Everything Old is New Again

Sometimes, with a favourite passage of scripture, one can be lulled into thinking, "Yeah, yeah.  I've heard this before.  So what else is new?"  1 Corinthians 13:1-13 is like that.  Known as "The Love Passage", it's a popular reading for weddings (it was the NT reading at mine, if I remember rightly).  But...have you ever stopped to think about it?  I mean, really think about it?  In today's sermon, Queen Pastor Lee explored this passage in a way I'd never heard before.  Here's an excerpt from her sermon:

A gift can either build up or tear down; it depends on whether love is present at its implementation.  To drive the point home, and to give us more to chew on about what love looks like, Paul lists 15 characteristics about Christian love.  They are 15 characteristics that we need to attend to as we gather together in a loving Christian community, meeting as a parish council, worshipping, working side-by-side on the highway clean-up, the church yard sale, and the fall dinner.  So here are Paul's 15 characteristics about Christian love, accompanied by a brief description:

1. Love is patient. The Greek word used to describe love in the passage means patience with people, not patience with circumstances.  It is someone who is slow to anger, not being vengeful to another who has wronged or hurt us.
2. Love is kind.  King Philip II of Spain was not a kind man, although he was deeply religious.  He founded the Spanish Inquisition and thought he was serving God by massacring those who thought differently from him.
3. Love is not envious. There are two kinds of envy; the one kind covets the possessions of other people, which is difficult to avoid because that is very human.  The other kind is worse because it is mean -- it begrudges others what they have, and wishes that others did not have possessions at all.
4. Love is not boastful.  True love will always be far more impresses with its own unworthiness than its own merit. Love is kept humble by the awareness that it can never offer its loved one a gift which is good enough.
5. Love is not arrogant.  The truly great person never thinks of his or her own importance.
6. Love is not rude.  Maybe another way of saying that is that love is full of grace.  There is a graciousness in Christian love which never forgets that courtesy, and tact and politeness may possibly be regarded as lesser virtues but they are lovely things.  Or put another way, "Go where you will, and let your face be a sermon in itself."
7. Love does not insist on its own way.  For Christians, this is a love that always remembers not what life owes them, but what they owe to life; that thinks less of our own rights and more about our responsibilities to others.
8. Love is not irritable.  This is a tough one.  It means that Christian love never becomes exasperated with people, because exasperation is a sign of defeat.  If we can master our temper, then we can master just about anything.
9. Love is not resentful, or as it is written in another translation, love does not store up the memory of any wrong it has received.  The original Greek word for 'store up' is an accountant's term, a word used for entering an item on a ledger so that it will not be forgotten.  Christian love means not holding a grudge, not brooding over the wrong done by someone, not fanning the flame of wrath.  Christian love is about forgetting a slight, a wrong, a hurt.
10. Love does not rejoice in wrong-doing.  Christian love means not taking pleasure when we hear something derogatory about someone else, not preferring to hear of the misfortune of others rather than of their good fortunes.  Do you remember seeing the first television accounts of the death of Osama Bin Laden?  Without a doubt he was an evil man, but it was also sad to see people congregating in the streets, cheering and celebrating at the death of another human being, someone who would now never have the opportunity to repent and turn to God.
11. Love rejoices in the truth.  Facing the truth can be hurtful.  In the Financial Peace course that [my husband] Gary and I teach, it is not easy for participants to face the truth, that they have not been good stewards of their money, to admit they need help with budgeting, and to face the reality of bad financial choices.  However, Christian love has no wish to veil the truth; it is brave enough to face the truth, and it is glad when the truth prevails.  We have seen this at work in Financial Peace; once people face the truth about their finances, they are ready to make positive changes about their finances that will bring financial peace to their lives.
12. Love bears all things, 
13. believes all things, 
14. hopes all things, 
15. and endures all things.  Love can bear any insult, any disappointment, any injury.  Christian love always believes the best about other people, and never gives in to hopelessness.  I don't know about you, but sometimes this sounds a bit "Pollyanna" to me, very prescriptive and difficult to live up to in the real world.  Tell someone who has been unemployed for 9 months not to be hopeless and that person might think you lack understanding and compassion.  I speak from experience, by the way.

So when we have lost our hope, lost our belief in things, lost our ability to endure things, when we want our own way and become resentful, then the best cure is the promises of God in Scripture, such as the "love" chapter...or this, one of my favourite passages from Jeremiah (29:11-14), which says:

"For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.  Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.  When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile."

AMEN!