One Essential Ingredient

It might be the best known passage in the Bible. It is known as the “Love Chapter” and it is read at most weddings, even though our seminary professors warned us against it because it is not really a poem about love between two people or about rainbows and butterflies and happily ever after.

Maybe we associate the love chapter with weddings because we don’t really know the whole passage by heart. We can remember “Love is patient, love is kind…” But much beyond that, we tend to trail off until “Love never ends.”

I happen to think that this passage is very appropriate at weddings but mostly for what we don’t know by heart. Paul describes here what is essential for any healthy relationship. The church in Corinth is a congregation in conflict.

There are some who are bound and determined that the only way to show true commitment to the Way of Christ is to give up individual possessions and hold everything in common. There are some who want to run things because they have the gift of speaking in tongues, and clearly that shows that they are God’s favorites. There are some who are much more scholarly, who are studied, and they really are the clear choice to be the leaders and the decision makers,…or at least they think they are. There are some who had healed, and Jesus healed, so they really understood that they were most like Jesus.

They had written to Paul. I wonder what the letter actually said, or if he had gotten more than one letter. However he learned it, Paul knew that they were looking to him to settle the dispute. Who’s the greatest? Who is on the highest pedestal? Who is God’s favorite?

Paul writes back with a more excellent way – not just for our relationship with our spouse or our children, not just for our relationships with relatives, but for ALL our relationships. And there is no warm fuzzy in the behaviors that are the more excellent way.

Love is patient. The Greek word here is not about waiting (drum fingers). Chrysostom said that “it is the word which is used of the person who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge himself and who yet will not do it.” Love passes up on the chance to get back, to get even. Love means we are patient with other people.

Love is kind – it has good manners. Love is respectful and courteous and polite. Love stops and thinks before it speaks. Love behaves gracefully. Love means we care about how the other person feels.

Then Paul lists eight things that love is NOT:

Love is not jealous. Have you ever wanted something, really wanted it? The root word in the Greek means “to boil;” have you ever boiled with desire? When I was expecting Elizabeth, a friend and I had a deeply honest conversation about her longing to have a daughter. It could have been a boiling conversation that ended our relationship. Instead, it was a conversation filled with love, rather than jealousy, because she did not allow her desire to cause her to wish that I was not going to have a daughter. Jealousy is not just wanting something someone else has, it is also wishing that they didn’t have it. Love means we appreciate what others have even while our own hearts are longing.

Love is not boastful or puffed up, pompous, supercilious, haughty, conceited, arrogant, overbearing. Love means we value heart over head, relationship over knowledge.

The fourth thing that Paul lists is usually translated “rude,” but Paul meant much more than rude. Remember that Corinth is a port town, with pagan worship and bawdy nightlife. Love does not take advantage of other people. Love does not go ahead and enjoy the Communion Feast while the poor are still working and shame them by leaving them out in the street with nothing much left to eat. These shameful things going on in your community, says Paul, that’s not love. Love means we avoid shameful behavior.

And love doesn’t look out for #1, but for the good of all. William Barclay writes that “In the last analysis, there are in this world only two kinds of people- those who are continually thinking of their rights and those who are continually thinking of their duties; those who are always insist upon their privileges and those who always remember their responsibilities; those who are always thinking of what life owes them and those who never forget what they owe to life.” Love means we do not insist on our way, the way that benefits us most.

Finally, love means we don’t have a chip on our shoulder. We aren’t about to fly into a temper, we don’t keep count of wrongs against us. We don’t rejoice in injustice or wrong, but in truth.

Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane told of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. “I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me.”

Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan “Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you’re getting a divorce. That will really hurt him.” With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, “Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!” And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting “as if.” For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. When she didn’t return, Crane called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?”
“Divorce?” she exclaimed. “Never! I discovered I really do love him.” Her actions had changed her feelings. (J. Allan Petersen)

Maybe it is good to read the Love Chapter at weddings, and perhaps at baptisms, and when new members join the Farmington family.

Be patient with one another, even when you frustrate each other. Even when you have been hurt, don’t hurt back.

Use good manners, and care about how the other person feels more than how the other person makes you feel.

Want the best for each other, and be happy for what the other person has. Be humble when you have something you know the other one wants.

Don’t act shamefully; have good morals. Don’t put yourself above others, or hold a grudge. Keep your temper in check, and don’t insist on your own way. Love rejoices in the truth, not my way or your way, but the truth of Christ’s way.

When I was a little girl, not more than 6 or 7, my grandfather gave me this pin. It is a key with three charms dangling from it. A cross, an anchor, and a heart. He gave it to me and told me it was the key to life. I didn’t understand at the time. I was literal.

The cross symbolized Jesus to me. The anchor, well, I was a river rat, all I knew about anchors were that they held you in place. And the heart, I knew, was love. I puzzled over this pin.

The next time my grandparents came to visit, I asked Granddad about it. “The key,” he said, “to the meaning of life is faith, hope, and love. The cross is faith. The anchor is hope. And the heart is love.”

I understood the connection of the cross and faith and the symbolism of the heart for love. But the connection between the anchor and hope…I didn’t get it. Now I know that in the 1st Century, Christians were persecuted, and the anchor symbolized for them Jesus who was their anchor in the midst of the storm of persecution. It was actually a play on words. In Greek, anchor is ankura, which sounds a lot like en kurio, which means “in the Lord.” But, when I was in elementary school I didn’t know all that, and I would forget what the anchor stood for.

But, then I heard this passage from Scripture, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the 13th Chapter. And I realized that this key to the meaning of life came from the Bible.

Three things in life remain after all else has passed: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.