeologists believe there were only about 40 or 50 souls in the congregation, but with 40 or 50 souls, you might have 50 or 60 experts – because some folks have more than one opinion.
Now, that doesn’t happen here, of course. Not like last week, when our congregational meeting was on Zoom and the moderator had a mute button. But I have been to churches where the experts stand up and tell everybody their expert opinions. Some have even “insisted on their own way. Like Paul, I wonder, “Is this about love?” Is this about building up the Body of Christ? Or is this about bullying? You may be able to move mountains, but if you don’t do with love, you are merely pushing around dirt.
And then, in this letter and in the second letter that follows it, we discover that church had a few Super Heroes. Christian Super Heroes. That is Paul’s nickname for them.[1] The Greek word is “huper,” as in “Super Duper.” They wanted to show how devoted they were, how sacrificial they could be, how they could leap from the pinnacle of the Temple and impress everybody with their spiritual success. Just hear them say it, “I had thirty-seven answered prayers last week, and I’m so humble.”
Paul says, “What are you doing? What do you think you’re doing?” You take a vow of poverty as a way of showing off? You think you want to be a martyr, a Super Duper Martyr? Get off the cross, we need the wood! If you wish to make a show of your spiritual superiority, but have no love, you have gained nothing.
I can almost hear him shouting when he begins the words, “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” It has taken him a number of pages, but he is now digging into the bedrock. The Christian life – the life in Christ – is saturated in love. Not love as an oozy feeling, like those chocolate-covered cherries I gave to my wife. No, this is love that integrates mind, heart, and will in service to all around us. It's more than an emotion. Love is what you do. Love is how you treat one another. Love is how you lift one another up. Love is reveling in the truth, with no need for shame or embarrassment. And we know all of this.
It is then that Paul says one more thing: “Love never ends.” He didn’t need to say that. He could have kept love in the present tense, declaring, “God wants you to love one another.” That’s what the apostle John does. In the first letter of John, he admonishes his little flock to love one another. No less than thirty times, John teaches love as a present-day ethic.
But Paul pushes us toward eternity. Love is not merely for here and now. Love is for “always,” for all time, for whatever comes after the end of human time. Love “never ends.”
It’s a mysterious thing for him to say. I have stood before the casket at an open grave. The widow who chose 1 Corinthians 13 to be read at her wedding now looks at the casket through scalded tears. She whispers, “I will love you always.” “Always” is pretty close to “eternity.”
The hard truth is that those who marry make their vows “till death do us part.” In this sense, every marriage concludes when our life concludes. If we have lost the one we love, we can keep remembering and keep loving until our days also come to an end. That persistent love is an extraordinary gift. We cherish it.
But Paul is pushing us even further. When he declares, “Love never ends,” he is speaking of the love of God. He is pointing to the love that continues even after God’s children live and die. We see this love only from a distance, he says. We might have powerful experiences of love, but they are only a little piece of the Whole Thing. The love we have known is a partial glimpse of the grace that creates the world and the mercy that redeems the universe.
I spent some time in the greeting card aisle this week. I was there to survey the messages of one red, heart-shaped card after another. After ten or twelve, it seemed they were all falling short. Some were sugary sweet, some were alluring, a few were arrogant and rude. As I recalled today’s Bible text, they all sounded like “baby talk,” childish words that could only point to fullness of a love that “never ends.”
Paul is pointing us to eternity, to the coming day when the fire of God’s love will consume all things. As Eugene Peterson translates the text, “When the Complete comes, our incompletes will be cancelled.”[2] When will everything be complete? When will the “perfect” come? On the day of Resurrection!
For resurrection is another revelation of God’s love. Resurrection was not only something that happened just for Jesus. A couple of chapters after this, Paul tells us the first Easter was the first glimpse of what lies ahead for us all. The ultimate expression of God’s love is this: that God loves us enough to wake us up after the very last time we go to sleep. That God desires our friendship so much as to keep us around Forever. That God pledges to work in us until the final, final day when we are completely lovable.
Love points us toward the eternity of resurrection. Whatever tough issues we have in this life will be worked out. Whatever mistakes we have made will be forgiven. Whatever sins we’ve done will be washed clean. Whatever injustices we have committed will be corrected. Whatever we have broken, or whatever has been broken in us or among us, will be healed. For as the apostle Paul declares, “Love never ends.” Can you believe it?
When I was school, we had a professor in historical theology, Dr. Edward Dowey could be a stern and demanding teacher. He taught the writings of John Calvin. Calvin wrote a lot of ink, so Dr. Dowey’s course on Calvin required a lot of reading. Maybe 120 pages of reading every week.[3] He didn’t want his students to skim the pages. He wanted them to absorb them, ponder them, discuss them, and write long papers about them.
He thundered, “We are reading Calvin because we are seeking to comprehend the mind of God. This is not lightweight fluff.” Fair enough; but some of his students struggled to keep up.
One day in class, he was lecturing on Calvin’s understanding of the doctrine of divine election, the concept that God chooses his people. Suddenly our professor started to cry. The tears were pouring. His eyes were red. His cheeks were puffy. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
Then he said quietly, “I make no apology for my emotions. Sometimes I am overwhelmed to know that God wants us because God loves us.” He blew his nose and added, “This is why I teach, so you would know this, too.”
Where did he learn this? In those thick volumes of theology? In forty years as a professor? Was it during the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ph.D. from the University of Zurich, or the Navy chaplaincy in World War Two?
No, he learned it as a child in the Presbyterian Church of Dunmore, Pennsylvania, where his father was the pastor. That’s where he discovered his human destiny was to receive the love of God and to pass it along.
That’s why we are here. To discover our destiny in the name of the God whose love “never ends.” All the love we receive from one another is a gift through Christ from the God who loves us. All the love we share is a rehearsal for Eternity . . . when we’ve been there, ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun.
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