Love is the Key

January 31, 2016 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Year C Love is the Key When I pastor in Aurora, there was this older couple who always sat in the first row, they had a fairly young daughter when I started, she was about 7th grade. I was there long enough for this young girl to graduate high school and go off to college. I remember her coming to me when I was about to leave, and she told me that I had come along way in my preaching. She said that I laughed at you so hard when you first came. It was July and you were preaching about being thankful. I could not understand why you would be preaching about being thankful, when it was not even thanksgiving. She meant that to make fun of me, but I thought the she just did not understand what it really meant to be a Christian. Because if you are a Christian, then everday is thanksgiving, even a day in July. Because there is not a day to goes by that we should not be thankful. Well, unfortunately I find myself in that predicament again. The scripture for today is the love chapter in 1 Corinthians, but Valentine’s Day is still two weeks away. Well the good news is that God’s love is so wide, and so deep that I could preach a sermon on love every Sunday, and still not say enough. Someone said – love is not God, but God is always love. That is a good starting point for my sermon this morning. What is God’s love, or what is the difference between our love and God’s love. Whenever I am doing premarital counseling, I always tell couples, do not pick this bible verse to be read at your wedding. Because 80 percent of the weddings that you will attend in your lifetime, this 1 Corinthians chapter 13 will be read. You will hear more wedding sermons preached on this chapter then you ever want to hear. And the funny thing is, that is not really Paul’s intention in writing this chapter. We have heard that there are three types of love – eros, philio, and agape. There is personal love, brotherly love and love for all of humankind. But Paul is actually talking about a 4th type of love – God’s love. And Paul is not writing these words to two people in a relationship, who are happy together. Paul is writing these words to a congregation in turmoil. He is telling people that don’t want to be bothered with one another, to remember God’s love. Human Love Falls Short I was preaching in the Midwest one day, when a woman came to me with a little girl at her side. This woman showed by the cast on her arm and some scars on the side of her face that she had been in the hospital. She said, "I was in the hospital because of a very serious fire. There were burns over two-thirds of my body. My husband walked into the hospital room, took one look at me, and said, 'You're not the woman I married.' " He left her to marry someone younger and more beautiful. Human love says, "As long as you stimulate me, as long as I can be proud of you, as long as you're beautiful, I can love you. If you change, my love for you changes." Erwin Lutzer, "Learning to Love," Preaching Today, Tape No. 99. The point is that human love always has its limitations, and God’s love is eternal, all encompassing, and able to withstand all situations. And sometimes in a congregation, we can reach our limits, we can get tired of people’s stuff. But we have to be reminded not of our feelings for one another, but our mission and determination. I would be willing to bet that if you look at the person that you are sitting next to right now. You have some type of relationship with them, some type of affinity. You sit next to that person every Sunday. So by now you have learned to like that person. It doesn’t take a lot of encouragement to get along with that person. But what about the person across the room? Or in the next pew? Paul is encouraging us to learn to love those who we don’t have a relationship with, those who we don’t understand, those we don’t want to be bothered with. But who are still members of your church. You love them because God loves them and not because you don’t. The Dalai Lama challenged us in a class – to think about our mother and all of the wonderful things that she has done for us. There is no other person in the world who has loved us more than our mother. Now hold onto all of the good feelings that you have about your mother. If you have a picture of your mother in your minds eye, all of that love automatically comes into focus. – but instead of thinking of your mother, think of someone that your are upset with, someone that you don’t like to be around. Someone that gives you the creeps every time that they open their mouth. – for me that person would be Donald Trump. But the Dalai Lama’s challenge was that instead of feeling to anger and resentment that you normally feel around that person, to intentionally replace it with the love that you have for your mother. To learn to give that person the same love that you would give to your mother. That is not an easy thing for us humans to do. And it certainly does not come natural. Paul’s point is that when we learn to do that effectively that we are expressing that 4th kind of love. It is not romantic, it is not brotherly, it is not even agape. It is God’s love. You should love everybody in the same way that you love your mother. Not because they deserve it. But because you love God and God loves them. Love is not God, but God is always love. In Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, Rosalee Futch (Kate Bosworth) is a small-town, West Virginia girl who enters a contest and wins a date with movie star Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel). After their date in Hollywood, Rosalee flies back home to resume her life. Her date with Tad, however, causes him to reflect upon who he has become. He decides he needs to change who he is and flies to West Virginia, hoping Rosalee's small-town values will rub off on him. Meanwhile, Rosalee is unaware that her best friend and boss at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Pete, is secretly in love with her. As the romance between Rosalee and Tad blossoms, Pete suffers in silence. Angelica, the local bartender, eventually convinces him to talk about what is bothering him. Angelica says, "You know, as a bartender, you do learn to kind of recognize those customers who need to talk." "Angelica, I'm fine, but, uh, could I have like six more of these?" Pete says, indicating his drink. "No, Pete, you really need to talk." Pete replies, "Okay. Um, I think that our friend Rosie might be falling in love with Tad Hamilton." "Yeah…didn't have to be a bartender to see that one coming." Pete says, "Right, but the problem with that is that I'm in love with Rosie." "You know, I always thought that maybe you were. So how much do you love her? Is it love, is it big love, or is it great love?" "Like, what do you mean?" Angelica answers, "Well, love, you get over in two months. Big love…two years. Great love…great love changes your life." Elapsed time: The scene begins at 01:09:39 and lasts 1 minute and 30 seconds. Content: Rated PG-13 for sexual content, some drug references, and language. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton (DreamWorks SKG, 2004), written by Victor Levin, directed by Robert Luketic; submitted by Rod Reed, Fresno, California Whenever we are talking about human love, there is always some doubt in our mind as to whether what we feel is really love. We are always wondering if it love, big love or great love. One of the reasons that this scripture is preached at so many weddings is to remind us that we have to put God in the center of all of our relationships in order to have a great love. But Paul breaks it down for us even more. He tells us what love is and what love is not. He tells us what loves does and what it does not. Paul gives 15 different characteristics of love. Love is patient. And the word here means to be patient with the person, even when you are not patient with the circumstances. No matter how bad the situation is, still be patient and understanding with the persons involved. Love is kind – which means be sweet to all people, not just the ones you are sitting next to. Love knows no envy. There are two kinds of jealousy – one is where you want what others have, and the other is when you don’t want that person to have anything, and you will fight to take everything that person has away from them. Love overcomes both of these. Love never brags, it never speaks of its own importance, love is always graceful, love does not insist on its rights,it does not fly into a tamtrum, it does not remember the wrongs of others, it finds no pleasure in wrongdoing, it rejoices in the truth, it trust it endures, it always hopes. The only thing in life that will live up to all 15 of those things all of the time is God. And it is only the love of God that helps us to love our fellow church members, our fellow family members, our fellow people of the world all of the time in all circumstances. These are my friends that I got in Greece, faith, hope, charity. These are the greek girls, you can also get them in the Christian version where they are fully clothed. These figures are popular in Greece, because Paul was not the first person to put these three qualities together. Plato uses them to say that all of humanity is dependent on these three virtues to keep us together. Paul just takes the concept a few steps further. You can’t separate the three sisters, faith, hope and love. One theologian says that faith is the door that we have to walk through in order to understand God’s love. Hope is the reward of faith. Hope expects what hope believes and faith believes what hope expects. You cant have one without the other. In the middle of the two is always love. If you don’t know how to love, then it is a forgone conclusion that you wont have faith in anything or hope in things changing. Love is the key to life. In the end that is all that we really want – is to experience love. To know that we are accepted completely for who we are. To have God’s love in our lives. Love is not God, but God is always love. Faith, hope and love travel together, but the greatest of them is love. Paul is reminding us that is it good to have love in all areas of your life. You should love the person that you are married to, you should love the people in your household, you should love the people that you work with, that you should love the person that you are sitting next to. But if you can show love in all of those places, you should also love the people that you see at church, love the people that you sing in the choir with, love the people at church council, love the person that always disagrees with you, love the person who is struggling and asking questions, love the people who travel this spiritual journey with you. Sometimes the only thing that is holding us together as a church is God’s love. We are united by faith, by hope, but the greatest of these is love. God’s love, not ours. Love is not God, But God is love. Amen. The film 127 Hours tells the true story of then 27-year-old Aron Ralston. In 2003, while hiking in Blue John Canyon in Utah, Ralston was trapped by a chockstone that pinned his right arm to one wall of a crevice. After surviving for five days on 500 ml of water and exhausting all other options, he fashioned a homemade tourniquet and with a blunt pocket tool cut off his arm and stumbled out of the canyon to find help. At one level, this film sounds like just another gory action movie, but more deeply, this film explores what it means to love. At the beginning of the film, Aron barrels into the canyon, music blaring in his headphones. He arrives there after ignoring phone calls from his mom and sister and brushing aside his boss' queries about where he was headed. Ralston acts like a completely self-centered loner, incessantly snapping pictures of himself and flirting with girls he meets on the trail. Clearly, Ralston doesn't need or want anyone else in his life. But by the end of the film, he's motivated to fight for his life by a memory of his ex-girlfriend looking at him with a mixture of pain and pity and saying, "You're going to be so lonely, Aron." At the time, he wanted the loneliness, savoring freedom from entanglements. But remembering her love and thinking about the possibility of starting a family provides the motivation to pull out his pocket knife. He realizes he's made a terrible mistake by isolating himself, and he wants another chance to live differently. So he cuts off his arm and escapes to freedom. Near the end of the film, when Aron has made it out of the canyon and is on the trail with his severed arm, he sees some other hikers a little way ahead. Barely audible at first he says, "Help me." Then, bellowing hoarsely, he cries out, "Please Help Me!" The hikers hear him, and turn around puzzled. Then, seeing what's happened, they come running. It's when Aron asks for help that the film reaches its climax. "Please help me" is itself a form of "I love you." The two cries belong together. Ralston's vulnerability, his plea for rescue, is what leads him back into the arms of his family, back into relationships with people, back to love. Adapted from Wesley Hill, "Love Is a Cry for Help," C