Sermon: Growing in LOVE: Love is a Verb
February 3rd, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If you don’t mind, I’d like to add a couple more sentences to Paul’s description of love: Love is crawling under the church with a hairdryer to thaw a pipe. Love is all the calls I have received from church members and folks in the community checking on us and on our shelter guests during the cold snap. Love is… (any of you want to add more?)
We have been focusing throughout January on how we can make this a year of growth – spiritual growth for us as individuals and for us as a church. We have remembered that a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire was given to us to get us started on this journey of growth. Grace-gifts, spiritual gifts have been given to provide every kind of ability we might need for growth as a community. Growing in our unity, our sense of belonging and need for one another is essential in order to overcome divisions that slow and stunt our growth. Last Sunday we left saying to one another, “I need you. We need you.”
Today as we conclude this series on preparing for a year of growth, we read again from the letter to that church in Corinth that had a lot of improving and growing to do. We know that because Paul uses an illustration in verse 11 about when he was a child, he acted like a child, but growing up meant leaving behind childish ways and adopting more mature ways. In chapter 13, he gets to the crux of what it is that is going enable them to grow up as Christian believers, to be what God intends them to be, and that is Love.
My guess is that 9 times out of 10 when you’ve heard this beautiful passage of scripture read it’s been at a wedding. Am I right? We associate this poetic passage with romantic love, with the love between two people who are making a loving commitment to one another that they hope will last a lifetime. But Paul has not stuck in a random bit of marriage counseling here. He is still writing to the same church, the same faith community, that he was speaking to just a few verses before as he wrote about spiritual gifts, about valuing their diversity, about depending on one another in unity. When he continues in chapter 14, Paul will still on that same topic, writing about how spiritual gifts should be used in worship. So this chapter on love is about love in a community. Love in a church.
He ends ch.12 saying, “Now I will show you the most excellent way.” Or more literally translated, “I will show you a way beyond comparison.” Paul’s alluding to their problem, which was comparing themselves to one another and finding either themselves or someone else to be lacking. We do that too. We notice how someone else needs to improve. We notice what we lack as a church compared to other churches. Or on the other hand, we congratulate ourselves because we think we are better than some other church or some other person in the church. What we need instead is a way that is beyond comparison. That way is love; only love take us beyond measuring, beyond comparing.
This way beyond comparison, is actually a vision: the vision of a community living life together in the way that God created it to be, the way God longs for us, for the church, to model for the world. Everything else will fall into place, everything else will flourish, if we start with Love, and if we seek to grow in LOVE! We might be the greatest in every church activity – in giving, in mission projects, in inviting people in to fill every pew, in studying the Bible, but if we don’t love, none of that will matter even one bit. So let’s look carefully at what it means to love.
I say that deliberately, “to love”, not “to have love” as if it is a thing to obtain. The love in God’s vision for Christian community is a verb, not as a noun. This glorious passage about love is rooted in the understanding that love is a verb. Starting in verse 4, Paul strings together 16 verbs with the word, agape, love. We can’t see that in most of our English versions. What we see are adjectives, as if Paul is describing a thing called love. “It is patient, it is kind. It is full of hope.” The result sounds like a dreamy description of something that is warm and fuzzy and cuddly, like a super-soft blankie or a fluffy, purring cat (which is why it sounds so great at a wedding). But in Greek, it is possible to take a word like patience, or kindness, and make them act as verbs. Love actively does these things.
Let’s start with patience. Love is actually practicing patience, in real situations. When someone else makes a mistake that upsets you, or doesn’t do their part, or doesn’t do something as well as you could have done it, you actually practice patience. That’s love! You hold your tongue, you count to 10, you gently guide, you patiently explain it all again.
Love is doing kindness, doing kind deeds in situations of need. Love is giving someone a ride, putting food in the wagon for the food pantry, letting the stressed out young mother go ahead of you in the check-out line, giving the tired cashier a complement, shoveling the walk for the neighbor.
In the Message translation, Eugene Peterson puts Paul’s list of 16 verbs into concrete actions:
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
I’d like to add some more… Love does not assume the worst, but love gives the benefit of the doubt. Love isn’t in it to be noticed, but is content to keep on helping out even when no one notices. Love does not make someone else the butt of a joke, or laugh at someone else’s expense. Love doesn’t criticize another person’s ideas or another person’s effort. Love never issues insults. Love thinks of others first. Love cheers others on to achieve their goals. Love holds the hand of someone who is scared. Love listens.
This love is not easy or effortless. The mission of the church is not to gather together a group of like-minded, likeable people, so we can all feel good together. The church is to model a love that requires effort, a love that can be difficult, a love that can be inconvenient, a love that can be costly. The church is to grow in its ability to love the way Jesus loved. Jesus’ love brought together people of varied backgrounds. Jesus’ love rescued those who thought life was hopeless. Jesus’ love knows us fully, sees everything about us, yet loves us fully. Jesus’ love put the lives of every person in the world ahead of his own, laying down his life to protect and to save us. That is the love we must grow in this year, this week, this day.
As Paul leads out of this passage, he begins the next chapter with the words, “Follow the way of love, pursue love…” As we move out of this time of reflection, we move into the work of the church which is acting out our love as a community – it is welcoming a new member into our church family, it is sharing communion around one table in remembrance of God’s love, it is enjoying being together over cake and coffee after worship. It is joining our voices together to sing a song of love.
Closing Song: “The Gift of Love” # 593
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