What do we mean by Love?

PROPERS:          4 EPIPHANY, YEAR C

TEXT:                1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-11              

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Agape is the standard by which a Christian life is measured.

 

            Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will be present at the 51^st diocesan convention in Fort Walton in three weeks.  I have known Bishop Curry in his days as bishop of North Carolina, and he is the genuine article.  He may be the most consequential presiding bishop we have had in many years.

 

            The primary memory many people have of Bishop Curry is when he preached at the marriage of Megan Markle and Prince Harry.  Imagine the novelty and irony of that – a bishop from the colonies being asked to preach at a royal wedding at Windsor Castle!

 

            Bishop Curry is a genuine evangelical, in the best sense of the word.  He believes and he energetically proclaims that Jesus Christ can change lives.  He is truly unapologetic of his view.  He embraces both the modern and ancient teachings of the church.  He is known for his concise and emphatic statement: “If it is not about love, it is not about God.”

 

            But what does he mean about love? Some schmaltzy, sentimental feeling which says that anything goes? Or something else?

 

            Let’s look to scripture.

 

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            Coming to the end of his second missionary journey, Paul visited Corinth, a seaside town on a small Grecian isthmus.  He founded a church there, in about the year A.D. 50.

 

            Two or three years later, while Paul was on his third missionary journey, he heard reports of dissension, fights, and arguments within the young church in Corinth.  So, he wrote the letter we now know as his First Letter to the Corinthians, addressing those issues.

 

            We must be clear:  We have no original manuscript of Paul’s letters, or any other New Testament work.  But his words have been passed down from generation to generation and speak to us to this day.

 

            Many would say that the First Letter to the Corinthians reaches its climax in our first lesson.  That chapter represents Paul’s attempt to reduce Christian motivations to one word: love.

 

            The biblical Greek language is nuanced and there is a variety of words in the Greek for love. One, of course, is eros – the sexual, erotic love.  That was not the word the apostle used.  Another word is philia – a brotherly love (Hence, Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love).  That was not the word that Paul used in the 13^thchapter of his letter.

 

            The word he used in the 13^th chapter – and used it repeatedly – is agape.  Agape is not some sentimental, schmaltzy emotion.  It is deep, sacrificial, other-oriented love that is represented most graphically by the cross.

 

            The love that Paul is writing about is not the anything goes variety, but the form of love which intends the best for another person.  It is a love that requires effort. That is the essential message Jesus seeks to convey in all his teachings.  It is the message which echoes down through the ages from all sorts of religious leaders, sages, teachers, and rabbis. “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”

 

            Agape requires more than an automatic, instinctive, or unthinking response. Responses that are set in our minds or because of the way we intrinsically think do not necessarily represent agape.

 

            That essential teaching brings into question all sorts of actions and positions Christians and the church have taken over the centuries.  It should give us cause, too, to reflect on past and future actions.

 

            Paul crystalized it in today’s first lesson. As an ancient rabbi said, “Go and do likewise.”