Words to Live By: Love - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Love - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Fred A. Holbrook, September 8, 2024

It was Christmas, 1982. Our first child was due in a few days. Laura and I had been married for five years. My love for her was and is a deeper love than I have ever experienced with anyone. I wondered how that love might expand to include our first child. Would I be a good father? Would I have enough love to share?

On December 30, our daughter, Bekah, was born. Since she was born two days before the New Year, I referred to her lovingly as “our ten fingers, ten toes tax deduction!”

God filled us to overflowing with love for Bekah.

Then October of 1984 came along and I wondered whether we would have enough love to share with little Philip as he was born. Again, God gave us more love than we ever knew was possible.

A third time God showed us the miracle of love when July of 1988 came along and we had more than enough love to share as Mary Beth blessed our family with her presence.

But that’s not all. God only begins there with this gift of love. Through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, love reaches beyond our immediate family to our church family and our community and our world. God’s love is a gift. It fills us to overflowing. God gifts each of us with more love than we ever thought possible.

When choosing texts for this summer’s Words for Life series, there were some favorite passages left over. As we celebrate Rally Day today with the program year starting its full and rich rhythm, it seems fitting to preach on one more text that permeates our holy relationships with one another.

When our church staff met on Tuesday, I was not convinced that James 2 was the text I would use for today. It teaches that “faith without works is dead.” Though I believe it, my heart was drawn by God’s Spirit to the familiar First Corinthians 13 text often shared at weddings. Recently it was one of the scriptures for Emma Price’s memorial service. Since it is familiar and a passage I have committed to memory, I wanted to discover which version I had learned. When I pulled my father’s 1952 Revised Standard Version Bible off the shelf, there were some corners of the pages of his Bible bent inward. I let the Bible fall open to a spot and it was First Corinthians 13! I love little miracle moments, God moments! That was one! This is how I learned it.

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not 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 have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 10 but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love is powerful. Love is holy. Love is the most important and challenging gift God gives us. And the Apostle Paul knows it.

In I Corinthians 12, Paul celebrates the body of Christ in all its parts, the people of God with all our gifts, but he leads in to chapter 13 by saying, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” That is the way of love.

It is different from the other spiritual gifts of apostles and preachers and teachers and healers and leaders and speakers in various tongues and interpreters of tongues. These are remarkable but they are not the greatest gift. Love is the greatest.

This is not puppy love. It is agape, Christ-like love. It is willing to sacrifice self for others. Paul is speaking of love that says from the cross, “I love you. I love you so much I am willing to die for you. I love each of you that much.”

Because the Apostle Paul experienced that deep love of Jesus first hand, he calls us to a life of love. There are fifteen characteristics of agape love that Paul shares with the Christians in Corinth and at Second Pres through this chapter. Without this love, we are nothing. If we sacrifice ourselves but don’t love others in the process, our actions are in vain. If we agree to teach Sunday School but don’t love others in our class, our teaching is in vain. We don’t gain anything. One person wrote: “The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as it is by often repeated deeds.”

Let me say that again. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as it is by often repeated deeds.

Paul says love is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It is happy when others get their way and doesn’t insist that “my way is the only way.”

Love is not irritable or resentful. It despises wrongdoing and celebrates the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, has unwavering hope, and an unbelievable ability to endure.

Love never, never, never ends. As long as the Holy Spirit is around and working in the hearts of believers, love will abound. Other spiritual gifts will run their course. Faith, hope, and love abide. But faith will one day be unnecessary because we will see God face to face. And hope will one day be fulfilled because, when we die and enter heaven or when Jesus returns, hope will be fulfilled. But one thing remains—love. Whether in this life or the life to come, love is crucial. Love is vital. Love is everlasting.

Laura Jeanne Allen shared this story found in Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul. It is an image of perfect love that applies not only in marriage, but can apply to all our relationships within our own families, in our church school classes, in our congregation, our city, our state, our world. It starts at home.

This is Ms. Allen’s story.

My grandparents were married for over half a century and played their own special game from the time they met each other. The goal of the game was to write the word “SHMILY” in a surprise place for the other to find. They took turns leaving “SHMILY” around the house, and as soon as one of them discovered it, it was their turn to hide it once more. They dragged “SHMILY” with their fingers through the sugar and flour containers to await whoever was preparing the next meal. They smeared it in the dew on the windows overlooking the patio where my grandma always fed us warm, homemade pudding with blue food coloring.  “SHMILY” was written in the steam left on the mirror after a hot shower, where it would reappear bath after bath. At one point my grandmother even unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper to leave “SHMILY” on the very last sheet.

There was no end to the places “SHMILY” would pop up.

Little notes with “SHMILY” scribbled hurriedly were found on dashboards and car seats, or taped to steering wheels. The notes were stuffed inside shoes and left under pillows. “SHMILY” was written in the dust upon the mantel and traced in the ashes of the fireplace. This mysterious word was as much a part of my grandparents’ house as the furniture.

It took me a long time before I was able to fully appreciate my grandparents’ game. Skepticism has kept me from believing in true love—one that is pure and enduring. But, I never doubted my grandparents’ relationship. They had love down pat. It was more than their flirtatious little games—it was a way of life. Their relationship was based on devotion and passionate affection which not everyone is blessed enough to experience. Grandma and Grandpa held hands every chance they could. They stole kisses as they bumped into each other in their tiny kitchen.

They finished each other’s sentences and shared the daily crossword puzzle and word jumble. My grandma whispered to me about how cute my grandpa was, how handsome an old man he had grown to be. She claimed that she really knew “how to pick ‘em.” Before every meal they bowed heads and gave thanks, marveling at their blessings: a wonderful family, good fortune, and each other.

But there was a dark cloud in my grandparents’ life: my grandmother had breast cancer. The disease had first appeared 10 years earlier. As always, Grandpa was with her every step of the way. He comforted her in their yellow room, painted that color so she could always be surrounded by sunshine, even when she was too sick to go outside.

Now the cancer was once again attacking her body. With the help of a cane and my grandfather’s steady hand, they still went to church every Sunday. But my grandmother grew steadily weaker until finally, she could not leave the house anymore.

For a while, Grandpa would go to church alone, praying to God to watch over his wife. Then one day, what we all dreaded finally happened. Grandma was gone.

“SHMILY.” It was scrawled in yellow on the pink ribbons of my grandmother’s funeral bouquet. At the visitation, as the crowd thinned and the last mourners turned to leave, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family members came forward and gathered around Grandma one last time. Grandpa stepped up to my grandmother’s casket and, taking a shaky breath, he began to sing to her. Through his tears and grief, the song came, a deep and throaty lullaby. Shaking with my own sorrow, I will never forget that moment. For I knew then that, although I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of their love, I had the privilege of witnessing its unmatched beauty.

        See how much I love you, See how much I love you, See how much I love you, I love you, Dear.

         S-H-M-I-L-Y: See How Much I Love You.

LOVE! God gave it to us in Christ. God expects it from us every day. As God’s children, we hear God saying to each one of us, “See how much I love you.” “See how much I love you.”

Prayer of Commitment: Spirit, open our hearts to the joy and pain of living. As you love may I love, in receiving and in giving. Spirit, open our hearts. Amen.