Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · January 31, 2010

Litany of Praise and Invocation

From Psalm 71  

We take refuge in you, O Lord.

               Deliver us through your righteousness.

               Hear us and save us.

Rescue all those abused by the intentions of the wicked, the unjust, and cruel.

               We have leaned upon you from our births;

               our praise is continually of you.

Let us pray:

               To whom else shall we turn, Lord of our lives?

               We place our lives in your tender care. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Jacob Thorne

God of creation, God of joy, God of happiness; we give thanks this morning that you have a love that will not let us go, for we rest our souls in thee. 

This morning, we pray that you will hear our prayers for those who need the sound of your love. All too often, our attention has focused on ourselves, instead of sharing your love with others. May our response to your love be love. With our whole hearts, let us spend our love with abandon. Let us risk our love with no thought for our own gain. 

Your healing touch, O God, releases us from the wounds of yesterday. Your forgiving touch releases us from the brokenness of yesterday. Your creative touch releases us even from the glory of yesterday and opens us up to a new way, a new path, a new beginning.

We praise you, O God, for we know that we can trust you with our deepest concerns. We know that we can follow wherever you lead. 

Hear us now as we say together the prayer that your Son taught us…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

I Corinthians 13:1-13

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.

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. But as for prophesies, 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.

Message

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Tim Carson

Where do we most often hear this “love chapter” from I Corinthians, at what occasions? At weddings, of course. I don’t know how many times I have read those words at weddings; too many to count. And that is not necessarily inappropriate; the notion of love is so universal that it applies lots of places, including weddings.

But what if I told you that the original context of this passage from the Apostle Paul was not a wedding, but rather a church fight? That changes things; doesn’t it?

As we listen to all the high-minded language about love, we need to remember that people were feeling and acting, well, less than loving. They were scrapping over who has the authority, whose version of the faith was most correct, what’s the right behavior in church, how they should behave in community, and who was their favorite preacher. All of this wrangling had resulted in the formation of factions and divisions in the body. Some wrote Paul about it with heavy hearts. And he sent a letter in return that addressed their volatile situation.

That is the context in which his words about the superlative place of love are found. It is love that is patient and kind and wills the best for the other. But what does he mean when he says the word, “love?”

Several years ago, the revered Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz was reported to have said that the word “love” is the most used, misused, and abused word in our vocabulary, and we ought to have a moratorium on it and use other words in its place. I became interested in that and did a little study on the uses of the word “love” and its equivalents in other languages and cultures. Sure enough, there is enormous variety. In many languages, there are very specific words for romantic affections, friendship, compassion, and divine love. In Chinese, there is a very specific word for “puppy love,” for instance.

When you hear Tina Turner sing in her dusky voice, “What’s love got to do with it … just a second hand emotion … who needs a heart when a heart can be broken,” you know we need to define terms.

What kind of love is she referring to? She means, does she not, that instinctual passion is the first term and every other form of affection – including deep emotional connection – is derivative of it? Tina Turner doesn’t know it, but she is really an evolutionary psychologist as well as a neurobiological scientist. Somebody text her and tell her that. Will she be surprised?

She is an evolutionary psychologist because they understand that all of the attractions and the sensory hardware we have that contributes to that are based in the drive to reproduce. The species wants to survive and thrive so this is just nature’s way of insuring continuation.

She is a neurobiological scientist because the word “love” is really only a combination of chemical washes that originate in the limbic system of the brain. Certain chemicals are dominant in early attraction to insure mating and then other ones take their place later to insure bonding and safety for the raising of children.

So, thanks Tina, for clarifying all that for us. Love – as an ideal – is a second hand emotion to the evolutionary process and our biology. Or so they would say.

Enter the Apostle Paul, writing in Koine Greek. He has several words with different connotations at his disposal. And I think he would have an interesting conversation with Tina. He can choose from a list that includes erotic love (eros), mutual friendship love (philia) and spiritual, self-forgetful love (agape).

Think of it this way. Eros, Philia, and Agape are found in several very basic postures of life, each having its place:

·         Eros says, “I want.” It’s the language of passion.

·         Philia says, “I like.” It’s the language of mutual benefit.

·         Agape says, “I give.” It’s the language of compassion, empathy, and self-transcendence.

The first two – eros and philia – are based in attachment. They are based in either desire or mutual benefit. In these cases what we call “love” is really a form of self-love; in both cases, I give, but I expect to get back. That’s not necessarily bad in an interdependent world where we hope to meet one another’s needs in a relational network. That’s one of the important functions of families, tribes, and even nations. Democracies assume it. But if one were to live only in attachment and what might be gained from it - scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours - then the resulting soul and community might become very self-centered and driven by self-satisfaction. The mantra of a self-centered love might be, “Meet my needs.” It’s not wrong to either have needs or ask for them to be met, but it becomes narcissistic if that’s all that drives a person, if it’s not balanced by anything else.

You might say that the Corinthian community was plagued by self-centeredness. Everyone was making claims for him or herself, elevating the self to grandiose places while diminishing others. Demands were made on others to “make me happy” and to “give me my way and what I want.” And so this self-centeredness tore the community apart.

If a community is based only on self-serving passion, getting what I want, then it is but a short step to hurting others to get it. Unless passion is governed by a regard for the other, then it can become monstrous – in both institutions and individuals. The other becomes an object that either provides for what I want or blocks it. And when self-serving passion is combined with power and arrogance, it then becomes the stuff of abuse, injustice, and even genocide.

As an antidote to this, Paul wrote to them saying, “If I speak with the tongues of men or of angels, but have not agape … I am a clanging cymbal.” Then I am two pots and pans beating together. I am noise, unless I have agape. Agape is a love born not of attachment, but rather giving for the sake of the other without expecting back. It is the unconditional, other-oriented love that pours out for the other because that is its nature.

We might ask ourselves how these different loves achieve some kind of balance in our lives, or how the absence of one is compensated by another. I think that sometimes, if we are very attentive, we can feel where these different kinds of loves actually reside in our bodies and minds. It is as though they live in some kind of spectrum within us. And we have to decide how and when they are employed, which is going to be honored or become preeminent. This is a life-long emotional and spiritual challenge.

What Paul knew was that absent agape, the Christian community will inevitably cave in upon itself.

As Leo Tolstoy drew closer to the end of his life, he began to assume more of what the Buddhists would call “detachment.” He let go of that which would impede his spiritual union with God. And at the core of it was his understanding of this agape. Listen to his words:

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the source from which I came.” (from War and Peace)

But how can we do this? Is it not impossible to live in some permanent state of agape consciousness and action, our hearts and minds tuned to the highest love?

Perhaps we can spend longer and longer times living in the currents of that kind of love. But love is more than a feeling. It is more than a second-hand emotion. It is the principle of life itself, one which we may strive to live even when everything in our nature screams against it. This highest love allows us most of all to act lovingly when not feeling so, which is one of the highest Christian virtues.

Anyone can act lovingly when we are happy and happy with the object of our love. That is philia – the give and take, tit-for-tat, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” kind of love. We are happy as long as we are getting what we want. It is easy to do that. It is quite another thing to act lovingly when the feelings are not aligned, when you’ve been hurt or treated unfairly. That is the test. It is one that I have not always passed with flying colors, as I suspect that you have not always passed either. At its heart, the real fiber of love is its capacity to will the best for the other when not feeling like doing it. It is a moral decision, loving is. And as such, we have to liberate our notions of agape love from a dependence upon feeling. Only a holy detachment makes it possible.

The Christian theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote a book called, Works of Love, and in it, he made a simple and rather revolutionary observation. He said that Christ commanded his disciples to “love one another as I have loved you.” That is the source of the word Maundy in Maundy Thursday. Maundy means, “command,” and that’s what he offered at the Last Supper – a command to love.

And so Kierkegaard takes this challenge to practice agape outside of feeling and places it, instead, in the realm of obedience. If you assume the mantle of Christian, you are asked to practice agape as something you do in obedience to Christ. He takes the three words – You… shall… love… and focuses separately on each one.

The command to love comes to you, no other, and the obligation to act on it rests on our own shoulders. The command is in the imperative – shall – because it is not an option. The command is to do a certain thing in the situation – to love. You shall love.

If love becomes an act of obedience, something that fulfills our calling in Christ, that changes things; doesn’t it? Then we are compelled, in any situation, to ask, “What is the most loving thing for me, for us to do?”

In my own life, I think of how, on certain occasions, this seemed next to impossible. Certainly, if I wait to feel like I want to love, I might never get there. Think of sometime in your life in which you were harmed or treated unfairly. What would be the impetus for you to do the most loving thing in the situation? Would it be your feelings? It wouldn’t be my feelings. I would want to do just the opposite. This kind of love, this agape, is not based in passion or attachment or feeling, but rather in obedience to the divine command to love. And that is central to what it means to live in Christ.

Whenever more than two people are in the room, however, love needs to be translated into justice. In fact, love in the social sphere is justice, if it exists at all. The most loving agape thing to do is to be a justice maker in the social sphere. That’s how love gets translated.

Do you remember when a gunman entered the Amish School in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in October 2006, and murdered the ten schoolgirls? (Amish Grace; Kraybill, Nolt and Weaver-Zercher; John Wiley & Sons, 2007).  Yes, it was one of those horrific things we would rather not remember. But the thing I do choose to remember was the response of that Amish community to the horrific act. Within hours, they went to the family of the shooter and offered forgiveness and took up an offering to help. They realized that the family members of the shooter were victims as well. They attended the shooter’s funeral.

None of this eclipsed the tragedy for them. None of this response pretended that something terribly evil hadn’t taken place. But their response, even in the midst of grief, was calibrated with something quite radical. Here were imperfect people who individually and collectively strived to live Jesus’ example to love. They were being obedient. And the rest of the world was shocked by their actions.

When they interviewed some of the Amish community later, they simply said, “Forgiveness is a decided issue … It was not a new kind of thing … It’s just standard Christian forgiveness” (49).  Listen to these words of an Amish father who lost a daughter in the schoolhouse: “Our forgiveness is not in our words, it’s in our actions; it’s not what we said, but what we did. That was our forgiveness” (52).

When I think of the times I’ve struggled with forgiveness in my life, I realize that true forgiveness needs to be set free from the assumption that our feelings have to be in order first. The truth is that some people will never regret the pain they cause others. They remain unrepentant. They will never tell you they are sorry. But agape love doesn’t wait for others to love first.

True forgiveness can’t wait for that to happen, though reconciliation is dependent upon it. Forgiveness is a moral act given in obedience to the command of Christ. And agape love, the underpinning of that forgiveness, is also the dimension of God in which we choose to live.

By the time we arrive at this thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letter, he has broken into song, set a poem to music, and we marvel at the words that pour out of him. These are words that put every other word into a different perspective:

“Agape is patient; agape is kind; agape is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Agape does not insist on its own way; agape is not irritable or resentful; agape does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Agape bears all things; agape believes all things; agape hopes all things; agape endures all things. Agape never ends … Faith, hope and agape abides, these three, but the greatest of these is agape.”

What’s love got to do with it? Everything, Tina, everything.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction

And now, the love of God, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you always. Amen.