A more excellent way

A More Excellent Way The Dover Church
February 3, 2013 –4th Sunday after Epiphany   1 Corinthians 12:31-14:1a

We human beings struggle with a sense of incompleteness, of something missing, something more that is not yet, of something more to live, discover, know, experience. This incompleteness is something more than evolutionary adaptation or normal appetites, which all animals possess. We try to understand ourselves, the people in our lives, the purpose of our lives, the meaning of our lives. We stand in a tension between the ordinary which we know and the great which we feel ought to draw us onward, and we agonize when it seems to be passing us by. We wonder about what could have been or might yet still be different. We face choices of where to make our stand, where to hang our hat, where to go and how to get there, over and above questions of physical survival, destitution or prosperity.
This morning the Apostle Paul offers us a very common sense, as in we all know it’s true from our personal experience even though we may not live it all the time, straightforward yet cosmic, and universal, as in it works in all situations, view of a more excellent way to live into this sense of incompleteness.
Paul begins by addressing people who think they have it all together. He notes some impressive spiritual gifts practiced by people in Corinth: speaking in tongues, prophecy, understanding mysteries and knowing everything, faith that moves mountains, giving away everything to charity. The folks he is writing to are really excellent at their religion. They are the rock stars of the First Church of Corinth, the people whom all the other First Corinthians look up to as exemplars. And Paul lays it right out there, “those gifts are great, but your religion is nothing without love.”
I have done more significant and insignificant things than I care to remember out of a sense compulsion, fear, anger, resentment, pettiness, for revenge, to beat the other guy, to prove to myself and to anyone else who might be paying attention how great I was. When those things worked out in my favor, there was instant gratification. Over time, however, they left no lasting sense of satisfaction, no sense of completeness, of right-ness, righteousness in Biblical terms, not compared with just about any of the things, great or small, that I have done purely out of love. I offer you two examples, one seemingly inconsequential, the other very consequential, to give you some reference. Do you remember the experiential difference between buying your child an ice cream cone because he wouldn’t stop nagging you for one, and surprising your child with a trip to Bubbling Brook just because you knew how much he’d enjoy it and how much you’d enjoy his enjoyment? Or, the experiential difference between taking care of someone you love because you love that person and taking care of someone because you have to, because in the musical chairs of life you're the one still standing? Point One: anything and everything we do in our lives is infinitely better when it is done with love. Love gives both the doer and the deeds completeness. Without love, the doer and the deeds are partial and incomplete.
From there Paul moves on to the mechanics of this love: patience, kindness, not envious, boastful arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful, not rejoicing in wrongdoing but in the truth; bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. Now here's an interesting irony. Many of us think this love is impossible, beyond both our capacity to do consistently or comprehensively, and beyond our experience of receiving, yet isn't this love exactly what we all long for, hope for, crave from others? This is how we want to be treated. We get used to and accept so much less, but this is the gold standard we have in a secret hearts. If we've never known it and doubt or ability to do it, I ask you a simple question: where did this hair brained idea come from?
I would argue, neither naively nor blindly, but out of deep conviction and after much life experience, that we get this idea from God. This love is the consistent personality and of God described from Genesis 1:1 to Revelations 22:21 in the Bible. In story after story, this love just pours out, freely and abundantly, with no real expectation of return. As followers of Jesus, let's take his example for a God perspective. God comes to earth, struggles with relationships and communication issues, tries his best to teach us by word and deed how to live, heals, feeds, frees people, takes on the powers, is killed, and is resurrected after three days, all of which God knew going in. Why would God bother? Would you or I do that if we were God? Give up a great gig for such a hassle? Why go to all the trouble? Simply because that is who God is and that is what God does. In a word: LOVE. And it's all a gift, freely given, for which have to do nothing to deserve and usually do little by way of reciprocation. God loves you and there's nothing you can do about. Right?
We don't have to read the Bible to see this benevolence underlying life. Just look around. Pay attention to how amazing life is, how abundant life is, how free a gift life is. Just being alive in good health with whatever senses you possess is pretty wonderful, especially when we're faced with the alternative. We either love being alive, or we're wasting our lives if we don't. This love, living this love, is just getting in synch with how things really are. Everything else is going against the grain, gumming up the works. Point two: love is not so much how things were meant to be, as in some sort of pie in the sky aspiration, as how things naturally are which we do our best to work against in thought, word and deed, both great and small.
And finally, moving beyond our individual lives to the big picture, love is the most excellent way because it is the only thing that endures. I may be a bit premature, being only 49, but we are never going to figure it all out, find all the answers, not in this life. Nor are we going to achieve perfection. The more mature folks here this morning can correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of life can be like looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection dimly. What do we see? Ourselves, in reverse, and distorted if the mirror is as poor as the mirrors were in Paul's day. Think of all the theories and certainties by which the world has been run which now sit on the ash heap of human history, all the scientific discoveries which turned previous discoveries on their heads. Do you care to remember any of the things you absolutely knew were true at some earlier point in your life and have now left behind as childish? Ideas, theories, knowledge, they come and go, seeming rock solid in their heyday, something to bet your life on, and then disappearing like a whisp of smoke in a strong breeze. But love, like God, remains a mystery, which, while we can't grab or control it, we can stand face to face with, experience at the very core of our being, and live it ourselves. No matter what we do in our lives, the only thing that lives forever is the love we give away freely. Love cannot fail. Love can be and often is rejected. Love is always resisted by violence, within our own hearts and by others, yet love is still the only sustainable, restorative, transformative, and enduring antidote. That is why Paul calls this love, this give it away for free love which we see in Jesus and live in our lives, a more excellent way. In Greek, the word is hyperbole, which means beyond measure, a throw beyond the others, exceeding. We can try to base our lives on all the current theories and nibble at the edges of life or even get our piece of the pie. But living love jumps us right into the center of life where we neither nibble nor grab but swim. Everything else is ultimately futile. This love is challenging, not easy sentimentality, and Christianity does not have exclusive claims on its practice. This love is not going to necessarily bring you happiness or prosperity, as it is promised in many churches these days, but it will place you squarely in the swirling vortex of completeness. To get up every morning and practice this love is a more excellent way to spend the rest of our lives. This is the Good News.