The Love that is Awesome Is God

4 Epiphany  C   January 30, 2022

Jer. 1:4-10 Ps.71:1-6

1 Cor. 13:1-13   Luke 4:21-32

 Lectionary Link

 

Logically, we can understand why many people choose first Corinthians 13 to be read at their weddings.  It is after all, the Love chapter.  But if we read it carefully, we should be awesomely overwhelmed, because it expresses the humanly impossible standard of such love.

 

Thank you St. Paul!  You who never were married, decided to write impossible standards of love for those of us who have become married.

 

This love essay of St. Paul is no quaint Country and Western Prose.  It not enough that the Greeks gave us four words for love; eros for the energy of attraction among people.  phileo for friendship love, for liking our favorite people;  storge was the word for family love, and agape is the profound unconditional love, that is so unconditional that it is believed to be divine love, and divinely inspired love.

 

Obviously, the church in Corinth had the loves of attraction, family, and friendship, but these natural loves had their limits.  The problem in the Corinthian church was not the lack of people having gifts; the problem was the ability of people who were gifted in living together well.  And this what brought about St. Paul's great writing about another kind of love, a love that was needed beyond our natural love.

 

And what kind of love was needed?   A "Love wass patient; love that was kind; love that was not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. That didn’t insist on its own way; was not irritable or resentful; it did not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoiced in the truth. Love that bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things."

 

This description of love seems to make it humanly impossible; it is so sublime.  And it is even horrifying to consider the extent of such love.  A love that bears all things is horrifying.  Think of all the horrendous events in the history of people, the extreme events of inhumanity.  And love has had to bear all this?  This kind of Love is about the great dilemma of life, and I would also say it is a divine dilemma too.  What is the dilemma?  How can God and we tolerate the full range of probable things which can happen in life?  How can God's love tolerate the conditions of freedom?  Is forbearing and enduring love incompatible with freedom, since so many things happen in the field of freedom which seem to contradict what love should permit.

 

But with God, Love and freedom co-exist, because the meaning and worth of love is dependent upon the reality of freedom.  If there is no freedom, then the world would be like an automatic machine of behaviors and happenings without moral significance.

 

Love and freedom co-exists because moral significance is crucial to living itself, and to human living.

 

St. Paul is writing to the church and in effect saying, "Because we know how bad we can be in living together, we need to freely explore how good we can be in living together.  And to do so we need help from God's divine love, not just to tolerate and forgive our failures, but to work hard at doing lovely things together, the projects of kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control, patience, and faithfulness.

 

When Jesus went to his own hometown, he experienced the failure of family love and brotherly love.  His own people seem to be jealous of his reputation for doing really good things.  The early church believed that the rejection of the goodness of Jesus by some, brought the goodness of Jesus to those whom had been foreign to the love of God which had become known to the people who had been given the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

The Love of God is never forced upon anyone; it is forbearing and enduring, and it will continue to be offered wherever it will find acceptance.

 

Let us be today, people who say yes to the Love of God.  The Love of God will not go away, it will bear everything, endure everything, and keep hoping for the very best use of human freedom.

 

May God help us today to receive continually the great gift of God's love so that we might honor in the very possible way the true significance of moral freedom.  Amen.