1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Fifth Sunday of Easter Sunday, May 15, 2022 “Live in Real Love”
Mary sat very still, just sort of staring out the window. Tears filled her eyes, and occasionally one rolled down her cheek. The tears had come before throughout this process, but for a moment, things just seemed to hit harder. The emotions: the pain, the sadness, the regret, the fear. The divorce had been coming for months and even years, but suddenly it felt more final than it ever had before. And through the tears and in the pain, Mary kept thinking back to a much happier day. She kept playing through her mind the Scripture reading from her wedding day, the same reading in front of us this morning. “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant.” On that day she thought it sounded so obvious. She loved him. She could feel it. Of course life and love would be wonderful and natural and easy. But he was so often impatient. He was so often unkind. He was so often irritable and petty and angry. After days and weeks and years, the feeling of love was harder and harder to come by. And then he had gone and done what was previously unimaginable. He did what could be considered the most unloving thing possible: he loved someone else in the way he was only supposed to love her. Things really unraveled once that came to light. Things progressed all the way to the divorce, but Mary still wondered. Could she have done more? Could she have prevented all this? It was hard to admit, but Mary knew it was true: she had also been impatient and unkind and unloving. Does Mary’s story sound familiar to you? It sounds familiar to me in a lot of ways even though I never knew this Mary personally. Mary’s story, though, is like a lot of stories I have come to know. Too many marriages end in divorce, and that always means pain and sorrow. Too many marriages don’t reflect the sort of love that God asks them to reflect. Too many people don’t love the way God calls on us to love. Mary’s story is a lot like my story from time to time as I wish that other people would be more loving toward me. Like her, I sometimes begrudgingly admit that I could be a little more loving, too. But when my conscience speaks the loudest and when my attention gets sharply focused, I unfortunately relate too closely with Mary’s husband. I act in ways that are not just unloving, but are actually the complete opposite of love. If you are anything like me, and I know that you are, you need to listen to what the Apostle Paul says about love in the “Great Love Chapter” of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. For Mary, this was part of her wedding service. That may have been the case for some of you, too. This is a very popular Scripture reading for weddings. But it’s not actually about weddings. It’s not about marriage. It is about love. Paul here is telling all of us, and all of the Christians in that ancient city of Corinth, that they are to live in real love. This is about life. It is about worship. It is about relationships of all types. It is about marriage because marriage is about love and relationships, but this reading is about much more and should not be limited to weddings. The Corinthians would have seen in this chapter many references to other things Paul had told them. In this letter, which God led Paul to write, he had already addressed concerns that the priorities of the Corinthians were misplaced. This congregation was blessed with many spiritual gifts. At times people spoke in tongues, speaking God’s Word in languages that they had not learned or previously known. Sometimes others in the congregation understood and could interpret those words, but not always. Others in the congregation had been blessed with the ability to heal people and do other miraculous signs. Still others were blessed with deep knowledge and understanding. And people started choosing their favorites. They started picking the gifts that they wanted. They started to envy others who had them when they did not. They didn’t always appreciate that God gave a diversity of gifts that could all be used together to build up the congregation. And they certainly did not appreciate that God had given those gifts in order for people to serve others. They didn’t appreciate that everything they did was to be done in love. Someone could have all the best and flashiest of gifts, but it didn’t matter if they didn’t show love as they used their gifts. The person who spoke like an angel with incredible beauty and eloquence, but didn’t love others was like a “clang clang clang” of a gong or a cymbal. Real love serves.