[Passage: 1 Cor 13: 1 – 13; Sunday morning, 01 Feb, 2009]

Paul speaks to a church in trouble and tells them that he has a more excellent way for them. And it is the same message for all churches in trouble. There is a more excellent way.
I stopped at a service station one day, and a girl was serving. As I entered, the boss called her from out the back somewhere, so she leaned over, patted my arm and said, “I’m really sorry — I just have to see what my boss wants, and I will be right back.” It struck me that she had done an enormous lot of things in those simple words and actions.
That touch said, “I am on your side.” It said, “I recognise you.” She didn’t mean that she had seen me before, because she hadn’t. She knew I was there, she was thinking of me.
Her touch also meant,” I trust you. I feel I can touch you and you will not take it wrongly.”

As I said, she had never seen me before as far as I know. She could have decided to ignore me, to treat me as an outsider, to mistrust me.

And it is a choice. She could have gone either way, and some people would have gone the opposite way to her. But she chose to go the way of showing care. Even if she thought it was the most natural thing in the world, it was still a choice, because she could have gone another way.
Paul is talking about love, and he is not talking about the feelings which lead you and me to feel closer to one person than to another. He is talking about what we choose to do, how we choose to respond to a person.

It was a lesson I began learning when I began school. One of the kids always punched me or kicked me when I was near. One day I was putting things back into the cupboard, and he squatted down beside me.
He drew his arm back to punch me. I said, “Why do you always hit me? I never hit you. I don’t want to fight. Why can’t we be friends?”
He put his hand down, and shook hands, and we were friends for the rest of the year.
I made a choice, and it worked.

Paul is talking about choices in this chapter: choices of love.
He talks about the primacy of love in a world where love is often dismissed as unrealistic and too soft.
He talks about the nature of love in a world which confuses real love with the emotions of the moment.
He talks about the durability of love in a world which expects unimportant things to last and neglects what is vital.

The primacy of love
Paul tells us,
1COR 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Some years ago, I attended a conference on healing at Randwick. I met a really nice Chinese girl there. She told me some of her story.
She was from a Christian family in Malaysia, and was in Australia to study.
“I never understood grace until I came here,” she said. “Because of the strong influence of Buddhism among the Malaysian Chinese, we find it very hard not to feel that we will be rewarded according to how well we perform. It transformed my life to realise that God loves me for Jesus’ sake, exactly as I am!”
If only we all understood things as clearly as she did! Every few days I come across someone seriously complaining that Christianity is all wrong because it gets people doing good out of a desire to be rewarded or a fear of punishment.

How far that is from the true Gospel! Yet it is deeply engrained in the Australian way of thinking. Even we

Christians can drift into such false thinking unless we are very careful.
The Corinthians had fallen into exactly the same trap.
What Paul is describing is Christians who don’t really understand grace. Grace is the active component of love.
If I speak in human or angelic languages, that does not make me more lovable. If I can communicate with God himself, there is no greater reward. Satan can communicate with humans and with angels and with God, but he will never inherit God’s kingdom.
Similarly, neither prophetic gifting nor understanding of deep spiritual truths nor knowledge of God’s ways, nor the greatest of miracle–working faith carries weight with God unless it arises from love and expresses love.

These Corinthians were so proud of their gifts, yet they were almost empty of true love.

I read a sad story, a disgusting story, that fundamentalist Christians have been abusing the naturalist, David Attenborough, because he doesn’t believe in six-day Creationism. They tell him to burn in hell!
Where is the love that Christians are supposed to display? What good is it to understand the secrets of the creation if you have no love, if you are filled with hatred of those you disagree with?
I want to make it entirely clear, that no one has to believe in any particular scheme of creation to be saved, because we are saved by Christ alone, and the proper response to that salvation is love, love to God, love to each other, love to the world.

If we don’t love, we don’t show ourselves to be children of God, our heavenly Father.

The nature of love
But what is love really like?

There was a discussion in a newspaper blog site. When it is appropriate for a woman to have sex — the first date or the third? TV depicts it as normal to begin a relationship with sex, so it’s a reasonable question. Many of the replies were from people who could not distinguish love from attraction, who could not distinguish love from sex, who could not distinguish love from affection.

Paul’s view of life and love is quite different.
As I said before, love in a choice, and Paul sets out some of the directions of that choice.
1COR 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
We all understand what patience and kindness are, but what about putting them into practice? Hard, isn’t it?

As a kid, I was not good at fighting. I learnt to fight with words. If I was impatient, I would snap at people. If I was irritated, I hit out with sarcasm.
I still tend to sarcasm, though I try to keep out of practice.

We have different ways of being unkind. Some people withdraw when things get tense — that’s another of my failings — and rob people of the opportunity to sort out a difficulty.
That can be self–seeking, too. “I will look after me, and I can’t care about you!”

There’s a discussion in The Herald at the moment where one of the journalists talks about how you see married couples who snipe at each other all the time, even when they are out. The journalist wonders how well their marriages stand up under such abrasion.

And what about not keeping a record of wrongs? How many people do you know who say, “Let bygones be bygones?”
But when these same people get into a conflict, how many will then say, “You always do this! You never do that!”? It doesn’t matter if it is true or not. I heard someone say to a partner recently, “You never listen!” From what I had heard of the prior conversation, he’d been listening rather carefully, but maybe just not to the bit that she thought was important.

People hang onto past hurts for two reasons. One is because it’s a way of protecting themselves against being hurt again. These are the people who are into avoidance. The other reason is because it is a way of winning, and these are the people who are into aggression.

There are times when we do have to protect ourselves. There are times when we do need to confront someone with the truth. Love rejoices in the truth. But anyone who hangs onto wrongs as a weapon or as armour doesn’t comprehend love.
What is the nature of love? We all know what it is like, once we sit down and reflect. What is love like? Filter out Hollywod’s messages. Remember the things that really said to you, “You are loved!”
Who stood up for you when you needed an advocate? Who trusted you to do well, trusted you to do even better next time? Who hoped in you when no one else seemed to?

Do we understand the nature of love? Of course we do! We just have to be discerning. Scoop out the dross and you will see the purity of real love.
And that is the kind of love which hangs in there when others desert you.
What kind of love have we received? What kind of love do we give?

The endurance of love
Paul’s final point is that love is lasting.
1COR 13:8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1COR 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

They say that young people feel they are immortal. When I was in my 20s, death seemed far away; now I often think of people who were my age when I met them and are now long gone. It gives you perspective on life.
Gradually you begin to see life, not as what you have acheived, but as what relationships have you been part of, and how have you dealt with them.

I sometimes read articles about the high achievers, the people who have made it in business with empires built under their expert direction. Only this week there was an obituary of a man who was a leader in the automotive industry. He had been married at one time, had a child, but the marriage broke up.
He said that he was better at business than at being married.
Some others have been through multiple relationships, leaving a trail of wrecked lives behind them.

At the end of life, surely you begin to see that none of these things is as important as relationships.

I conducted a funeral some years ago for a chap who, it turned out, was an extremely unpleasant and difficult man.
His ex-wife and children breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. His sons spoke of beatings and abuse; his daughter may have been talking about rape.
The funeral was difficult because of the person he was, but it was well attended. One of his former work colleagues had also known my father, so we got talking. This man told me that he hadn’t liked the bloke who had died, but he came to support the family. It seemed that that was why most of the people were there.

Talk about gaining the world and losing your soul! He may have been good at his work, but he lost everyone.

And that’s what Paul is telling the Corinthians. They need to put away their childish boasting about what they have achieve. They need to forget about emphasising their gifts, the frequency with which they speak in tongues, the number they have won to faith, the power of their preaching. They need to move on from being mere doers and become lovers through and through.

Don’t make the mistake that some do, of trying to use this passage to prove that tongues and prophecy have ceased. The New Testament is not the perfect thing that is to come. Paul is talking about heaven, about the age to come. Paul is talking about the full revelation of the Kingdom, when we are forever in the King’s presence!

Then there will be no need for tongues, because we shall praise God with the angels as our backing chorus.
Then there will be no need for prophecy, because the King will tell us directly what his will is.
Then there will be no place for hope, because what we hope for will have come.
And then there will not even be a place for faith, because
faith is the substance of things unseen,
and we will already see face to face!
But love — love endures forever.

Conclusion
Paul wants these Corinthians to build their fellowship and to ensure that the gospel is not hindered by how they behave.
What better way is there, than the way of love? God is love, and his children must display love.
Conflict burns its way through a fellowship, and it could all be solved in a moment by an outbreak of love.

Churches split, and the reason is that people pursue power and control rather than love.

Some blame divisions on doctrine, but differences in doctrine are only ever a problem if people fail to love.
If we want to build fellowship, we will do it through love; if we want to build strength, it will come through being known for our love; if we aim to touch our world, we will do it best through love.
The world around us doesn’t have a lot of experience of love. It understands affection, it is good on lust, but enduring love, love for the unlovely, love that lasts to the coming age — it needs to see that. It needs to see that it is real among God’s people, and then it will trust that we tell the truth when we offer it to them. Let’s choose to love!
AMEN