4th Sunday after Epiphany
February 1, 2004
1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:13

^12:31b. . . And I will show you a still more excellent way.

^13:1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (NRSV).

Love Is the Greatest Spiritual Power

  We have all heard or seen a story where a genie, or the devil, gives someone a few wishes. It usually becomes an experience in which this person discovers that some things are much more important than others. Quite often, love is the most important thing. Riches and power and sex-appeal are nice, but if no one loves you, all those other things leave you very cold.

  Now let’s say that God gave you a wish today. Out of all the powers that the Holy Spirit could give you, you may choose one. Which would you choose? Maybe you’d like to turn water to wine and do other amazing miracles! Maybe you’d like to raise the dead! Maybe you’d like to be a prophet like Moses or heal people like Jesus did! Maybe you’d really like to speak in a whole bunch of other languages like the disciples did on Pentecost! What would you choose?

  Our reading last week ended with Paul telling us to strive for the greater gifts of the Spirit. But along side those gifts of the Spirit, there is something more important. There is a power without which all the gifts are useless and even detrimental. That power is love. If, therefore, you had to choose only one thing from the Holy Spirit, the best thing to choose would be love. For in spiritual matters, love is the greatest power. Paul explains why.

  First of all, love in necessary. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

  What if you had the gift of healing so that you could pray for sick people and they would be healed? That would be great! But what if you began to tire of the rest of us? What if we were just a burden and a nuisance always coming to you every time one of us had a cough or a pain or a runny nose. Imagine getting called in the middle of the night because some little kid, yes, the brat who spilt his milk on you, has a ear ache and needs you to heal him. Imagine that you so tire of us that you move away. What good is your gift? Maybe you even start to think of it as a curse!

  Or, imagine that you are a great singer and that we love to hear you sing. Then someone else joins the church who is an equally good singer and we like to hear that person sing too. Then you become jealous and no longer want to sing as long as the other person is here. So now, even though you have this great gift, it does nothing for us. In fact, we’re all miserable.

  Impossible situations? Such things happen all the time! And that is why Paul says that no matter what he can do, if he does not have love, he is nothing. Remember that we have been baptized into the body of Christ. We are part of a whole. No one of us is a self-sufficient island. We need each other; we cannot be the body of Christ either isolated by ourselves or having excluded some others. Remember also that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to us for the good of the body. Yet, it is not our gifts that bind us together as one. Because of our corrupt proud nature, our gifts usually tear us apart. Love is the power that binds the parts of the body together so that we don’t annoy each other. Love is the power that lets me control myself so that my gift, whatever it may be, does not make me proud and look down on others. Love is the power that keeps me from being jealous of what another can do. Thus, love is indispensable. We can live just fine without miraculous healing, but not without love. We can live without a great vocalist, but not without love. We can live without almost anything except love.

  Why? Why does love work? Love works because of what it does. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

  We can’t do it in English, but Paul uses 15 verbs in that list to tell us what love does. Love is a force, a power, that acts. It is something that the Holy Spirit works in us. It is a quality of God himself. The Bible never says that God is mercy or is grace although he is clearly merciful and gracious. But the Bible does say that God is love, not just that he loves, but that he is love and that we know what love is because he first loved us. So love is a power of God. When we love it’s because the Holy Spirit lives in us and causes us to love.

  That love does what our corrupt nature doesn’t like to do. While we’re generally impatient, love is patient. While we can be unkind, love is kind. We are often jealous, boastful, arrogant and rude, but not love. We get fed up with each other and resent each other, but not love. We get a kick out of seeing all the evil things people do; we like to gossip about other’s immorality and watch with greedy eyes to see how far they will go. But not love, it clings tenaciously to the truth, God’s word. We get tired of others and say that their problems are not our problems, but love bears everything. It believes God’s promises and has the confidence we call hope.

Newspaper columnist and minister George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. “I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me.”

Dr. Crane suggested an ingenious plan “Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you've convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you're getting a divorce. That will really hurt him.”

With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, “Beautiful, beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!” And she did it with enthusiasm. Acting “as if.” For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. When she didn't return, Crane called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?”

“Divorce?” she exclaimed. “Never! I discovered I really do love him.” Her actions had changed her feelings. Motion resulted in emotion. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often repeated deeds. (J. Allan Petersen.)

  Love is a power of God that acts. It changes things. Love moved God to give his son as a sacrifice in our place. Love moved God to call us to be his people. Love moved God to give us new birth in baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Love moves God to patiently put up with our sins and transform us into the body of Christ. God’s love is changing us! Let it work now in your life and see what it does. Love that person who has hurt and offended you. Revenge can only destroy her; love can restore her.

  Paul adds one more thing about love. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

  The spiritual gifts that Paul has been discussing are impressive and desirable. But they are both temporary and partial. God revealed many things through the prophets and apostles, but not everything. Therefore we know many things about God, everything we need to know, but certainly not everything we’d like to know. These and other gifts of the Spirit are tools that the Holy Spirit gives the body of Christ according to his wisdom. He knows when we need them. When they are no longer needed, they will cease. Perhaps many of the gifts have already ceased in this place, not because God no longer has the power to act nor because we lack faith, but because he does not deem them necessary for us now. Like a boy becomes a man and leaves behind some things from his childhood, so in time, the Holy Spirit will stop his gifts. In that we must trust him.

  Love, however, is something that all of us need all the time. It does not end. It goes on to eternal life. When we get to heaven, we won’t need any prophets or healers or people to speak other languages. We won’t even need faith and hope because we’ll have what we trusted in and hoped for! But we will continue to love. In fact, then we will be able to love perfectly and know what perfect love is.

  Love then is the greatest spiritual power. It is the way of living in the body of Christ. Above all else, we need love.