A long time ago when I was much younger than I am now, the church I attended had a very eloquent preacher. He had such a way with words, it wasn’t unusual for his sermons to move people to tears. So when I Corinthians 13 came around in the lectionary (which it does every few years) I couldn’t wait to hear what he would have to say. I mean, one of the most beautiful passages in all the Bible combined with one of the most moving preachers would make for an incredible sermon, right?
But that morning he combined the lesson with John 14:15 in which Jesus says: “If you love me, keep my commandments” – and his sermon centered on love being defined as obedience to God. The point’s well taken but I have to say I was disappointed.
I’m not going to do that today! But having said that, I Corinthians 13 is not what it may appear to be on the surface. It has been read so often at weddings – and there’s nothing wrong with that; this passage makes a wonderful foundation for a marriage – but the love between a couple getting married is not what Paul had in mind when he wrote this.
So I’ve called our sermon today “God’s Gold Standard.”
Gold Bars – 999.9% pure.
God’s love – 1000% pure.
This looks back to a time, even further back, when our currency was backed up by gold. That is, if you took a dollar bill to a bank you could (theoretically at least) get a dollar’s worth of gold in return. So our paper money actually represented gold. It was a way of measuring the worth of something, the value, by comparing it to something that never changed.
Antique $20 Gold Certificate
And I take this as a parallel to Paul’s great chapter on love. People use the word ‘love’ in all kinds of ways; so many ways the word often loses its meaning. But what Paul gives us here, on a spiritual level, is God’s gold standard. Something by which every word and every action is given value; something against which we can compare and measure the worth of things that are said and things that are done.
In fact what Paul describes here isn’t human love at all. I Corinthians 13 – as well as our reading from Jeremiah – talks about God’s love. And in times like these, it’s a good thing to hear God’s message of love for us. God’s love gives us a foundation we can build our lives on. God’s love gives us confidence when we feel uncertain. God’s love gives us something to trust when things around us look untrustworthy. In times like these, when people are afraid, and it seems like violence and hatred are all around us, we need to be surrounded and comforted by God’s heart of love.
And all three of these passages today assure us of God’s love for us.
Looking first at our psalm: the psalmist cries out: “Lord – deliver me, rescue me, be my refuge.” He says, “rescue me from the hand of the wicked, from the unjust and from the cruel.” Have we ever felt that way? Have we ever felt surrounded by people who don’t know (or don’t care) what’s fair or what’s right? The lack of compassion in public speech these days, combined with constant bad news from TV and online, can sometimes leave us feeling a bit shell-shocked. “Lord, rescue us…” – isn’t that our prayer for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, for our communities, for our nation, for the world?
“Thy kingdom come, O Lord” is a heartfelt prayer; God has answered it and will answer it again. And so the psalmist reflects:
“You O Lord are my hope… on you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.”
And our reading from Jeremiah echoes the same thought. God says to Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…”
In this passage God is calling Jeremiah into a lifetime of service: in which Jeremiah will be bringing God’s word to the people of Israel during that terrible time in their history when the nation was decaying from the inside, leading to the people’s exile to Babylon. But right here at the beginning of his story, Jeremiah doesn’t see all that yet. What he sees is that he’s young and inexperienced in speaking and unsure of himself, and he answers God: “But Lord! I don’t know what to say, I’m just a boy.”
I wonder: Do any of us ever look around and say “but I’m just one person” or “I’m just a housewife” or “I’m just a senior citizen” or “I’m just a kid”? Do our churches ever say “but we only have 30 or 40 people” or “but we’re just a poor little church”?
God said to Jeremiah:
“Don’t say, ‘I’m just a boy’; you will go to whom I send you, and you will speak what I command you. Don’t be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD…” (Jeremiah1:7-8)
Would God say to us: “Don’t say ‘I’m just one person’”? or “Don’t say ‘We’re just a small church’”? Does God want to say to us, “Follow My lead, and don’t be afraid, for I am with you”?
Not that any of us is being given Jeremiah’s job! But we have been commissioned by God to speak, both as individuals and as a church, to share God’s message with those around us, “to build and to plan” as God says to Jeremiah.
And as we follow God’s lead, God’s love will our support, our guide, our defense, and our comfort.
In Jeremiah, we see God’s love in the words: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” These words are for us as much as they are for Jeremiah. God formed you and me to be in this world, at this time and in this place. God has a plan and a purpose for us. And so we can pray with the psalmist, “In you O Lord I take refuge, let me never be put to shame.”
The question then becomes what should we do? What actions does God want us to take? And I think God has made us a variety of people and a variety of churches for a reason, so the answer will be unique to each of us. But before I bring us back to God’s Gold Standard, one side note: when we look at all the disputes and disagreements in the world today, I think for people of goodwill, so many issues seem to come down to having to make a choice between doing righteousness or doing justice: that is, choosing what’s right or choosing what’s compassionate.
I submit for your consideration that God is both perfectly righteous and perfectly just. In God, righteousness and justice are two sides of the same coin. As human beings we struggle with that because we’re not perfect. But God is perfect, and in God, what is right and what is loving is the same thing: oftentimes in ways that surprise us.
And this is what I Corinthians 13 is all about. Even in the opening words: “if I speak in tongues of mortals and angels but have not love… if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not love… if I have all faith, even to move mountains, but have not love I am nothing. If I give away all I have, even my own life, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
The kind of love Paul is talking about here is not romantic love. In fact, what Paul is talking about here is a spiritual gift. I Corinthians 13 is in the middle of three chapters of teaching on spiritual gifts. So what he’s talking about is something that comes from God.
In I Corinthians 12, Paul begins this teaching about the gifts of the Holy Spirit by listing a number of them: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment… he goes on at some length talking about how, while nobody has all these gifts, all of them are needed in the church; and how the Church is like the Body of Christ. So, as Paul puts it, “the eye cannot say to the hand ‘I have no need of you’ nor the head to the feet ‘I have no need of you’.” And Paul ends chapter 12 by saying “strive for the greater gifts; and I will show you a still more excellent way” – and then he launches into I Corinthians 13. And then in chapter 14, Paul shows how all these wide variety of gifts come together, in love, in the church to build up God’s people and to build up our communities.
So I Corinthians 13 is talking about love as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not the same thing as affection or compassion or kindness or tenderness or any of those things, although it may include them. This kind of love isn’t even a choice, although it may include choices. God’s love is God’s nature. God loves because if God ever stopped loving, God would stop being God.
Therefore God’s love does not depend on us. It doesn’t matter what we do, or where we’ve been or what we’ve said. Yes, these things do matter, but they don’t change God’s love. We as mere mortals don’t have the power to change God’s love. Nothing we can do can stop God’s love. And those of us who have given our lives to Jesus and have received the Holy Spirit – we receive, as one of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, a bit of God’s unstoppable love in us.
And Paul then goes on to say, “this is what it looks like”. This is what God’s gold standard of love looks like in action. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious – that is, it doesn’t desire to have what others have or to be in someone else’s shoes. Love is not boastful – it doesn’t brag. Love is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. Love is not easily bothered or easily offended. Love does not rejoice in what’s wrong but rejoices in truth (which assumes there is such a thing as truth – that’s something we as Christians believe in, because God is truth.) Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never gives up or fades away.
Human beings can’t love like this. We can try. We can take this list of Paul’s and make it our goal and work on it every day, and while the effort would be worthy it’s doomed to fail unless God is in it. Because we can’t love like this without God.
This is kind of love God has for us. God is patient with us. God is kind to us. God doesn’t want what we have. God doesn’t brag on himself (although I do think Spring is God showing off a little bit.) God is never arrogant or rude to us. God only insists on God’s way when it’s what’s right for us: like a loving parent who sets limits for a child for the child’s own good. God is not easily offended. God rejoices in what’s right and what’s true. And Jesus on the cross bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, and endured all things, for us. God’s love never fails.
So wherever we are today, in joy or in sorrow, in busyness or at rest, in hope or in discouragement, God loves us like this.
This is God’s gold standard: the measure against which all things are measured, the value by which all things are valued.
And God calls us to carry God’s Spirit in ourselves so we can share this love with a world that desperately needs it.
So today: take with you the assurance and the confidence of God’s love. “And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three: and the greatest of these is love.” AMEN.
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Jeremiah 1:4-10 Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” 6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7 But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” 9 Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Psalm 71:1-6 In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.
5 For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O LORD, from my youth.
6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 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. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 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. 12 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. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
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Preached at Carnegie United Methodist Church and Hill Top United Methodist Church, 2/3/19
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