Candies, Hallmark and What St. Paul was Really Talking About

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. Love never ends. 1 Cor. 13:4-8.

(A Sermon by Rev. M. Robinson delivered Feb. 3/13 at Westminster United Church)

Love is hard to talk about. It’s something that we don’t entirely understand because we can’t quantify it and dissect it and study it the way most things in our science-driven lives are. I mean, sure, we can hook someone up to a machine who says they’re in love and look at how their neurons fire, but we still aren’t able to fully communicate exactly what love is.

I walked into Hallmark the other day, a store that assists people in communicating love. “I don’t have the words, but for $5.99 this card and these candies will tell you.” It was all pink and red, and hearts, and blooms and cupigs (because nothing says love like a cupig.) It was weird. Though not as weird as the look I got from the sales clerk when I asked if I could take a few pictures because I was a preacher and would be discussing the virtue of love and there was a lot of good cultural commentary in the store that I could use in an upcoming sermon.

I think she wanted to say, “No,” but was afraid of what I’d do.

While the store may have looked like a giant heart threw up all over the place, there was playfulness to it all. All those hearts and things, they’re fun, don’t you think? For some of us they’re nostalgic: memories of a time when getting that card that said, “I choo-choo-choose you” meant you were in the best relationship ever. That time when you made sure your hair was done just right, when you stood a little taller, listened a little closer… put on deodorant. A time when everything was wonderful and you knew it would be like that forever and ever, Amen.

If you’re in that stage of a relationship right now, fantastic. God bless you.

And if I may be so bold as to tell you….brace yourself.

Unlike the mythology that we perpetuate in our society, love is work. Love is not pink hearts and fuzzy pigs. Love is active, tough, and requires some heavy lifting.

Now, this isn’t a sermon about marriage… although this particular passage of 1 Corinthians 13 has been most often relegated to marriage ceremonies. But Paul was not writing to a couple exchanging vows or valentines. This is a letter to a community of people, a fledgling church in Corinth. And why do you suppose that Paul is writing this letter to this newly established church? Is it because everything is going perfectly, and he just couldn’t resist bursting into a poem of love?

No. He writes because people are discovering that being in relationship with each other is not easy. There’s that guy that always thinks he’s right, and the woman who talks way too long at the meetings. There’s someone who is always late and another who expects his own way all the time. The choir thinks they’re better than the ushers, the ushers think they’re better than the board, and that minister thinks the whole service revolves around her.

People start judging others, ranking certain abilities and viewpoints ahead of others, boasting about themselves all in the name of Jesus. Paul writes to a group so preoccupied with being right that they’ve forgotten about being loving. And if they can’t be loving, according to Paul, if they don’t have love… well, they might as well not bother:

“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.”

Love as a Christian virtue is the core of who we are. A core muscle that we need to develop, engage and strengthen because it is what matters, what lasts, and it is what enables us to do the heavy lifting that is required for this thing called life.

As N.T. Wright points out in the book After You Believe (p. 182) the mere fact that Paul says that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things endures all things, says that there will be things to bear, things to believe, things to hope for which are not seen at present, things to endure. We’re going to have to do some heavy lifting in this life and in community.

Ever seen weight lifters and wonder how they can lift the weight they do without crushing their spine? It’s the muscles in their core that does the work; muscles that they develop over time, with sweat and practice. Love is like that. It is our core, something we develop over time with sweat and practice; a muscle we strengthen and flex.

So how do we do that since the fitness store doesn’t really have the equipment for this task? Some suggestions:

We strengthen our core in our relationships by being intentional about calling to mind someone we love. We take a deep breath, get in touch with our heart (maybe place our hand over it) and say, “I wish you well.” After we’ve practiced that for a while, maybe we can call someone to mind that we don’t know very well and do the same thing, “I wish you well.” And then after we practiced that for a while we call someone to mind that we find difficult and do the same thing, “I wish you well.”

We strengthen our core by contemplating people’s goodness so that when one of our brothers or sisters cannot see love, or hope or the face of Christ within their own life, we can see it for them.

We strengthen our core when we don’t think about our own benefit but the benefit of someone else.

We strengthen our core when we need to take a stand. Hear me on this: love is not about being nice (Paul says, “love is kind,” which is about consideration, he doesn’t say “love is nice”…there’s a difference.) Love can confront especially as it looks abuse, injustice, prejudice, and suffering directly in the eye and says, “It stops here.” Sometimes the most loving thing we can do for ourselves and for others is to say firmly, “No more.”

But most importantly we strengthen our core through the love of God through Jesus Christ who knew how hard this loving thing is and walked among us anyway; who was so full of love, his heart broke open with it. And even though God’s love was nailed to a cross and closed in a tomb, it still couldn’t be contained. That is how strong love truly is.

Christ is the example of how 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. Love never ends.

Is such love even humanly possible? I don’t know. But it’s sure worth the effort. And I think St. Paul would agree.